SmartCitiesWorld discovers how Huawei’s digital technology and strategic expertise are supporting the transition to renewables, bolstering energy efficiency, and creating added value for the electric power industry.
Energy security, efficiency and the transition to renewables are taking centre stage in the global discourse on what the future of sustainability will look like for the planet. Central to these discussions is the nature of technology and digitalisation as a means to keep electricity networks running efficiently with absolutely minimum downtime.
Digital technology will not only be core in keeping networks efficient, but it will also support the energy sector in bolstering capacity and resilience at a time when changes to the environment and the growth of urban centres are putting additional strain on power networks. Among these technologies are smart grids, which are set for significant uptake in the next few years in smart cities as local authorities grapple to achieve rapidly approaching net-zero targets.
Underpinning these technologies are a series of IoT networks, campus management software and fibre networks that create and maintain the kind of seamless connectivity required to keep power networks available and properly maintained. These are all vital cogs in the evolution of the energy sector moving forward but levelling the playing field to enable these technologies is a variable challenge based on numerous factors.
Understanding energy trends and challenges
Speaking broadly, the trends and challenges of the energy sector today centre on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the transition to renewables, but they come at a time of dramatic change for the planet.
"Our world has experienced some significant changes in recent years - we’re seeing an energy crisis now following a global pandemic. From carbon neutrality vision to energy security of supply and continuity issues, and the impact of energy prices on socio-economics, we need to fully consider the game-theoretic relationship among green and low carbon, energy security and energy economy,” explains Dr. Anthony Hu, President of Global Strategy & Marketing, Huawei Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit. “These have brought significant challenges, but more incredible opportunities. Net-zero development, energy transition and digital transformation all come under the same umbrella, we need technologies to lay a digital path for future power systems.”
While the global situation helps explain some of the macro trends being experienced in the energy sector, it is at the more regional and local levels where the true meaning of these challenges is being felt.
For example, Indonesia’s national electricity company, PLN, which has recently been planning for a cleaner and more resilient electric network for the entire country against the backdrop of macro trends outlined above.
“We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or we risk compromising the earth’s future. That’s why the transition to clean energy is so important,” explains PLN’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Darmawan Prasodjo (pictured right). “During PLN’s planning phase for the future of Indonesia’s national electricity network, we committed to removing coal from the energy mix which will save 1.8 million metric tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.” Mr. Prasodjo explains that PLN’s electricity plan for Indonesia will be the greenest in its history, with an additional 51.6 per cent of PLN’s electricity generation capacity coming from renewables. PLN is committed to harnessing the potential of every source of renewable energy it can, including hydro, geothermal, solar, wind, and any other potential routes that can be explored in Indonesia.
Progress on renewables is required urgently, but Mr. Prasodjo notes that the attention is now turned just as much to the supply side as the demand side, which is where further underlying challenges lie. For example, Indonesia’s communications infrastructure has historically been unable to provide high enough network quality to support the efficient and continuous operation of PLN’s power network – though it is a challenge the company has sought to solve in recent years thanks to its work with Huawei.
“PLN has been focused on the digitalisation of the energy network for the last three years,” says Mr. Prasodjo. “We have been digitising our power plants, and the transmission and distribution of electricity. We have modernised control rooms and dispatch centres in such a way that we are ready for the transition to renewables, where we can monitor and predict supply and demand, for example analysing weather and wind speed and translating that into what it means for energy network capacity to supply intermittent renewable energy.”
“We need reliable digital infrastructure to shift PLN from just an ordinary electricity company to a digital infrastructure company for Indonesia to grow and move forward,” adds Mr. Tedi Bharata, the Deputy for Human Resources, Technology and Information at the Ministry of State-Owned-Enterprises and Commissioner of PLN.
Finding solutions
The latest digital technologies need to support energy companies holistically, providing them critical insights across distribution networks to maintain the kind of end service to the public that many of us take for granted today.
To do this, technological solutions must be able to integrate with power plants and substations in a way that enables a complete view of the status of the power grid – not only monitoring the situation, but also using modern digital technology to provide the next steps.
