Energy Internet: Decentralized Control is Imperative

"As renewable energy gradually moves towards parity, we will truly combine energy production and energy use at the user side, such as households, enterprises and institutions, and implement the photovoltaic rooftop plan and the integration of 'photovoltaic-energy storage-energy use' across the country. This is our dream and the action we are promoting." At the 2019 World Industrial and Energy Internet Expo held recently, Gao Jifan, chairman of Trina Solar Co., Ltd., explained his understanding of the energy Internet to the participants. "Build a market-oriented and shared new energy system, completely subvert the traditional boundaries between energy production and consumption, and make everyone a producer and consumer of electricity."

"People's energy use behavior and methods, as well as how they interact with energy supply, are major challenges facing the future energy system in the process of control optimization." Similarly, in the view of Tim Green, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a professor at Imperial College London, and the director of the Future Energy Laboratory, in such an energy system, it is undoubtedly very costly to "centrally control" all devices. "Therefore, energy must use the Internet to perform calculations and decisions locally, and carry out "decentralized" and "non-centralized" control in an orderly manner, so as to provide higher energy supply quality and energy balance services for local energy systems."

How to achieve “integration”? How to achieve “decentralization”? What role will the concept and technology of energy Internet play in this process?

"We connect the devices in the local area through a set of system software and localized control devices, and the intelligent system will tell the devices what action plan to take." Tim Green gave an example: "For example, when the voltage rises, the system will adjust the voltage and analyze whether the nearby devices have the same problem. By adding a large number of sensors to the system, the adjacent nodes are adjusted according to the voltage conditions of the corresponding nodes to determine whether part of the work of the high-voltage nodes needs to be distributed to the surrounding generators to achieve balance. In this system, the network monitors itself and the control system makes its own decisions. This is 'decentralized' control."

Tim Green emphasized that the process of "decentralization" places higher demands on the stability of the supply side and the flexibility management of the demand side. "First of all, we need to know the sources of various forms of energy so that different energy sources can complement each other better and even achieve second-level control. At the same time, we need to predict changes in demand. It may be easier to make predictions at the national level, but if it is at the regional level or even a smaller scope, such individual predictions are relatively difficult. Of course, in this process, how to reduce costs at each link and provide cheaper solutions is also particularly important."

Faced with the difficulties of personalized prediction and the pursuit of second-level control, how should these challenges be overcome?

Gao Jifan believes that an open energy Internet platform may become the future direction. "Currently, Trina Solar is cooperating with Huawei, Alibaba, and some well-known universities and research institutions to build an open energy Internet of Things platform, which will fully combine power generation, energy storage, smart power distribution, and smart energy use to maximize the overall energy efficiency. Our goal is to connect 100 million users. We now have more than 100,000 connected terminals, and I believe it will soon reach one million."

In this regard, Xu Wenwei, director of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and dean of the Strategic Research Institute, also said that at present, in the field of industrial Internet, Huawei's main focus is on platform building. "Through the platform, a series of problems such as information islands, network security, production, and process and framework visualization can be solved. In this way, new models and new formats such as intelligent production, networked collaboration, personalized customization, and service-oriented transformation can be truly realized, achieving the goals of improving quality, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency."