How do traditional enterprises transform into energy operators?

Recently, the reporter learned from authoritative channels that the final draft of the "National Energy Internet Action Plan" written by the Science and Technology Department of the Energy Bureau will be released soon. At that time, different regions will be selected to carry out innovative pilot projects at different levels such as technology, policy, and business model.

With the introduction of the top-level design of the energy internet, the energy internet ushered in the first year of its development in 2016. However, as a new thing and an emerging industry, the technology, model and business model of the energy internet are not clear. The industry has different opinions on the energy internet, and the understanding is often limited to a certain level. For this reason, this newspaper specially interviewed Ci Song, the chief scientist of the China Energy Internet Strategy Research Group of the National Energy Administration and the expert of the Pre-research Group of the Energy Internet Action Plan, and the PI researcher of the Energy Internet Innovation Institute of Tsinghua University, to unveil a corner of the mystery of the energy internet.

Pictured is Ci Song, PI researcher at the Energy Internet Innovation Institute of Tsinghua University. He is the chief scientist of the China Energy Internet Strategic Research Group of the National Energy Administration and an expert in the Pre-research Group of the Energy Internet Action Plan. He was selected for the Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Specific examples of "Industry 4.0"

China Energy News: From the market perspective, the industry’s enthusiasm for energy internet has continued to grow, but the knowledge and understanding of energy internet vary greatly. So, what is the precise definition of energy internet?

▍Cisong: There are many interpretations of energy internet in the industry. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, among which there are two main reasons:

• First, the original English translation of EnergyInternet contained technical ambiguity, which was further enhanced by the unique semantic function of Chinese;

•Secondly, since the energy Internet is a new thing, it is normal for people from different industry backgrounds to have different understandings of its meaning. However, it is worth pointing out that this difference is not essential. There is a broad consensus in the industry that it is open, flat, shared, efficient and clean.

Energy Internet is a new energy system, a physical support system for the realization of "Internet + Smart Energy", and also a customized energy service industry ecosystem centered on user energy experience. Its essence is the inevitable result of information evolving into a new type of production material and deeply integrating with the traditional energy industry, reconfiguring and optimizing various production factors in the energy field.

The Energy Internet uses a system architecture that tightly couples information systems with traditional energy systems to horizontally integrate resources and drive industries in traditional vertically integrated and fragmented heterogeneous physical energy network systems (such as electricity, heat, gas, oil, nuclear, transportation and other independently operated energy networks). It can revitalize the heavy asset stock of the traditional energy industry through the incremental light assets of information, support the integrated and efficient use of multiple energy sources, and thus generate new value.

•From a macro perspective, the Energy Internet must meet the technical support needs of the country’s revolution in energy production and consumption, realize the evolution and transition of the traditional energy industry from the current vertically integrated, edge-closed business model to a new business model with horizontal interaction and edge openness, restore the commodity attributes of energy, and fully release the shared (reuse) value generated by the efficient utilization of diversified stock assets through the construction of an open energy trading market mechanism.

• From a micro perspective, the Energy Internet must meet the C2B and C2C models of energy production and supply driven by diverse energy demands. From this point of view, the Energy Internet can be seen as a specific example of "Industry 4.0" in the energy field. The final product of the Energy Internet is to provide flexible and diverse customized energy services for various energy demands.

Force traditional energy to change

China Energy News: The spirit of the Internet is openness, equality, collaboration and sharing, but energy in the traditional sense is monopolized. To develop the energy Internet, we need to break the monopoly and rebuild the energy market structure. In your opinion, what forms will the new business models presented by the energy Internet in the future take?

▍Cisong: In the era of energy Internet, there will be massive bidirectional power sources at the edge of traditional energy networks, which will pose great technical and business model challenges to the B2C model supported by traditional vertically integrated energy network systems, and will force the traditional energy industry to change. Of course, this change is first and foremost a change in thinking.

Secondly, after the boundaries of different traditionally segmented energy systems are opened up for interaction, the complementarity of different types of energy at the consumption level will also give rise to and promote a series of customized energy services based on the integrated and efficient utilization of heterogeneous energy systems, such as integrated utilization of cooling, heating and electricity, contract energy management, dynamic response on the demand side and other application scenarios.

As an industry driven by the energy internet that integrates the genes of the internet, it is first driven by the increasingly diverse energy demands on the user side. We can easily draw this conclusion from the popularity of new user-side bidirectional power sources such as distributed photovoltaics, electric vehicles, and home energy storage. In the era of energy internet, the market positioning of traditional users has changed from simple energy users (consumers) to dynamic energy users (prosumers). This role change will have a significant and far-reaching impact on the evolution and development of the energy system.

From the perspective of network system construction, the physical scale of the energy Internet can be divided into four levels: energy personal (family) network, energy local area network, energy wide area network, and global energy interconnection network. In this system, usually a large-scale network system is composed of several smaller-scale network systems interconnected, and this form is then iterated in a cycle to eventually form a global energy network system infrastructure.

It is worth pointing out that, unlike the traditional energy system, in the energy Internet, due to the dynamic interchangeability of supply and demand, we can use energy virtualization and energy informatization technology to give traditional energy resources new Internet information attributes, and then perform new load scheduling by transmitting and exchanging Internet information attributes of energy suppliers and energy users, so as to achieve the same purpose as traditional energy transmission, which greatly improves the efficient utilization of energy assets and the full life cycle utilization efficiency of energy resources. For example, we can achieve the same effect as energy transmission and scheduling by guiding the maximum matching of energy consumption (load) distribution and energy supply distribution through the information Internet, thereby realizing the local collection and consumption of new energy, while avoiding the loss caused by energy transmission and improving the utilization efficiency of energy assets and resources. Use cases such as load scheduling between different nodes in the data center network and charging load scheduling in the electric vehicle charging network have proved this point.

Technological innovation supports industrial development

China Energy News: In the eyes of many people, the energy Internet is still in the conceptual stage, and there are doubts about the realization of innovative technologies in the energy Internet. So in your opinion, how much support do existing technologies provide for the development of the industry?

▍Cisong: Energy Internet is a system in which information and communication technology is tightly coupled with traditional energy systems. Its physical network architecture is a new type of energy network infrastructure that is interconnected and formed by linking traditional independently operated energy networks such as electricity, heat, gas, oil, transportation, and distributed renewable energy through Internet technology, advanced information and communication technology, and new energy trading systems.

Energy Internet is different from the informatization of traditional energy systems. Its important technical feature is the construction of a two-way decision-making and control closed loop of information flow and energy flow. The informatization of traditional energy systems is to build digital collection, transmission, storage, processing and decision-making of system control information at the level of system information flow, such as the SCADA system in smart grids. From the perspective of energy flow, traditional energy systems are still continuous one-way analog systems.

In the energy internet, energy flows will be processed digitally and informatized and seamlessly connected with information systems, thus forming a deep fusion of energy flows and information flows (rather than an informatized superposition), so that energy will eventually become a network virtual resource that can be calculated and measured. From this point of view, the future information internet will also be deeply integrated with the energy internet, and the resource space of the information internet will add one dimension: energy resources (the other three dimensions are computing resources, storage resources and bandwidth resources). Therefore, we can say that the energy internet is also one of the important technologies supporting the next generation of the internet, cloud computing and big data, and sustainable ICT.