Digital grid: "Bits" and "watts" are moving towards deep integration

Du Zhuang, a media reporter for China's strategic emerging industries

Driven by demand, green power enters the trading market

New energy has experienced a stage of great development under the "policy-driven" for many years, and has moved towards a new starting point of "demand-driven". On the basis of the current achievements in the construction of the electricity market, the pilot green electricity trading, focusing on the construction of the green energy production and consumption market system and long-term mechanism, is an important measure for the power industry to help achieve the "double carbon" goal. From green certificate trading to green electricity trading, how to accurately match the needs of power generation parties and users? What is the significance of the establishment of the green electricity trading market and how to implement it? Can we take marketization as the starting point to promote reasonable fluctuations in electricity prices? How does digital technology inspire the construction of new power systems? In this issue, we will discuss with you the risks and challenges that Green Power will face when entering the trading market.

Watts are power units that can be found everywhere in the power industry, and bits are units of information, symbols of the digital age. Among the many digital technologies, digital twins have become one of the key technologies for the digitization of the power grid. Power grid enterprises point directly to the core position of digitalization in the "new infrastructure" of the power grid, aiming at the "digital new infrastructure".

In 2020, among the carbon dioxide emissions generated by China's energy consumption, the power industry accounts for about 42.5% of the total carbon dioxide emissions of the energy industry, and the carbon peak and carbon neutrality progress of the power industry affect the entire process of achieving the goal of "carbon neutrality and carbon peaking". In the new power system, the various links of power supply, power grid, energy storage, and load (source network storage) are coupled with each other, so that the analysis of the power system must change from the isolated analysis method in the past to the collaborative analysis of all links, and the construction of a digital grid has become more urgent.

Watts are power units that can be found everywhere in the power industry, and bits are units of information, symbols of the digital age. The application of technologies such as digital twins has brought the "bits" and "watts" of the digital grid to a deep integration.

Making the grid "smarter"

Energy is an important foundation and driving force for social and economic development, and in the context of "double carbon", China's energy industry has embarked on the road of digital transformation. New energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaic power generation have the characteristics of randomness, intermittentness and volatility, and the characteristics of "double high" and "double peak" of the power system are obvious, and with the larger-scale grid connection brought about by the goal of "carbon neutrality and carbon peaking", the safe and stable operation of the power grid and the balance of electricity are facing great tests. In order to effectively ensure the operation safety of the power grid after the large-scale integration of new energy into the grid, the improvement of energy use efficiency has become more important.

Through the App to install 90 kVA of ordinary industrial electricity in the manufacturing industry, from the application to the completion of the power connection, it only takes one and a half days; the high-voltage transmission line inspection work that was originally completed in 10 days can now be completed in two hours; once workers had to carry out a large number of equipment inspection and operation regardless of the cold and heat, and now they can rely on robots to complete it... To make the power grid more "smart", it is indispensable to the digital grid.

The "Digital Grid White Paper" released by China Southern Power Grid pointed out that the digital power grid is a new generation of digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, mobile Internet, artificial intelligence, and blockchain as the core driving force, data as the key production factor, based on modern power energy networks and a new generation of information networks, through the deep integration of digital technology and energy enterprise business and management, and continuously improve the level of digitalization, networking, and intelligence, and the formation of a new energy ecosystem, with flexibility, openness, interactivity, Economy, sharing and other characteristics make the power grid more intelligent, safe, reliable, green and efficient.

According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030, industries will benefit from 12.1 billion tonnes of reduced carbon emissions from ICT, with more than 1.8 billion tonnes in the energy sector.

From the perspective of the power generation industry, the International Energy Agency predicts that the use of digital technology can reduce the annual cost of electricity generation by $80 billion in 2016-2040, equivalent to 5% of the total cost of global power generation.

Pan Helin, executive dean of the Digital Economy Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said that the digital grid has formed not only a smart and efficient transmission network, but a power energy ecology that has changed from all aspects such as energy structure and transmission mode.

Digital Twins: An Effective Way to Improve Energy Efficiency

At present, through the application of key digital technologies such as digital twins, smart middle office, blockchain, and edge intelligence, energy use efficiency has become an effective way for most industries and enterprises to achieve green and low-carbon development. On the one hand, energy companies such as state grid co., LTD., state power investment group co., LTD. and China Huadian group co., LTD. have accelerated their embrace of digital technology, on the other hand, Internet technology companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu have intensively laid out the energy industry.

Among the many digital technologies, digital twins have become one of the key technologies for the digitization of the power grid. IDC predicts that companies investing in digital twin technologies will reduce cycle times for critical processes by 30 percent.

