Digital & Intelligent Technologies are Primed to Solve Major Problems in Future Power Systems

David Wang

Executive Director of the Board,
Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board,
Huawei

Huawei's recent Global Electric Power Summit brought together stakeholders from across the global electric power industry to look at how digital and intelligent technologies can be used to solve the most pressing issues facing the global power system. At the summit, held during HUAWEI CONNECT 2024, David Wang, Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, spoke with attendees about the economic, business, and technical approaches Huawei's customers are exploring in electric power digitalization as well as how these approaches are impacting their longer-term strategies. Here is the speech David gave opening the event, where he shared his takes on how digital technologies are primed to support the development of future power systems:

Major technical developments and challenges

We all know the three great industrial revolutions of the past. Each was driven by innovation in key general-purpose technologies and resulted in increased productivity, and social and economic progress. The Second Industrial Revolution, for example, helped us achieve mass production.

Now, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. I'm sure you have already seen for yourselves how digital and intelligent transformation is sweeping the globe.

Huawei predicts that, by 2030, AI computing power will grow by 138 times, more than 90% of applications will be reshaped by AI, and 40% of businesses will use AI agents.

The power industry, in particular, is searching for new ways to use digital and intelligent technologies to improve future power systems.

The industry is currently undergoing a massive transition, gradually moving away from load-based power generation towards multi-directional networks that rely on complex interactions between power sources, grids, loads, and storage. The new energy sources being folded into our grids are a huge source of uncertainty: The supply they provide is massive, but intermittent and prone to unpredictable fluctuations. Their loads are scattered and change randomly. And management of these sources is complex due to the number of dimensions that must be accounted for. Multiple digital and intelligent technologies will be needed to address these challenges, including precise situational awareness, extensive IoT connections, digital twin simulation, and intelligent computing and analysis.

Establishment of Huawei Electric Power Digitalization BU

In March 2022, Huawei established its Electric Power Digitalization BU. This unit is an elite team we've put together to explore the electric power industry full time. The power industry is a sector with clear strategic significance for us, and so we plan to continuously invest in over the next two decades. The mission we gave this elite team was to integrate ICT with key electric power scenarios, and leverage Huawei's portfolio advantages to help build a better electric power industry.

Business scenarios driving innovation

We believe key to seizing new opportunities in this sector, and to addressing its challenges, is innovation. Over the past two years, I had the opportunity to visit and meet with many of our customers from the power industry and have learned a lot during this process. The industry as a whole is extremely professional and sophisticated. You value an engineering culture as well as technological innovation. Technological innovation must be scenario- and problem-oriented, and so we are driving innovation within specific scenarios by focusing on solving real-world problems. This is how we can ensure innovation has practical value. For Huawei, our current goal is to find the scenarios within the power industry where our technologies can create the most value. Through this kind of innovation, we can create a technological foundation that will help solve industry problems and create value.

Core capabilities + open ecosystem

We are also focusing on building capabilities and a prosperous ecosystem based on innovation to support stable, long-term digitalization within the power industry. Enterprise-level informatization capabilities can be easily studied, but digital and intelligent capabilities must be self-developed. And Huawei is committed to helping train a new generation of digital talent using practical, scenario-based enablement systems. By lowering the threshold to digitalization, experts within the power industry can build their own digital expertise and unleash their creativity as engineers.

Ecosystems play a fundamental role in digitalization and intelligence. An open and prosperous ecosystem drives innovation. Through openness and cooperation, we can make industry and cross-industry capabilities available to all players. Ecosystem innovation delivers shared success for all.

The electric power industry is standing at a turning point. Global challenges can only be solved with world-class innovation. Looking to the future, Huawei will continue to pursue open and win-win cooperation with more partners. We will aim big, but act small, to promote the digital and intelligent transformation across the entire power industry.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, products, and technologies of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. If you need to learn more about the products and technologies of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., please visit our website at e.huawei.com or contact us.