Electricity is computing power, and the digital transformation of energy is unstoppable

Challenges: Solving problems such as coordinated development and market-based allocation of factors

Under the new development concept, the energy system needs to properly solve the problem of coordinated development of security, economy and green. At present, we have generally recognized that there is an "impossible triangle" problem in energy development, the security of the energy system and the economy of energy use, clean and green requirements are difficult to take into account, in fact, the past investment-driven asset-heavy operation of the development model has come to a bottleneck, we must rely on new development concepts, with the advantages of digital economy to achieve high-quality development.

Under the new development pattern, the energy system needs to solve the unified problem of overall and partial, centralized and distributed development. At present, the attention of the new power system mainly focuses on two points: first, adhere to the centralized and distributed simultaneously, and the connection between the two needs digital "lubrication"; Second, the development of new energy requires not only quantitative change in scale growth, but also qualitative change, that is, new energy units should contribute to the frequency modulation and inertia of the power system.

In the high quality development of energy system, it is necessary to solve the problem of market-oriented allocation of elements and realize integration and innovation. As a platform for optimal allocation of power resources, the power grid should make use of various production factors, integrate traditional power grid infrastructure with new digital infrastructure, and become a new energy infrastructure that outputs power, computing power and intelligence. During this period, the functional form of the power grid and the organizational form of enterprises need to be changed to empower the construction of a modern economic system.

The development of energy digital economy is the only way to deal with the above three challenges, and the basic direction of its innovation and development can be summarized as: the digital transformation of energy under the concept of market economy + system. Adhering to the "combination of effective market and successful government" is the basic theoretical premise, and digital transformation is the key to breaking through the traditional development model. By definition, the energy digital economy is guided by new development concepts, with the integration and application of energy technology and digital technology as an important driving force, with data as a key production factor, and with modern energy networks and information networks as the main carrier, to continuously improve the total factor productivity of the energy industry and promote the realization of high-quality development of energy in a new economic form.

Path: Foundation, value, product, market, mechanism innovation

It is generally believed that the development of energy digital economy should be made from the digitalization and digital industrialization of the energy industry, but for a long time, there has been a lack of in-depth research to describe the internal driving force of its innovation, research and judgment of innovation direction and action path. In this regard, the author proposes that the innovation of the five elements of foundation, value, product, market and mechanism will help to find the internal logic of the integration of energy and digital technology, and analyze the future development trend.

New foundation: Integrated development of electric power and computing infrastructure. The proportion of electricity in the terminal energy has exceeded 80%, and the future energy form is the integration of electricity and computing power, and the power grid will fully consider the development needs of computing power while transporting electricity. On the one hand, the current power consumption of data centers is not more than 2% of the electricity consumption of the whole society, and even if the demand growth doubles in the future, the overall power supply pressure is not large; On the other hand, electricity is computing power, and functional forms such as distributed production, consumption and long-distance large-scale transmission of electricity can synchronously load computing resources to achieve resource reuse and space-time optimization. The platform hub function of the power grid will be further enriched in the era of power + computing power, and the utilization modes of power + Beidou, power +5G, and power data center external services can fully respond to the dual needs of users for computing power and electricity, and reconstruct the functional form and value form of new energy infrastructure.

New value: Energy big data enables the construction of modern industrial system. The value of the energy digital economy lies in the data-driven value, which is not only reflected in the development of the energy industry chain and supply chain, but also reflected in the improvement of industrial collaboration and interaction ability, which has an important role in promoting the realization of the "double carbon" goal and governance modernization. Taking the Transportation Power Index (TEI) as an example, the electricity consumption of railway, road, aviation, water transport, postal service, warehousing and other activities can reflect the real economic activity in advance. At the same time, digging the change of electricity consumption in the industrial chain before and after the epidemic can effectively find the short board of the industrial chain. In addition, the analysis of electricity consumption in each link of the manufacturing industry helps to comprehensively judge the health and toughness of the industrial chain.