On July 6, National Development and Reform Commission and National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of Smart Grids".
This is the first important document on the support at the national level to smart grid development, which undoubtedly points out a clearer direction for developing smart grids. With the continuing growth of global energy production and consumption, energy security, environmental pollution and climate change have become a major threat to the social development. Constructing a modern energy system that is safe, stable, diversified and clean is imminent. Smart grids represent a necessary condition for energy transformation and upgrading, and also a pillar to realize the worldwide energy Internet. Its growth may promote industrial upgrading and innovative energy technologies; more importantly, it provides support to human’s future energy solutions. The article on the cover of this issue, titled "What Smart Grids Bring to Us", makes us once again draw attention to smart grids and their future development of new pattern, to expect their growth to create more energy to China in transition.
Smart Grids Drive the Future Development
Recently, smart grids become a center of the industry attention again.
The focus of the attention arises from the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of Smart Grids" (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”) jointly issued by National Development and Reform Commission, and National Energy Administration on July 6. This is the first important document on the support at the national level to smart grid development, delivering new opportunities to the development of smart grids for sure.
According to the "Opinions", the smart grids have such features as highly informatization, automation and interaction, enabling the power networks to better operate safely, reliably, economically and efficiently. As an important means of China’s energy production, consumption, techniques and institutional revolution, the smart grid development constitutes a key foundation for the energy Internet advance. One may regard it as a long-waited policy for the industry. It is also a programmatic measure for the years development of the smart girds in China that is needed urgently to unite understandings to work together.
The Development Needs Consensus
A large-scaled, systematic development of the smart grids in China got started from 2009. In May of the year, the State Grid Corporation released the noticeable “Comprehensive Research Report on Strong & Smart Grids” at the International Conference on UHV Transmission Technology, announcing for the first time the development plan for smart grids to the public. It also proposed the unique ideas to develop China's smart grids: the smart grids in China involve 6 parts including power generation, transmission, substation, distribution, application and scheduling of the electricity system, characterized technically by informatization, automation and interaction. Thus, China's development of the smart grids opened the curtains.
That means an unprecedented major shift for the electrical network development, from strong power grids to strong smart grids. It wasn’t just a simple optimization or upgrading, but rather a profound change in order to adapt to the electricity system development at home and abroad through injecting new content into power grids. For a time, smart grids, a brand-new topic, was widely discussed in the industry.
Like any new things that are likely to encounter divergence in people’s understandings during their earlier stage of development, the smart grid progress has no exception. For such a new concept, there were various points of views without unified understanding on the direction. In this context, the State Grid Corporation launched the "General Report on National Intelligent Electrical Network Planning" in 2010, outlining a bright outlook for the smart grid development in future. "The report was the first one in the world, which means we got started from zero at that time, without any reference in either the planning system or the content experience. So you can imagine how tough it was. But everyone of us was full of passion and energy on this innovative task”, said Zhang Yibin, Director of Research Institute in Power Grid under State Grid Energy Research Institute in the interview, who led the report preparation. After two-year planning pilot, the smart grids formally entered the phase of construction from 2011.
Going forward in an unknown territory while keep trying, without any experiences to follow and also lack of support of key equipment. Led by State Grid Corporation, the "innovation-driven development" has made smooth progress, with a number of influential smart grid demonstration projects built: The Expo Smart Grid Integrated Demonstration Project, Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, and Zhangjiakou Fengguanchu Demonstration Power Plant, etc. All these works has become valuable experiences for China or even the world in developing intelligent electrical network; also, the significant breakthrough in practice has raised the confidence of China in developing smart grids and strengthened the international influence. In September 2011, the State Grid Corporation and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers co-organized the Smart Grid World Forum, and in September 2013, the State Grid Corporation, together with International Electrotechnical Commission and VDE, hosted the International Smart Grid Forum. Some Chinese participants said that on the two important international conferences of smart grid, they could clearly perceived more attention to the Chinese opinions. Many countries were eager to communicate with China, hoping to obtain practical experiences from China. Through such continuous international exchanges, the company’s philosophy on development of smart grid has been spread out extensively and recognized widely. In 2014, the "Smart Grid Innovation Project of State Grid" won the First-Class Reward of National Science and Technology Progress for the year, representing not only a great honor highly recognized by the country and society for the company's technological innovation strength and innovation results, but also a huge incentive on the future development of smart grids.
