Zhejiang plans to build a "digital energy system", the beginning of "chessboard-style" management?

Recently, the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission and the Energy Bureau issued the "Key Points for the Reform of the Energy Sector in Zhejiang Province in 2020" (hereinafter referred to as the "Key Points"). Regarding the thinking of Zhejiang, a "model student", in addition to the reform of the power and natural gas systems that the industry pays close attention to, there may be another issue whose importance is underestimated - the construction of a "digital energy system".

After carefully reading the above documents, the eight key points are: "Reform and innovation of energy operation and management system", "Accelerate the comprehensive pilot of electricity system reform", "Accelerate the reform of natural gas system", "Improve coal reserve and quality control system", "Improve renewable energy development mechanism", "Accelerate reform in the field of energy conservation", "Establish an energy open cooperation mechanism" and "Promote pilot demonstration innovation".

It is not difficult to see that the above ideas have made a "chessboard-like" annual task deployment from the horizontal (electricity, natural gas, coal, renewable energy and other energy types) and vertical (operation management, energy conservation, open cooperation, pilot demonstration) dimensions. However, this is only a "chessboard-like" matrix arrangement based on experience. Can it really achieve the goal of optimizing decision-making?

Among the eight key points, the first one is "Innovation in the reform of energy operation and management system". The "Annual Goal" of this key point is to "establish a coal, electricity, oil and gas transportation coordination mechanism with clear responsibilities, efficient operation and system coordination, build a digital energy system by 2020, and comprehensively improve the level of energy management."

What is the blueprint for the "digital energy system" mentioned by Zhejiang? The document does not provide a detailed description. Judging from the deadline, although the delay in resumption of work due to the epidemic will bring a certain degree of time lag, it is not difficult to complete the project deployment and build a "system" before the end of 2020.

The real difficulty may lie in what categories of data and what degree of granularity can be gathered and connected to the "digital energy system" in real time after all kinds of information on different energy types are online, internet-based and digitalized; and whether the entities in the industrial chain of different energy types are willing, or what methods they accept to connect the data into it.

These are all things worth paying attention to in the future. Just like the digital transformation at the enterprise level, which attempts to break down the barriers between internal departments, the digital exploration at the energy industry level will inevitably touch upon the industry barriers of different energy types, as well as the interests of different entities in the upstream, midstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and there are many difficulties. However, if we put it in the perspective of digital government and smart cities, the above problems can be solved.

Since the country issued its big data strategy in 2015, it has gradually become a consensus to improve government governance capabilities with the help of digital technology. During the COVID-19 epidemic, we have already felt the role of digital technology in making up for the inefficiency of the mechanism. For example, the financial and academic circles used Baidu big data to study the resumption of work through the population inflow and outflow data during the epidemic.

What changes will happen when a huge, complex, and historically burdened energy machine encounters a digital tool that breaks information asymmetry? For the energy industry, perhaps digitalization and Internet-based means have the potential to become an "assist" for institutional and mechanism reform.

Previously, many voices in the industry expected that China might refer to the energy management model of the United Kingdom and bring together electricity and natural gas, two energy types with similar properties, under the unified management of the same competent department. However, considering the historical and current situation, it is extremely difficult to implement in the short term.

Now, we can try to use our imagination. If we can integrate the data of different energy types, or just the data of coal, electricity, oil, gas and transportation, and then have R&D personnel complete the creation of a large number of models, we will have the opportunity to use digital twin technology to perform deductive operations, thereby achieving coordinated decision-making at the data level without directly changing departmental affiliations and management authority.

When we go back to the document, we find that, judging from the three major tasks in 2020, there is no abstract leapfrogging goal, and it is feasible in the early stage of exploration. The first two tasks are to improve the coordination mechanism of coal, electricity, oil, gas and transportation, and to improve the energy operation analysis and dynamic monitoring mechanism, which focus on establishing and improving the information communication mechanism and improving the operation monitoring technical means.

The third task, "speeding up innovation in energy management models by taking advantage of the 'one-stop' reform," is also worth noting. "One-stop" is a proven successful model in the government affairs field, which has greatly improved the government's governance capabilities and the efficiency of social machinery. What will happen if this idea is introduced into energy industry management?

The reform of "one-stop" registration for water, electricity, gas and network has been explored first at the prefecture-level city level in Zhejiang. Tongxiang, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province proposed the method of "one-stop registration for early service, one-form application to reduce materials, one-window acceptance to reduce the number of times, one-time survey to reduce links, and one-time connection to reduce costs". The local area has also set up packages with different permutations and combinations, such as water and electricity packages, water and gas packages, and electricity packages.

Behind this is the local government's coordination of various departments and sharing of data, which not only improves the approval efficiency for local enterprises, but also greatly reduces the application cost.

If at the vertical level, by compressing the intermediate links and reducing the charges of energy supply entities respectively, the effect of "reducing costs" for the real economy can be achieved, then at the horizontal level, through the coordinated management of energy supply across varieties and departments, it can also reduce unnecessary construction and labor costs caused by duplicate construction, thereby reducing charges and optimizing the business environment.

The “chessboard-style” overall consideration is interspersed in the above-mentioned “Key Points for Work”. For example, the “Key Points for Work” mentioned, “Accelerate the promotion of energy infrastructure interconnection, further deepen the mutual assistance and linkage mechanism of the four local gas, oil, power and heat networks, and promote the intelligentization of energy networks.” The document also proposed, “In 2020, continue to promote the construction of comprehensive function service stations, promote comprehensive function service stations to achieve innovation and create benchmarks in terms of diversified energy supply varieties, diversified land supply forms, and standardized service standards.”

Digital technology can also "assist" more areas, but how to empower applications and how to cleverly resolve the limitations of the original mechanisms may really require vertical industries to continue to "open their minds."