Strategic Direction and Action Suggestions for Developing New Infrastructure for Energy Grid

Polaris transmission and distribution network news: Since the Central Economic Work Conference determined the basic direction of new infrastructure construction in December 2018, the understanding of all sectors of society, including traditional large enterprises, has undergone a "thinking change" process. Especially after the outbreak of the epidemic, the domestic and international situation has changed treacherously, and the pressure of economic employment and growth is unprecedented. New infrastructure construction has once again been given high hopes as a prescription to solve the dilemma. How to objectively understand the functional value of new infrastructure construction,Power grid enterprisesHow to develop new infrastructure construction still requires calm and careful thinking.

Understanding new infrastructure from the historical mission entrusted by the times

The connotation of construction: investment-driven and empowering business formats at the same time

The construction of new infrastructure was first proposed by the Central Economic Work Conference at the end of 2018, and the specific expression was "accelerate the pace of 5G commercialization and strengthen the construction of new infrastructure such as artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and the Internet of Things." Since 2020, after the accelerated clearance of excess industries and production capacity, the lack of new investment channels has made the economy worse. Since March, the construction of new infrastructure has once again attracted widespread attention from the society. According to the latest definition of the National Development and Reform Commission, new infrastructure mainly includes three aspects:

First, information infrastructure. It mainly refers to infrastructure generated based on the evolution of new generation information technology, such as communication network infrastructure represented by 5G, the Internet of Things, the industrial Internet, and satellite Internet, new technology infrastructure represented by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain, etc., and computing power infrastructure represented by data centers and intelligent computing centers.

The second is to integrate infrastructure. It mainly refers to the integrated infrastructure formed by in-depth application of Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to support the transformation and upgrading of traditional infrastructure, such as intelligent transportation infrastructure, smart energy infrastructure, etc.

The third is to innovate infrastructure. It mainly refers to infrastructure with public welfare attributes that support scientific research, technological development, and product development, such as major scientific and technological infrastructure, science and education infrastructure, industrial technology innovation infrastructure, etc.

From the perspective of expanding scope and further enriching connotation, new infrastructure can expand capacity so that it can play a greater role in "scale" in investment driving; at the same time, it also emphasizes the empowerment value of the new economy, especially the role of "software" and "innovation". Domestic scholars Shi Dan, Jiang Xiaojuan and others also pointed out that the value of new infrastructure construction lies in incubating new business formats and cultivating new momentum. Based on the characteristics of the energy and power grid industries, the author believes that the following three key points will be the focus and evaluation criteria for the construction of new infrastructure.

First, in terms of purpose, the construction of new infrastructure must be in line with the needs of productivity development and play an important role in promoting improving production efficiency and improving people's quality of life. Taking power grid companies as an example, State Grid is currently accelerating the construction of power 5G network and terminal communication access network to meet the needs of low latency, high reliability, wide coverage, and large-connection terminal access, enhance the bandwidth of the backbone network, promote the application of 5G network in the field of energy and power, and build an integrated power communication network of "wired + wireless, backbone + access, ground + satellite" and a middle-end service system based on a cloud platform. The fundamental purpose of these infrastructure construction is to better serve users and people's livelihood. Their service functions will be reflected in the application scenarios such as online State Grid, smart energy services, new energy cloud, Internet of Vehicles, Internet finance, etc., and further expand the new value of shared services.

Second, for the energy and power industry, the main battlefield for the construction of new infrastructure is the digital and intelligent upgrading and transformation of the energy industry, and its core is the reshaping of the forms of energy and power grids. The development direction of new infrastructure construction includes not only digital infrastructure that serves the digital economy and digital society; it also includes digital and intelligent transformation of traditional infrastructure to adapt to the development of the digital economy. For the energy and power industry, the latter has greater room for development and more urgent development needs. From the perspective of change driving force, this process is the first comprehensive integration, interaction and mutual construction of energy systems, information systems and social systems. The final form is still difficult to design or plan in the process of continuous evolution; the current energy Internet and comprehensive energy service forms cannot be regarded as digital industry forms of the energy industry in a strict sense, and new evolution forms must still emerge in the continuous consolidation of new infrastructure construction. Judging from the development trend of the digital economy and energy digital economy, new ideas such as democratization, decentralization, few people's contact, and home culture have grown stronger during the epidemic. Under the new production relationship network built by the construction of new infrastructure, the social division of labor system will inevitably be reconstructed, such as the increase in home office work - the decline in demand for commercial real estate - the shift in the center of gravity of energy consumption load - the power grid needs to be more flexible and flexible. The energy revolution is ultimately to meet people's production and life needs, and changes and adaptation to economic and social forms have always been the starting point and end point for the construction of new infrastructure.