“Digital technologies will be deeply integrated into our energy systems facing future challenges. We are providing advanced digital technologies like AI, big data and cloud computing with multiple scenarios such as power plants, substations, power transmission and distribution,” explains Dr. Hu. “We are now deploying AI-enabled cameras in electricity transmission to automatically identify problems and alert control centres. In substations we are providing an IoT platform that can integrate with thousands of different devices and metres to collect information in real time and analyse it in the cloud using AI, which allows for remote inspection and provides risk warnings and device status analysis quickly and efficiently, whereas manual inspection typically results in a slow response and can be a high-risk operation. The insights from the analysis can support the network operator in providing better maintenance and control capabilities for the power grid.”
Dr. Hu explains that digitalisation also has a critical role in the future of energy sustainability: ”In Yancheng of Jiangsu province, we collaborated with State Grid Yancheng Electric Power Company on a net-zero intelligent campus. Five major values are innovated and provided for Yancheng’s sustainable development: net zero carbon energy management, electricity-carbon joint business model innovation, multi-energy complementation and coordination, comprehensive energy efficiency optimisation and full digital empowerment. We closely cooperate with Yancheng to a new era of clean energy with the concept of green, economical, intelligent and sharing.”
In March 2022, Huawei established the Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit, which combined Huawei’s strategy planning, R&D, product lines, marketing and sales resources and deeply collaborated with global partners to focus on the common requirements of security, efficiency and sustainability in smart power generation, smart grids, and comprehensive low-carbon energy services. ”We are systematically building organisational capabilities and innovation systems for the electric power industry, from the strategic model, business scenarios, planning consultancy, and technical solutions based on the T3 ternary development system, and deeply integrated digital capabilities with challenges facing by the electric power industry, to create greater value for global electric power enterprises, such as PLN,” added Dr.Hu.
Huawei is utilising advanced digital technologies to jointly innovate with partners in scenarios such as smart power plants, distributed photovoltaic control, transmission line inspection, digital substations, intelligent distribution, and net-zero carbon intelligent campuses to achieve multiple targets of security and reliability, cost-saving, efficiency improvement, and sustainable development for the industry.
Technology is also key to more efficiently distributing power throughout the grid, particularly as the renewable energy mix continues to grow and diversify, as Mr. Jason Li, President of Marketing & Solutions Sales, Huawei Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit (pictured right), explains when talking about Huawei’s Power Distribution IoT Solution..
“Efficient and reliable power distribution is only becoming more important. As energy demand soars with new innovations like electric vehicles, managing the distribution of electricity becomes more difficult,” says Mr. Li. “IoT becomes the key to solving this problem. The availability of wind and solar power has been an issue in the past when the world was first learning how to manage renewable energy. By using IoT technology combined with cloud and edge computing, the distribution of these energy sources becomes more straightforward, ensuring that renewables are more manageable, controllable and traceable. Huawei’s power distribution IoT solution is fully intelligent in this way and connects to the energy network’s dispatching centre.”
Collaborating effectively
The right solutions for digitalisation of the electricity sector will only truly deliver the right results in the hands of the right partner – perhaps the aspect to industrial transformation that Huawei takes most seriously.
In its work with customers in the electric power industry, such as PLN, Huawei has worked together with integrated teams from customers and partners to provide consulting, planning and knowledge sharing for the organisation and its operations, helping not only to digitalise to power network, but also bolster the communication network that underpins it. Huawei has deployed its SingleFAN Pro one-stop solution with PLN, which builds high-quality and low-cost fibre infrastructure that can be deployed quickly.
In their work together, Huawei has supported PLN in quickly launching new services and completing its market plan to develop 20 million power lines in just four years. Working in an efficient and agile manner is critical when looking to solve challenges at this scale, and finding a partner that recognises that has provided mutual value to both PLN and Huawei.
“Our work with Huawei has supported new and innovative ideas within PLN,” says Mr. Prasodjo.“ We have a workforce of young and agile people and with digital transformation, their ideas have become shared knowledge for PLN to act upon. Huawei’s approach is very similar and helped to foster collaboration – this is the common ground upon which our partnership has been built.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Luke Antoniou
Quelle/Source: Smart Cities World, 03.04.2023
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