Energy Internet construction depends on technology

The construction of energy Internet, based on informatization and intelligence, is gaining momentum.

On June 13, at the 2017 State-owned Enterprise IT Technology Innovation and Application Seminar, Yu Xiaohui, chief engineer of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that mobile Internet has changed the development model and pattern of information and communication technology to the greatest extent in the past 10 years. This trend has not stopped until now, and has expanded from the information industry to traditional fields. In the next wave, the Internet of Things is more important. The revolutionary field now is the application in the production field, especially the application in the manufacturing and transportation fields will promote greater changes.

From Germany's "Industry 4.0" plan, the United States' national strategy for industrial Internet and big data, the European Union's "Horizon 2020" plan to the "Made in China 2025" strategy, countries around the world are formulating strategies to seize the high ground of a new round of industrial transformation. As the largest energy producer and consumer, China's energy production and consumption must be informationized and intelligent.

Energy companies have also sensed the business opportunities of "Internet + Smart Energy" and have continued to focus on the construction of energy Internet and constantly show off their high-tech assets on various occasions.

"Freemeso, which has been officially released and used since 2015, is a resource planning and evaluation Internet platform independently developed by Goldwind, based on global meteorological and geographic information data. The global monitoring center represented by the telemetry and remote control system is a system for real-time collection, storage, statistics and analysis of operating data of more than 17,000 units of Goldwind Technology worldwide." At the recent Clean Energy Ministerial Meeting, staff in front of the Goldwind Technology booth introduced their company's high-tech to visitors.

Wu Kai, vice president of Goldwind Science & Technology, believes that as a leading enterprise in the domestic wind power industry, Goldwind Science & Technology is engaged in energy internet and the development of future energy, and pays more attention to accumulating strength and taking advantage of the trend based on Goldwind's existing resources. "Compared with energy internet, future energy is more extensible in connotation. Energy internet itself is an important form of future energy. But there is not much difference between the two in essence," said Wu Kai.

With seven major R&D centers around the world, nearly 30 national key scientific research projects underway, over 1,800 patented technologies, and design and type certification for over 33 models, Goldwind Technology has the confidence to develop the energy Internet in line with the trend.

As a leader in the clean energy industry, GCL Group also has its own understanding and practice of the Energy Internet. Liu Zhibo, deputy director of the GCL Central Research Institute, defined the concept of Energy Internet, saying that Energy Internet, as the technical support for the third energy revolution, is a new form of energy industry development that deeply integrates the Internet with energy production, transmission, storage, consumption and energy markets. It has the main characteristics of intelligent equipment, multi-energy coordination, information symmetry, decentralized supply and demand, flat system, and open transactions. It has put forward a strong demand for innovation in technology and business models, and will inevitably drive changes in energy-related industries.

Liu Zhibo said that GCL Smart Energy has created a new energy interconnection model of "source-network-sale-use-cloud" to provide users with integrated "Internet +" smart energy services. Through continuous technological innovation and business model transformation, GCL Smart Energy integrates energy technologies that meet the needs of ecological civilization and sustainable development in all aspects and the entire process of energy development, utilization, production and consumption.

Envision Energy's reliance on technological progress has been constantly emphasized. Zhang Lei, CEO of Envision Energy, said at the Clean Energy Ministerial Conference: The essence of renewable energy is not energy, but technology.

In Zhang Lei's view, there is already very good technical support for solving the problem of coordinated costs in energy systems: from the Internet of Things, cloud computing, to artificial intelligence and real-time control, all can provide technical support for solving system coordination.

Envision Energy's technological innovations are also bearing fruit around the world: Germany's sonnen has transformed itself from Europe's largest energy storage equipment supplier to Europe's leading energy retail and service company through its energy IoT platform EnOS; America's leading reinsurance company is creating a new insurance product for photovoltaic power plants through this platform; and Hong Kong's CLP Power is accelerating its new ambitions of realizing energy digital transformation and developing smart energy city business through Envision's energy IoT platform EnOS.

Today, no one knows what will happen in the future. Many things are evolving iteratively, and the construction of energy Internet is one of them. But there is no doubt that with the support of scientific and technological progress, the energy Internet will bring huge commercial value.