Bits Drive Watts: Cloud, AI, and 5G Empower a Fully Connected Smart Grid

[July 8th, 2020]COVID-19 has swept across the world in 2020, bringing unprecedented challenges to global economic and social development, as well as to our daily lives. Unfortunately, such large upheavals inevitably lead to limited confidence in the global economy and adversely disrupt industries.

But China has been quick to undertake recovery processes, with all industries prioritizing pandemic control, keeping faith that China will indeed recover.

The digital economy has unleashed huge potential and momentum for change.

Based on Chinese pandemic control practices, Accenture — a world-renowned consulting firm — believes that digital technologies have played an important role in containing the spread, keeping the public informed, ensuring high living standards, and helping to re-ignite productivity. With this in mind, digital technologies will continue to make significant contributions to pandemic control and public administration in the long run.

Indeed, the crisis has accelerated the digital transformation journey of enterprises, including electric power companies. Clearly, access to electricity is a cornerstone of modern living. However, as a vital industry and a lifeline of China's economy, the electric power industry is facing challenges regarding economic recovery in the post-pandemic era.

David Sun, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group and President of the Global Energy Business Unit, said in his speech at the Seventh Huawei Global Power Summit Online, on July 8, 2020: "The electric power industry is facing multiple challenges, including how to ensure business continuity and power grid security, detect security issues in real time, and respond quickly during external emergencies, such as the current pandemic." He continued: "Additionally, global warming and frequent extreme weather conditions bring greater operational risks to grid services. Only by trying to build clean, green, secure, and efficient energy systems, can we effectively reduce carbon emissions using clean energy, enable new energy consumption, and build energy networks to support the rapid growth of electric vehicles."

As a leading global ICT infrastructure and smart device provider, Huawei serves more than 170 countries and regions, covering one third of the world's population. In addition, more than 190 electric power companies worldwide have partnered with Huawei.

The Summit gathered global customers, partners, industry pioneers, and thought leaders. Following the theme of "Bits Drive Watts, Building a Fully Connected Smart Grid", experts explored how to reshape the electric power industry and how innovative ICT — such as AI, cloud, edge computing, and 5G — can be applied to electric power scenarios.

Mr. Sun also stated: "We are now at a key stage of overcoming the pandemic and restarting the economy. There will be many challenges and unknown risks in the future; however, we are willing to share the digital transformation experience of the Chinese electric power industry and other industries with more customers to boost power companies' development. Huawei will join global customers and industry partners to weather the storm. We hope Huawei can help more electric power companies implement digital transformation to cope with industry challenges and seize future opportunities."