Securities Times reporter Yan Cui
Driven by the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, intelligence and low-carbonization will become the two deterministic development trends in the next 30 to 40 years. However, intelligence requires digital technology, and low-carbonization is inseparable from electronic power technology. The global energy industry is From resource-dependent to technology-driven, a trillion-level industry integrating digital technology and electronic power technology - digital energy came into being.
A reporter from Securities Times e Company recently learned from various investigations that major companies are currently accelerating their entry into the digital energy industry.
On the one hand, technology-based companies represented by Huawei, ZTE, and Fii have entered the digital energy field by setting up independent departments or subsidiaries; on the other hand, traditional energy companies have successively established digital companies to accelerate the digital transformation of energy.
In addition, regional digital energy industry development plans including Inner Mongolia and Shenzhen have also been released.
According to the company’s data, in 2021, my country will add 56,700 digital energy, photovoltaic, new energy, and energy management systems related companies, a year-on-year increase of 154.93%. Among them, there will be 93 existing companies with digital energy in their names. It is 8.45 times of 2020.
What is digital energy?
What is the status of the industry?
Which companies are expected to be the first to share this trillion-scale cake?
Our reporter found a clue of the answer through conversations with industry executives such as Huawei and ZTE.
The era of digital energy is coming
Since last year, Huawei has been making frequent moves in the field of digital energy. In June 2021, Huawei invested 3 billion yuan to establish Huawei Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd.; ; Recently, Huawei issued another document to appoint 10 reserve corps leaders, involving campus networks, data center networks, data center bases, site and module power supplies, airport rails, and power digital services.
As a typical representative of Chinese technology companies, Huawei's every move is often a vane, and Huawei's efforts to develop digital energy are no exception.
In Huawei's words, more than 30 years ago, Huawei deployed phones to every home, which enriched people's communication and life; more than 10 years ago, Huawei connected the network to every corner to build a fully connected world; today and in the future, Huawei It is accelerating the development of digital energy, and is committed to eliminating the energy gap and building a low-carbon smart society.
Huawei Digital Energy carries Huawei's dream of taking off again.
Why does the digital energy business hope to promote Huawei to take off again?
Recently, Hou Jinlong, Senior Vice President of Huawei and President of Huawei Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd., elaborated on the logic of the birth of the digital energy industry outlet.
Hou Jinlong said that fossil energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas are limited, cannot achieve sustainable development, and are the source of current extreme climate, environmental pollution and other problems, and the development of technology-driven clean energy is changing the challenges faced by mankind. The predicament will also bring new momentum to world economic growth and sustainable development, and global energy is entering the era of digital energy.
"Carbon neutrality has reached a broad consensus on a global scale. More than 140 countries and regions have announced carbon neutrality goals. There will be two certain trends in the next 30 to 40 years, one is intelligent, and the other is low Carbonization. Intelligence requires digital technology, and low-carbonization is inseparable from power electronics technology. The global energy industry is changing from resource-dependent to technology-driven." Hou Jinlong said.
ZTE executives also see this energy trend.
"Energy has become the main lifeline of the current global economic development, and the dependence on traditional fossil energy has become the main problem of current energy development. The essence of carbon neutrality is to promote the transformation of energy development and the transformation of the energy structure to low-carbon, electric energy, and digitalization. The proportion of new energy power generation has increased significantly, and will become the main body of power supply in the future; the proportion of electric energy in energy consumption will also continue to grow; energy digitalization is to further get rid of the dependence on fossil energy through technological development.” Senior Vice President of ZTE Corporation , Yu Yifang, general manager of the digital energy product business department, told the Securities Times reporter.
Huawei also gave an official definition of digital energy.
The traditional energy industry only pays attention to the watt flow. The nodes of "generating-transmission-distribution-storage-use" are isolated from each other and difficult to coordinate, resulting in low power production efficiency and low energy efficiency, and there are a large number of "dumb devices" in the whole link. Manual maintenance and low operation and maintenance efficiency.
Energy digitization can introduce digital technologies such as connectivity, AI (artificial intelligence), big data, and IoT (Internet of Things), integrate power electronics technology with digital technology innovation, add bit stream on the basis of watt stream, and manage watts with bits to achieve The interconnection, digitization and intelligence of the entire link maximizes power production efficiency, operation and maintenance efficiency, and energy efficiency.
The vision of Huawei Digital Energy is also based on the above logic: integrating digital technology and power electronics technology, developing clean energy and energy digitalization, promoting energy revolution, and jointly building a green and beautiful future.
Industry accelerates expansion
Under the leadership of giant Huawei, the digital energy industry is accelerating its expansion.
Recently, ZTE revealed that it has established a digital energy operation department to improve the company's energy management position, integrate existing products such as power supply, energy storage, IDC (data center) and energy management, and fully penetrate into the energy industry. The leading energy companies complement each other's advantages and jointly promote the digitalization process of the entire industry.
According to the reporter's understanding, IT, digital energy, smart home and other businesses are the second curve of business development that ZTE is currently actively developing. At the same time, the company invested in server and storage, industrial digitization, digital energy and other fields last year.
