Ubiquitous power Internet of Things has great potential

During the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the State Grid Corporation of China held a meeting to deploy the construction of the ubiquitous power Internet of Things, making comprehensive arrangements for the construction of the ubiquitous power Internet of Things and accelerating the implementation of the "three types, two networks, and world-class" strategy. As soon as the news came out, the ubiquitous power Internet of Things became a hot topic among the representatives and members of the two sessions, and related concept stocks in the stock market all rose to their daily limits.

The ubiquitous power Internet of Things is a smart service system that focuses on all aspects of the power system and fully applies modern information technologies such as mobile Internet and artificial intelligence, as well as advanced communication technologies to achieve interconnection of all things and human-machine interaction in all aspects of the power system. It has the characteristics of comprehensive state perception, efficient information processing, and convenient and flexible application.

How will it strengthen the security of the power grid, what will it do in terms of data usage, what new business forms will it give rise to, and what problems should be prevented in advance in the construction of ubiquitous power Internet of Things? With these questions, Energy Review interviewed Zhang Yunyong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and president of China Unicom Research Institute.

"Energy Review": Ubiquitous power Internet of Things belongs to the category of industrial Internet of Things. What stage is China's industrial Internet of Things construction currently at?

Zhang Yunyong: Industrial Internet of Things is the Internet of Things technology in the industrial field. Industrial Internet of Things is to continuously integrate various types of acquisition and control sensors or controllers with perception and monitoring capabilities, as well as communication, artificial intelligence and other technologies into all aspects of the industrial production process, thereby greatly improving production efficiency and improving product quality. Furthermore, this interconnection is extended to the company's information system, business processes and personnel, realizing vertical interconnection from the workshop to the decision-making level. Realizing horizontal interconnection between upstream and downstream companies and ultimately achieving the upgrading of traditional industries to a new stage of intelligence is the task to be accomplished by Industry 4.0 or the Industrial Internet.

In fact, my country's industrial upgrading is driven by the Internet of Things and the Internet of Things. In recent years, the country has vigorously developed the industrial Internet and intelligent manufacturing. In 2016, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Development of Industrial Internet through "Internet + Advanced Manufacturing"". In June 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Industrial Internet Development Action Plan (2018-2020)". After hard exploration, my country has formed a relatively clear development path in terms of improving productivity within enterprises and extending the value chain outside enterprises, and has entered the stage of deep practice.

"Energy Review": What can the ubiquitous power Internet of Things do in mining the value of data, and how to apply big data technology to consolidate power grid security?

Zhang Yunyong: Big data is penetrating into many industries, giving rise to a variety of highly innovative application products and stimulating new business models.

I think we can discuss the big data application of ubiquitous power Internet of Things from several aspects:

First, in terms of control, since many power equipment are connected to the Internet, equipment monitoring and status evaluation can be carried out based on real-time data; at the same time, as safety is a priority factor, the adaptive defense control system of the power grid can be studied based on big data technology; the coordinated optimization dispatching technology of power transmission in the power grid can also be studied based on big data and cloud platforms. Second, in terms of power transmission and transformation, the production management information system and equipment status control platform covering the entire life cycle of power transmission and transformation equipment are constructed by using technologies such as big data and cloud computing, so as to realize the intelligent detection of the status of various types of power transmission and transformation equipment, including automatic equipment status collection, real-time diagnosis, visualization and remote perception, etc. Third, in terms of power distribution and consumption, the distribution network can be managed leanly and the impact of the power grid can be reduced by using the big data analysis of power distribution. Fourth, in terms of power quality, the power quality data analysis is studied, and the power quality information base, indicator system and big data analysis platform of typical power consumption equipment are established to provide power quality auxiliary decision-making analysis. Fifth, in terms of smart grid, through multi-dimensional power grid management and operation and maintenance key data, the integration and comprehensive analysis of power grid equipment status information is studied to promote the further intelligence of the power grid.

In this regard, operators have accumulated rich and massive data resources. China Unicom has built a PB-level cross-domain data collection, analysis and application platform. In terms of big data development and application, it provides big data products and solutions for governments and enterprises, builds an industry application ecosystem, and achieves win-win cooperation with various industries. In terms of the big data research and development system, a multi-dimensional correlation analysis of 28 types of data sources is constructed from different perspectives of users, services, networks and terminals.

We also hope to provide China Unicom's strength in the application of ubiquitous power Internet of Things big data.

"Energy Review": We have seen that "Internet +" has spawned many new business models. What business models may the ubiquitous power Internet of Things spawn and how will it change the current urban transportation life?

Zhang Yunyong: On the one hand, for the power grid itself, the ubiquitous power Internet of Things is based on comprehensive perception and driven by data integration. The data in the power production, transmission and service processes are explicitly expressed, and all business operations are digitized. New business value is further mined from the data to generate new business models. For example, through the accumulation of massive data and the learning of failure modes, a certain equipment failure can be predicted in advance, and predictive maintenance can be achieved.

On the other hand, the greatest value of the new business model is to serve end customers. With the help of the ubiquitous power Internet of Things, the internal perception capabilities of power grid companies can be enhanced, such as planning and construction, dispatching and control, operation and maintenance, etc., which can be extended to smart communities, smart city overall energy solutions, smart transportation overall energy supply solutions, smart energy packages and transaction models, user energy efficiency analysis and user portraits, smart homes and energy management, etc. For example, in the power supply of new energy vehicles, matching public charging piles with Internet of Vehicles data, based on such a collection of resources, can not only provide charging services for customers, but also expand to more vehicle services, and even share data information on the platform with the government and upstream and downstream electric vehicle companies.

"Energy Review": Recently, Venezuela's power system suffered a cyber attack. This also reminds us what we need to pay attention to in terms of network security issues in the construction of ubiquitous power Internet of Things?

Zhang Yunyong: That’s right. Security issues should be the key consideration in the construction of the pan-electric Internet of Things.

The ubiquitous power Internet of Things can realize the extensive interconnection of sensors, people, power equipment, dispatching systems, and management service terminals, providing new impetus for the intelligent development of power grids. However, this ubiquitous interconnection also breaks the closed pattern of traditional systems, making some key power equipment visible on the network. Due to the strategic and basic characteristics of the power grid, it will be very dangerous if we do not pay attention to the construction of the security system.

Accidents such as the Stuxnet virus attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and the large-scale power outage at Ukrainian power plants due to hacker attacks are examples of national critical infrastructure being invaded through the Internet.

According to our experience in network security and cloud security, the construction of security system is considered in layers. The first layer is for physically existing devices, such as terminals, systems, equipment, etc., which can all be counted as this scope. At this level, security protection functions such as endpoint protection, communication and connection protection, security monitoring and analysis, security configuration and management should be included; the second layer is data protection, from the location of the data, including endpoint data, communication data, configuration data, monitoring data; from the data survival state, including static data, dynamic data, mobile data. All of these data need to be protected from unauthorized access and uncontrollable changes; the third layer is security model and security policy, including security management covering the organizational level and device level. It is a logic-based security model used to describe the security goals of the system and is a formal representation of the system security policy.