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.

New product: Digital energy has three levels of value. Digital energy economy will produce a new form of energy products, that is, digital energy, just as the virtual power plant is not a "visible" power plant, digital energy is not a "digital state" energy, its digital attributes have three levels: first, the energy production and consumption into the digital platform technology, so that the supply and demand sides more quickly match and interact, that is, the platform value of digital energy; The second is to use algorithms, computing power, data to realize the reconstruction of energy supply and demand, and develop a new trading variety, that is, the product value of digital energy; The third is to further expand the financial market attributes of digital energy, become a new unified measurement scale, and change the pricing method of energy in the digital era. Using digital energy as an evaluation scale to measure the level of energy use, the mapping relationship between the virtual market and the real world is established.

New market: Electricity market + carbon market + energy data market. The construction of electricity market and carbon market is a typical combination of "efficient market + government", in which, carbon trading, initial allocation of quotas, pricing mechanism, scope of participants and integration with the electricity spot market need to be fully measured, simulated and predicted, and then an energy data market for electricity trading and carbon trading is derived. The organic combination of the three markets is a powerful means to implement the goal of "double carbon".

New mechanism: Digital technology enabling system innovation and energy finance innovation. Market operation needs the active participation of multiple subjects. On the one hand, it is necessary to establish an attractive incentive mechanism; On the other hand, it is necessary to establish a mutual trust mechanism of multi-party trust. For example, the distributed energy trading mechanism using blockchain technology can adapt the characteristics of distribution and fairness to the business needs of all aspects of the source network load and storage under the new power system. In addition, in emerging business areas such as electricity credit reporting, cross-border applications of technologies such as fintech + big data + blockchain are also needed. It is foreseeable that the future energy digital economy ecological circle will be a big stage that can attract mathematicians, financial practitioners and other people outside the energy circle.

Direction: Product innovation, user market cultivation, computing power layout will be fully rolled out

Innovation always starts at the edge, and the energy digital economy will accelerate from four segments:

Digital energy product innovation aiming at the contradiction between peak load supply and demand. From the point of view of the pain point of demand, digital energy product development can generate a market for sharp energy use. At present, the peak load duration of 3% is generally not more than 30 hours, and the peak load duration of 5% is generally not more than 100 hours. With the new power system with new energy as the main body of the "double high" and "double peak" characteristics further prominent, the traditional redundant construction mode is increasingly difficult to sustain due to diminishing marginal returns. The key points of its design include: using market means to call social small and medium-sized micro power supply facilities in the peak period; Design quota certificate trading products and system models based on blockchain technology; Through power big data analysis and prediction, realize the price scale monitoring of the trading market; Cap-and-trade data can further drive financial innovation and aid grid planning.

Aim at the user market cultivation of the wall electricity market. The role of the market economy after the decline of subsidies is an important reason why capital is optimistic about the new energy track, and innovation has become the source of the continuous upgrading of the new energy industry chain. For example, Longji Group's capacity cost advantage strategy, Tongwei Group's "fishing and light one" model, and Qingneng shares' heavy truck breakthrough route are all new models and new paths emerging in the market competition, and new business opportunities will also be born around the partition wall electricity market in the future. At present, it is difficult to predict the size of the "producers and consumers" who are willing to participate in two-way interaction in a community, but it can be judged that the multi-energy complementary model represented by "flexible power + photovoltaic" will have greater space for development. Of course, the premise is to adhere to the "create more value for users" as the basic point, from the use of energy scenarios and convenience to strengthen the usability of equipment, usability design.

Aim at the power distribution of the "east number and west calculation" market. On the one hand, the spatial transfer of part of the power load is conducive to alleviating the problem of clean energy consumption in the west and north. On the other hand, the online load of the data center has the flexibility of space transfer, the offline load has the flexibility of time transfer, and both types of loads have the potential of demand side response. It is estimated that by 2025, the data center market will reach 600 billion yuan. In line with the "dual carbon" goal, the strategic value of the eastern data center and the western computing center will be fully displayed in the future.

"Carbon rhinos" risk warning aimed at manufacturing transfer cities. It is necessary to pay attention to the energy transformation of the eastern manufacturing cities, give full play to the guiding role of the market, improve the national unified carbon market trading mechanism and operating rules, and promote the fair development of enterprises in different regions, different industries and different levels. In this regard, the author put forward the "carbon rhinoceros" problem, in order to understand the superposition of various risks and prevention and control problems: first, the risk of industrial structure imbalance, alert to the overcapacity of "high-tech" industries and the problem of "bad money driving out good money" in traditional energy-consuming industries; The second is the risk of regional structural imbalance, and the risk of regional fragmentation caused by top-down decomposition; Third, the superimposed risks of the energy system, and vigilance against the security and stability risks caused by the development of new energy "heavy quantity and light quality"; The fourth is the superimposed risks of the financial system, and the investment and financing credit risks caused by the uncertainty of the industry and energy system are transmitted to the financial system.