Third, the key to building new infrastructure in the energy grid is soft capabilities rather than hard investment. The content of new infrastructure construction can be divided into two parts: hardware and software. The hardware includes servers, key storage devices, etc., and the software includes underlying development platforms, developer tools, etc. The latter is also a long-term weakness. Judging from the current development investment of major central enterprises, the investment in hard resources has begun to take shape. The key is how to connect and integrate sensor equipment from different types and channels, and how to integrate cross-platform data centers, especially building a shared and co-built underlying big data analysis platform, algorithm model sharing platform, etc. These work requires consideration of future interoperability between technologies and multi-subject incentive compatibility.

Understanding the construction of new infrastructure from the perspective of market-oriented allocation of factors

Strategic Value and Development Focus on the Development of the Energy Digital Economy

The construction of new infrastructure is not an isolated infrastructure, but to better develop the digital economy. The construction of new infrastructure mainly supports data collection, storage, processing and application, and meets the needs of digital economy development. By drawing on the role of market-oriented allocation of factors, we can grasp the development direction and focus of new infrastructure construction of energy grids from three levels: "production factors", "new economy" and "new business formats".

Make data a new factor of production: secondary processing and shared flow are the key

The basic foundation for developing the energy digital economy is the full circulation and use of core elements of energy resources and data resources. But data can only become valuable data "only "transformed by big data and entered the production process." The new infrastructure carries the platform environment for data production and secondary processing, and must also enable these new production factors to be automatically integrated into the production process. For power grid companies, it is difficult to be competent for the information construction model of "two skins" with the "two skins" of the data middle platform. The integration of the data middle platform and the business middle platform may become a new trend. To this end, based on early data governance, data strategy, etc., data transactions, data markets, digital operations and other work should be considered in advance and piloted.

Widely drive the development of the new economy: new energy infrastructure to serve a new pattern of digital energy

Investment in the construction of new infrastructure is mainly information technology, and it has the characteristics of public products and emerging industries. From the perspective of public products, positive external effects will be generated, which will be beneficial to the entire economy; from the perspective of emerging industries, it will bring significant improvements to user efficiency. Overall, the construction of new infrastructure will bring major changes to productivity and production methods. In the digital economy, the government should provide more public products needed to develop the industrial Internet, such as equipment access standards, data privacy protection legislation, etc. Enterprises are the main body of innovation and should believe in the role of the market in allocating resources.

Regarding the above issues, the author boldly speculates that power grid enterprises, as public utilities, have the dual mission of providing public products and developing emerging industries under the framework of new infrastructure construction, which is also the basic requirement for power grid enterprises to assume the three major political, economic and social responsibilities. In addition, it is more necessary to establish a macro-international perspective and strengthen the re-allocation of energy resources from a global perspective. Since the 20th century, oil and energy have been closely related to the capital market. After Western powers anchored their currencies to oil, they have enabled their countries to enjoy the dividends of "sin tax" without having to bear the "Triffen problem" of the gold standard. However, for the international energy world, this relatively stable trading system is not a public product of international trade, and has a positive effect on the international energy system and even the world trade system. Times have changed. Under the energy digital economy, new world currencies and new forms of energy are needed as anchor objects. Whether digital and electricity can be derived from digital energy is worth discussing. Under this imagination, the author proposes that in the future, we should study the establishment of an influential digital energy market, digitally integrate the supply of energy demand with human behavioral activities, and form a new tradable variety. As a new direction for energy infrastructure construction, a large amount of data analysis and services are needed to focus on energy consumption behavior, consumption demand, power load fluctuations, price discovery mechanisms, etc. Based on my country's super-large scale and the latecomer advantages of digital economy development, there is a full opportunity to open up new space in the field of energy digital economy.