Digital twin technology can accurately "map" the physical world and achieve transparent data visualization through big data collection and digital model construction; its more important value is that it can use these big data to go beyond the limitations of the physical world, simulate and predict the process, operation process and operation and maintenance process, and achieve rapid verification, thereby bringing feedback value to all aspects of the whole life cycle such as planning and design, construction implementation, and operation and maintenance services. From the perspective of the power grid industry, in the past, in the process of digital transformation of the power grid industry, the data information of each system and department was independently dispersed, forming a data island. In addition, stubborn diseases such as diversified data sources, different data forms, insufficient standardization, inconvenient integration and utilization, insufficient data expression, insufficient data interaction, and difficulty in recovering real scenes also exist.

Taking the successful implementation of the substation intelligent transportation project of Schneider Electric and dual number technology as an example, before the transformation, the traditional 2D transportation platform used by the substation was not intuitive, the type and quantity of equipment were complex, could not be managed uniformly, multiple data types could not be integrated on a unified platform, and the transport personnel could not predict possible failures and accidents.

After the implementation of the transformation, the digital twin solution provides a series of functions such as three-dimensional modeling and restoration of the whole scene of the distribution station, visual display of the internal and external structure of the whole station equipment, real-time acquisition of transportation simulation data, real-time viewing of equipment accounts, and simulation prediction of failures, which brings the effect and experience of turning stones into gold for the transportation and maintenance of substations. Compared with before the transformation, it saves a lot of time and financial costs, greatly improves the efficiency of operation and maintenance, and effectively reduces the efficiency loss of the distribution power station.

Hu Quan, president of the Industry 4.0 Research Institute, said: "Through the introduction of digital twin technology, the difficulty and cost of development of enterprises in the power industry can be greatly reduced, and the application of advanced technologies can be rapidly promoted to meet the needs of digital transformation of the power industry. It is understood that the current Industry 4.0 Research Institute has proposed an evolution path from 1.0 to 3.0, and it is expected that after about ten years, the digital twin power grid will achieve the overall and life cycle production and operation needs, achieve the management goals such as the integration of source network and load storage, and form a relatively complete intellectual property system."

Gradually improve the coverage of digital technologies

In recent years, the rapid development of technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and big data has profoundly changed the pattern of electric power, manufacturing and other industries, and power grid enterprises have pointed to the core position of digitalization in the "new infrastructure" of the power grid and aimed at the "new digital infrastructure".

The State Grid Corporation of China released the "Digital New Infrastructure" ten key construction tasks, focusing on big data, industrial Internet, 5G, artificial intelligence and other fields. It is understood that the overall investment in 2020 is about 24.7 billion yuan, and it is expected to drive social investment of about 100 billion yuan, which will drive the common development of upstream and downstream enterprises.

In the view of Zhou Xiaoxin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it is necessary to promote the construction of a new generation of transmission and distribution networks and energy Internet through digital transformation, adapt to the high proportion of renewable energy electricity consumption, and ensure the safe and stable operation of the power system.

"At present, the digitization rate of China's power grid (including network security of the power grid) is already at the leading level in the world, but the distribution network system and user system access of a large number of cities are not digitally connected." Xue Yi, vice president of marketing and strategy of Schneider Electric's energy efficiency management medium-voltage business in China, believes that the top priority of China's power grid in the long future is to gradually improve the coverage and penetration of digital technology.

In the process of rapid development of the digital grid, there are also some problems. In the past, when the power grid application of informatization and automation means was less, only the operational security of the physical power grid itself was guaranteed, and the current power grid security was more faced with challenges from the outside.

Han Xinyang, director of the Power Grid Development Research Institute of the State Grid Energy Research Institute, believes that compared with the past, on the one hand, various smart home appliances are connected to the power grid, a large number of digital means are applied in the power grid, and the boundaries of power grid security are continuously extended; on the other hand, the risks of hacker attacks and network attacks have increased, making the scenarios that power grid security needs to deal with more complex, and studies have shown that with the rapid improvement of the degree of informatization in the energy industry, the energy and power sector has become an important target of network attacks.

Han Xinyang pointed out that in order to solve the problem of data quality, we should continue to optimize and improve the relevant models and rules of data quality, improve the application by strengthening the unified data model, and consolidate the foundation of power grid data management capabilities. Rely on improving the relevant rules for data entry verification, and improve the online verification capability of source-end data quality. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen the application of big data mining, artificial intelligence and other related technical means. Promote technical research such as big data mining, artificial intelligence analysis, and real-time data anomaly detection, and carry out data quality assessment and online audit through technical means to improve the real-time verification and analysis capabilities of abnormal data.

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