A Technology Platform for Energy Transformation
In recent years, China confronts a very serious situation in energy development, with rising reliance on foreign energies. The air quality is difficult to be effectively solved, and the ecological structure is in tremendous imbalance. So it is urgent to find out solutions in the predicament.
On June 13, 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping hosted the 6th Meeting of the Central Committee’s Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs focusing on China's energy security strategy, proposing to promote energy consumption revolution, supply revolution, technological revolution and institutional revolution. Shortly thereafter on August 18, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the innovation-driven development strategy at the 7th Meeting of the Central Committee’s Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, pointing out that "our economic growth driven by cost advantage and relying on a lot of resources input and consumption environment has been unsustainable". No matter it is the economic development or the protection of national energy security, enhancing the endogenous momentum of growth and releasing the growth potential in the transformation and upgrading have been a clear signal sent by the nation, suggesting that the energy consumption and production reform is imperative. So building a safe, stable, diversified and clean modern energy system is in an extremely urgent need. The issues existing in the energy predicament for long run and waiting for solutions simultaneously, for example, how to push forward a large-scale use of clean energies, how to make power grids run more securely and reliably as well as how to meet users’ more service interaction demands, need to be solved with smart grid technologies.
We can say that the smart grids are becoming basic platforms to achieve the transformation and upgrading of energy, with the next development stage facing the support to the energy revolution, new urbanization, intelligent cities, ecological civilization, "Internet +" and other key national growth strategies. For such a technological innovation having great significance to the energy and national economic development, its progress should in particular be coordinated under the guidance from the national level, therefore the releasing of the "Opinions" is even more valuable, allowing the smart grids to produce larger external impacts to better stimulate the industrial upgrading and energy technological innovation, and to promote all parties of the industry to continuously discover and create new value.
The Foundation of Future Energy System
If we put our vision at a higher level, we may find that, based on the global energy development, China’s energy predicament is also a critical situation faced the globe. The future energy solutions and a new round of energy revolution worldwide also need the participation of smart grids.
Currently, the world's energy development meets three challenges of energy security, environmental pollution and climate change. To guarantee a sustainable development of the world energy supply and ecological environment, clean energies need to replace fossil energies in energy development, while electricity needs to replace coal, oil and other fossil fuels in energy consumption. After a deep consideration about the world energy trends, Liu Zhenya, Chairman of the State Grid Corporation, put forward an innovative idea to build a global energy Internet to meet the demands of a large-scale development and wide-range allocation.
The global energy Internet is a worldwide-interconnected ubiquitous strong & smart grid, mainly based on UHV power network, with delivering clean energies as the leading purpose. The smart grid, a key part of the global energy Internet strategy, will provide technical support to this grand strategic idea. As a result, its growth has been attached to a deeper, more significant historical mission.
But countries also need to the ubiquitous smart grids in addition to further improving the power network intelligence level, in order to achieve the global energy Internet strategy. At present, there is a worldwide boom of practicing smart grids. Despite different descriptions on the concept of the smart grids across countries, the understandings will gradually converge with deepening study and practice. In China, comprehensive breakthroughs have been achieved in the smart gird concept, technologies, equipment, standards, engineering and other aspects, with a total of 32-category, 305 smart grid demonstration projects built in the nation. The smart grid development boom, both home and abroad, lays the foundation for the global energy Internet construction.
The ubiquitous smart grids across countries will widely connect domestic energy bases, various distributed power sources and power load centers, as well as interconnect neighboring countries’ energy, and undertake clean energy allocation across countries and continents through the global energy Internet. By intelligentizing, the ubiquitous smart grid across countries will enable the power grids to run more securely, efficiently and flexibly in general, ensuring a flexible access to and operation of distributed power sources to meet future society’s demand for sufficient, reliable, clean and convenient energy supply, and to let users get more rich and diverse service contents that break time and space limitations. By then, people will truly realize a sustainable supply of energy.
Dream is ahead of us, and road is under our foot. Construction and development of smart grids is only the first step forward on the path leading to the global energy Internet. Driven by the development and innovation, we have reason to expect that the global energy Internet, an ambitious strategy composed of "UHV + ubiquitous smart grids + clean energies", will start the future of sustainable development.
