Energy Internet: Social Infrastructure for Common Prosperity

China Energy Storage Network : We have entered the era of globalization. How to grasp such a small geographical space and enable mankind to gradually move towards common prosperity and a better life in the future? Some people of insight have put forward a scientific proposition of epoch-making significance. "Global Energy Internet" is such a masterpiece. In the sense of sharing the material interests of the earth, we will build social infrastructure so that every country and every person on the earth can benefit. Human beings are entering or are about to enter the era of networking with good electrification facilities. "Global Energy Internet" scientifically and systematically analyzes the content system and construction path of the energy Internet, deeply grasps its internal mechanism and control technology, and provides methodological enlightenment and reference to engineering technology innovation experience for the construction of social infrastructure for common prosperity.

1. Grasping the general rules and the inevitability of the development of energy internet

Energy is an indispensable material basis for the development of human society. In the process of human civilization, energy plays a vital role. It is not only a necessary condition for achieving civilization change, but also an important part of people's affluent life. From private ownership and individual use, to independent supply and use of energy within a certain range, to the realization of open energy transmission and common use in a wider range, wise humans have made scientific explorations and rational choices. With the popularization of information Internet and the progress of industrial manufacturing and intelligent machine technology, energy Internet has become a general trend, and electricity has gradually become a commodity that people can freely exchange and control.

The world in the 21st century is flat. It has never been so small. "Globalization is entering the era of globalization 3.0, the era of individual globalization, following national globalization and corporate globalization." Modern technology is connecting people in this world, as well as the social infrastructure that needs to be shared for affluent and noble lives, to jointly create a new industrial chain with high added value. The information Internet shortens the distance between people, eliminates the barriers to communication between people, and the transmission of complex things becomes a data stream expressed by 0 and 1. The Internet is not a top-down tree structure. Its data is jointly created by all users. Everyone is both a consumer and a provider of information. The Internet turns the spherical geographical world blocked by mountains and rivers into a touchable display screen. Everyone who knows or does not know each other has established an organic connection on an equal footing. The energy Internet and the information Internet have the same connotation and basic principles, and promote and coordinate each other in function. It depicts such a scene - many distributed power customers are both power consumers and power providers, and electrification facilities enrich the content of life, improve the quality of life, and realize personal freedom and resource sharing in the sense of social basic security.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution 300 years ago, mankind has experienced two great industrial revolutions that were shrouded in smoke and full of destructive power, but also established the position of mankind to dominate the earth's society. Every change in the way energy is used has become the engine of the industrial revolution. After two industrial revolutions and two world wars, the development of communication and transportation technology has brought great convenience to the flow of people and goods, and has developed into today's trade network, making trade, transportation tools and highway networks, sea and canal transportation networks, and aviation networks a necessity in people's daily lives.

The development of communication information technology has brought about more profound changes in human lifestyles. Today, the Internet terminals are distributed in everyone's hands. The difference is that trade networks transmit goods, while the Internet transmits information. Their common feature is that they use different carriers to penetrate the traditional structure of society, improve transmission efficiency, reduce the cost of obtaining goods and information, and make up for the shortcomings of people's communication. People gain huge benefits from each other's learning from each other.

Looking back at the two industrial revolutions in human society before the 21st century, we can see the cooperative development of social division of labor and exchange, and the indispensable basic role played by energy in it. The first industrial revolution was the widespread application of steam power, which increased human production capacity exponentially. At the same time, transportation tools such as trains and ships came into being. The ever-increasing supplies and increasingly convenient transportation have led to a rapid expansion of the market, people have accelerated the division of labor and exchange, and the basic wealth of society has expanded and expanded to an extent unmatched in any previous period. The invention and application of electricity gave rise to the second industrial revolution characterized by technologies such as computers, modern communications, and the Internet. Objectively speaking, without the invention and application of electricity, the second industrial revolution would not have occurred, human life would still be in an environment shrouded in smoke and clouds, and it would never have been possible to enter the era of electrification with energy Internet as the link.

In today's era, the third industrial revolution is rolling in with an irreversible momentum, and human society is facing the third major capacity upgrade of social infrastructure. This time, it is the high integration of human physical fitness and intelligence, which is another great initiative of human beings to capture and possess the power of nature in harmony. It will produce a huge storm effect and bring unprecedented changes. The leading factor of this industrial revolution is still the way of energy utilization, requiring people to rely on universal interconnection and apply renewable energy more intelligently. Not only should we use energy efficiently, but we should also truly protect our own living environment and sustainably improve the quality of social life. A strong and intelligent power grid with UHV transmission as the backbone and global interconnection has come into being and is about to emerge. In the past decade, the builders of China's State Grid have eliminated various interferences and established the basic framework of the UHV power grid without distraction, which is a remarkable contribution to the construction of human social infrastructure.

Jeremy Rifkin expounded the core concept of the energy Internet in his book The Third Industrial Revolution: the innovation of energy supply methods constitutes a broad industrial revolution, such as the use of steam engines and electricity, and the third industrial revolution will be the interconnection of new energy users on a global scale based on informatization, which will be a revolution that completely changes the face of the world. The traditional power grid and the information network are deeply integrated to solve the misalignment of power supply and demand in time and space. In terms of time, the smart grid can accurately predict the load demand in the next second, and open up the supply and demand information and automatic control channels of energy production and consumption. For electric energy that must be completed at the same time for "power generation, transmission, distribution, and power consumption", the reliability and intelligence of the power grid are particularly important. In terms of space, the smart grid can comprehensively consider the energy conversion efficiency according to the resource endowments of different regions, and select and configure between energy conversion methods such as hydropower, thermal power, nuclear power, wind power, and solar power to obtain greater resource utilization efficiency. Not only that, smart grids are also profoundly changing the relationship between producers and consumers. Traditional power grids are one-way, with producers responsible for supply and consumers responsible for use, while smart grids are two-way or even multi-way, and consumers can also participate in production.

The essence of the Industrial Revolution is that humans gradually overcome the limitations of time and space and gain the ability to dominate the earth and even the vast universe. The way people use energy determines the size of this dominance. The way energy is used promotes the high-speed operation of market systems and mechanisms for the progress of human society. Today, the communication information Internet supported by a widely interconnected power grid is passionately colliding in the form of Internet+ around the world. Optical fiber and iron arms are integrated, touch and intelligence intersect, communication and satellites accompany each other, and the network is connected in all directions. Hundreds of trillions of data shuttle through it, creating unprecedented value for human development. The energy industry will break the narrow parochialism and the closed thinking that energy use is self-sufficient. The future must be an era of global energy Internet with electricity as the core. The global energy Internet will make it possible to optimally configure global energy production, reduce energy production costs, promote energy technology updates, and avoid waste of energy resources. The global energy Internet can make scarce traditional fossil energy such as coal, oil, and natural gas take a back seat, and make wind and solar energy around the world the main source of energy supply. It can fundamentally avoid wars for energy resources. The global energy Internet integrates energy production and consumption. You are in me and I am in you. We prosper together and suffer together. What people need is careful maintenance, effective connectivity and stable operation.