Where does the energy Internet come from?

The concept of energy internet has been tepid since 2008 when Americans first introduced it, until recently it has been widely heated, and it looks very sudden, but it has a deep and grand background.

The first background is the advent of the energy revolution. Human society has undergone the era of firewood, represented by human and animal power, the coal age represented by the steam engine and the oil and gas era represented by the internal combustion engine, is transitioning to a new era of renewable energy, which will be a new type of power revolution with the core characteristics of clean energy production and electrification of energy consumption, The ultimate goal is to build a clean, efficient, economical, safe and sustainable modern energy system, and the energy Internet is the technological means to advance this revolution.

The second big background is the exponential progress of information technology. Moore's Law, Gilder Law, the law of Arc and the law of Heilen, respectively, the calculation ability, network bandwidth, network value effect, digital sensor, from the technical development speed and socio-economic value point of view to give accurate summary and forecast. Moore's law reveals the speed at which computational power is progressing, and the prophecy that "computer performance increases by one times every 24 months" is still true in half a century.

The Hot Apple smart watch iwatch has the same computational speed as the $35 million Cray-2 supercomputer that was produced in 1985. The Gilder law gives an accurate description of the speed of network bandwidth development and the cost reduction trend, and predicts that the growth rate of the backbone network will increase by one times every 8 months, and that the cost is rapidly declining as users increase. Not only has the speed of wired networks increased rapidly, but mobile networks have also entered 4G from 2G. And five years ago, video chatting via mobile phones and watching movies on the internet was unthinkable.

The law of Arc reveals that the value of the network is proportional to the square of the network scale, that is, the value of the network increases with the number of network users, like the telephone network, a person's telephone is no value, but all use the telephone, it radiates immeasurable huge external value.

The Heilen law reflects the progress of digital sensor technology, becoming smaller, lighter, cheaper, and better. Take a look at now a smartphone that can be held in hand, and how many sensors are assembled: position sensor (GPS), compass, HD camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, multi-touch screen, microphone, and a variety of new sensors are emerging.

The exponential progress of digital information technology has led to the realization of a goal, namely "Connecting everything". From the traditional portal, network, instant communication, such people-to-people connection, to the industrial Internet form of machine-to-machine connection, the end of the formation of human, machine, process and data interconnection. This is a data based on a variety of sensor information explosion era, is also based on the internet of everything, cloud computing, big data, the era of intelligence. In this era, we can let machines help us perceive everything, optimize decisions, and execute efficiently.

The three major challenges of the energy revolution have solutions.

Compared with the "Internet +", which aims at "connecting everything", the purpose of using the energy Internet is specific and clear, which is to use new concepts and methods to resolve the main contradictions and obstacles encountered in the energy revolution process.

The energy revolution proposed by our country, based on the current situation, faces challenges from three aspects:

First, for the huge amount of energy consumption, waste serious, inefficient, the need to vigorously promote energy conservation and improve energy efficiency; second, in order to adapt the power system from centralized to decentralized, from one-way to two-way, from stable power supply to the direction of development, need to reshape the power system; Thirdly, it is necessary to improve wind farm, The operation efficiency and operation level of the fluctuating power supply such as PV power station. In short, the energy Internet is a collection of methods that use modern information technology to address the challenges facing the energy revolution.

This understanding is not a thin-air assumption, but a prototype of exploration, and achieved preliminary results. According to the above three challenges of the energy revolution, there are corresponding technical means and business practice respectively.

Mobile 2.0 technology, sensor technology, smart home appliances and intelligent building technology in energy saving performance of ultra-strong potential, in early 2014 Google to buy $3.2 billion smart home company Nest, through the user's basic necessities of life management, in improving people's living comfort while saving energy costs, This is a typical case of demand side management through the energy Internet to achieve energy savings.

Energy Internet is to shape the next generation of intelligent power system technology support, with the help of data and network, power can be in accordance with market demand real-time pricing, so as to return to the real commodity attributes, the price to replace the frequency to adjust the supply and demand balance of the effective signal, from the previous supply to demand adjustment to "dance with the Wind", " In the intelligent electric power system, clean renewable energy power becomes the dominant power, the industrial and commercial, transportation, civil and other fields of terminal use can fully enter the electrification era. This system provides services in a variety of innovative business models, such as Opower in the United States and E-energy in Germany.

The energy Internet has made good progress in improving the operational efficiency and reducing the cost of renewable energy generation. Through the information acquisition, intelligent control and other technology to build the machine Internet, so that wind farms, photovoltaic power plants as the traditional power plant as efficient and reliable power supply. Wind farm through the installation of state monitoring and fault diagnosis system, combined with asset integrity management, to achieve from the post-fault maintenance, into preventive maintenance, greatly reducing the downtime maintenance time, improve the safety and stability of the power plant performance.

Intelligent control system is based on the perception and prediction of the environment, according to the different time, different seasons, different sectors of the wind conditions, automatically take different control strategies, in achieving the reduction of load and longevity, while improving the efficiency of power generation. Adaptive control strategy with self-correcting function can give optimal power generation strategy according to environment condition and unit fault condition, for example, when the fault is not so serious, maintain a certain proportion of power generation, or run again faster, in order to increase the generating capacity. There are many such technologies that have played a huge role in reality.

The energy revolution is an irresistible trend in the development of human society, and the energy Internet has given it the possible technology. In a fair and open interconnected environment, the myth of "natural monopoly" in the energy industry will be completely overturned, and a diversified energy business model will be free and equal to the right to development.

Historical experience shows that changes driven by technological advances often occur at a speed and intensity beyond the imagination of people. The energy revolution, driven by the energy Internet, is hard to predict how fast it will come and how far-reaching it can be, even if all our imaginations are exhausted.

Where does the energy Internet come from?