Fuel-cell manufacturer Bloom Energy Corp. has teamed up with SoftBank Group on a joint venture that will sell Bloom's products in Japan. Each partner will own half of the new company, called Bloom Energy Japan.

The damage caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, the incident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the subsequent closure of nuclear power plants have created a significant electrical power deficit in Japan, the companies said in a statement. Subsequent energy imports have greatly expanded Japan’s trade deficit, while consumer electricity prices have recently risen by double digits.

Bloom Energy Japan was created to provide a reliable electricity alternative to using utility power. SoftBank, which already owns a number of solar and wind energy sources, will add distributed baseload power provided by Bloom Energy servers to its portfolio.

KR Sridhar, Bloom co-founder and CEO, said, “Empowering customers in Japan to buy electricity on their terms is another significant step on our journey to change the way energy is generated and consumed in the world.”

Bloom Energy has a number of customers in the US, including Walmart, AT&T, Google, eBay, The Coca Cola Company and others. Some customers, such as Apple and eBay, are using the fuel cells to power data centers.

The company says its energy servers have generated over 700,000,000 kWh of electricity over the last five years. The energy server can run on natural gas and biogas.