Support the growth of new business formats: The key to digital upgrading of the energy industry is the action roadmap

The construction of new infrastructure not only includes the Internet and artificial intelligence industries, but also includes the digital and intelligent changes of traditional industries, including intelligent manufacturing, smart cities, and intelligent transportation, which will provide new impetus for economic growth. The important purpose of power grid enterprises in carrying out new infrastructure construction is to develop two major areas: digitalization and digital industrialization of the energy industry, which can be used as the two main lines of digital transformation of power grid enterprises. At present, the energy industry has a larger scale of digitalization, and there are many areas that require digital and intelligent transformation. Even a large number of transformation and upgrading projects can be listed in each link of transmission, transmission, transformation and distribution. Which one does not support which one does not support which one, and how to effectively evaluate the transformation and upgrading have become the top priority in ensuring the high-quality digital development of power grid enterprises. The author believes that the judgment criteria should also be determined from the source of data as new factors, creating new values, and driving the new economy. Only transformation and upgrading that meets these characteristics need priority support. We should be fully vigilant about upgrades and transformations that are unclear in goals and simply to improve online and automated. For the digital industrialization path of power grid enterprises, from the perspective of the difficulties of low development scale and insufficient innovation capabilities, more investment entities need to be introduced to share risks and make the cake bigger together. Important propositions worth studying in the next step include: how to choose partners, how to carry out an ecological governance system for cross-grid enterprises, how to make good use of mixed-ownership reform policies to better motivate internal and external employees, etc. These achievements can be applied in the construction of digital platform industries such as cloud data centers and energy big data centers, and then promoted to other digital businesses.

Focus on the actual development of the energy digital economy

Advance research on technical layout and methodology

The construction of new infrastructure can play a very wide role in the energy digital economy, but since other values need industrial integration to achieve, its development path is still full of uncertainty. Therefore, the construction of new infrastructure should be moderately advanced and take into account both efficiency, always pay attention to the driving role of new productivity, and insist on building and evaluating while maintaining and improving it in practice.

First, grasp the laws of the integrated development of physics, information and people, and form a basic methodology for the construction of new infrastructure. The essence of the field of energy digital economy is to establish energy science formed by the interaction between energy systems, information systems and social systems. Among them, the three laws of the information age are inspiring and valuable to the form of energy digital economy. Reconsidering the scale effects, network effects, synergies, etc. derived from energy production and consumption from a human perspective can be used as the cornerstone of new theoretical research.

The second is to grasp the core functions of new infrastructure construction and provide usable and easy-to-use data production factors for the development of the digital economy. Research on the energy digital economy can start with energy and power data, and connect new technologies (taking blockchain and artificial intelligence as examples to create a "trusted" data exchange "black box" technology) with new platforms (taking power grid enterprise data middle platform, Internet of Things platform, online business hall and other business middle platform as examples to enhance the integration of the middle platform and business) to achieve highly automated, transparent, interpretable and scalable secondary processing of data, and activate the value of production factors of energy data.

The third is to grasp the "time" and "momentum" of digital transformation and increase the 2.0 upgrade of the digital ecosystem. Digital transformation composed of digital industrialization and industrial digitalization has become the focus of transformation and upgrading of power grid enterprises. From the perspective of ecological evolution, it is believed that the integrated development trend of the energy revolution and the energy industry will give birth to huge new business opportunities. Among them, the new digital ecology (corresponding to the energy ecosystem with stronger industrial attributes in the past, the digital ecology with stronger innovation attributes can be called 2.0) will integrate new production factors such as labor, capital, technology, and management with the development concept path of factors marketization, equity diversification, disruptive innovation, and people-oriented management. In the future, the development and changes of power grid forms, energy forms, and industrial ecology will be completely renewed.

Fourth, we will advance the study of the weak links in the industrial chain of new infrastructure construction, and increase the comprehensive evaluation and trend analysis of technology and economy. In the digital economy era, the industrial chain of the traditional economy has been migrated and reconstructed. Under the energy digital economy, which links become new "bottleneck" links need to provide referenceable answers in the early stages of the construction of new infrastructure. From the perspectives of ICT industry development laws, digital "smile curve", industrial clusters and network effects, it is further analyzed that technological innovation at the "software" level such as database localization and cloud platform technology is more important and urgent than hardware technologies such as chip manufacturing. Under this judgment, it is necessary to further analyze and propose an industrial development path suitable for the development of energy digital economy of power grid enterprises.

Fifth, we will seize the new model of enterprise management brought about by the construction of new infrastructure from the new trend of the Internet of Things. In the era of consumer Internet, countless business model innovations are generated by the connection and interaction between people. At present, the development of industrial Internet is still in its infancy, and the value emergence model brought about by the connection between people, people and things, and things has not been fully discovered. In the field of energy digital economy, the resulting new management model is still in its infancy. To find the value password of industrial interconnection, we must go deep into the grassroots front line, and examine the "small trends" of organizational management micro-innovation from the grassroots perspective, and realize the ubiquitous connection between employees, power grids, suppliers, customers, products, etc. at a lower cost, and further improve the level of digitalization, networking and intelligence in the energy industry.