Coincidentally, the reporter learned from insiders that recently, Fii has also newly established a digital energy-related department, and has been deeply involved in the digital energy field. The company has also formulated a "data-driven, green development" development strategy. The relevant news is expected to be announced soon .
More and more companies are or have joined the digital energy ranks.
Recently, Longjin Technology disclosed on the investor interaction platform that the company has set up a digital energy division and a digital energy subsidiary. At present, it has completed the overall technical solution design of data center temperature control and the research and development of serial products, and has been put into mass production and production. For sales, the company will increase resource investment, seize the development opportunity of "East Digital and Western Calculation", and develop new digital energy businesses better and faster.
On March 1, Keller also announced that in order to further deepen the industry layout, promote the activation of the vitality and creativity of the company's relevant teams, and achieve the company's strategic development goals, the company plans to cooperate with Zhang Dengji and Hainan Yingchu Technology Partnership (tentative name). ) jointly invested in the establishment of Hertz Digital Energy Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (tentative name).
The registered capital of the target company is 30 million yuan, of which the company contributes 22.5 million yuan with its own funds, accounting for 75% of the registered capital of the target company.
According to the company’s data, as of March 15, there were 1,163,600 existing enterprises related to “digital energy, photovoltaics, new energy, and energy management systems” (note: company name, brand products, and business scope), of which 1,163,600 were newly added in 2021. 56,700, a year-on-year increase of 154.93%.
In addition, there are a total of 159 digital energy-related companies with digital energy in their corporate names, of which 93 will be added in 2021, 8.45 times that of 2020.
As the number of new entrants continues to increase, a number of central energy enterprises such as State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, Sinopec, National Energy Group, China Energy Construction, and State Power Investment Corporation have also established specialized digital companies to accelerate digital transformation.
In January this year, China Energy Construction, a listed company, established China Energy Construction Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
In addition, since the beginning of this year, local governments' digital energy industry development plans have also been released.
In February this year, Shenzhen Longhua District proposed to take the lead in building a demonstration area for digital energy integration and development by 2025, with a digital energy industry scale of 20 billion yuan.
In the same month, Inner Mongolia proposed a plan that by 2025, the added value of the autonomous region's digital energy economy will exceed 50 billion yuan.
Still in the exploratory period, fierce competition
It is worth mentioning that, as an emerging industry, the current development of digital energy is still in the exploratory period. All businesses are exploring business models suitable for their own development, effective and sustainable development paths. At the same time, due to the continuous flow of participants. The industry is uneven and competition is fierce.
According to the global carbon emission data from authoritative organizations, China, the United States, the European Union, India, and Russia account for 64% of the global carbon emissions, accounting for 28%, 14%, 10%, 7%, and 5%, respectively. From an industry perspective, global carbon emissions mainly come from power, industry, transportation, and construction industries. In 2020, these industries will account for 40%, 25%, 21%, and 8% of the global total carbon emissions, respectively.
At the end of 2021, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology issued the "Digital Carbon Neutrality White Paper", which pointed out that digital technology can be deeply integrated with key carbon emission fields such as power, industry, construction, and transportation, reduce energy and resource consumption, and promote traditional industries. Risk prediction and decision-making control can achieve energy saving, cost reduction, efficiency improvement and quality improvement as a whole.
Based on the above situation, the main development path of each enterprise is to continuously expand the digital energy business in the above-mentioned areas with high carbon emissions based on their own past industry accumulation.
For example, the current development strategy of Huawei's digital energy business is to give full play to Huawei's advantages in the two fields of digital technology and power electronics technology, and integrate technologies such as watt technology, thermal technology, energy storage technology, cloud and AI technology, focusing on clean power generation, Energy digitization, green ICT (information and communication technology) energy infrastructure, transportation electrification, comprehensive smart energy and other fields Business drives the energy revolution.
"The key path to achieve carbon neutrality is to reduce carbon and clean the power generation side, and try to use clean energy to achieve power generation. The second is to electrify the power consumption side, by changing our travel to electric, and oil to electricity. consumption, and reduce carbon emissions. The third is to improve the overall energy efficiency through digitalization and intelligence in the future. This means that clean power generation, traditional energy digitalization, green ICT energy infrastructure, and green travel will become inevitable.” Vice President of Huawei Digital Energy Liang Zhou, the chief marketing officer, explained the logic behind Huawei's digital energy business development strategy to the Securities Times reporter.
ZTE's digital energy product operation department mainly includes three main businesses, communication energy business, data center energy and new energy business.
Yu Yi told reporters that with the deployment of 5G and the large-scale construction of data centers, carbon emissions have become a serious challenge for the current development of the ICT industry.
The energy consumption of communication operators is increasing year by year, and high electricity bills will greatly erode the operators' operating profits. At the same time, under the general trend of global carbon neutrality, operators need to think in a new way how to reduce the energy consumption of mobile sites and reduce carbon emissions, making green networks a reality.
Communication energy is an indispensable and important infrastructure for base stations. The future evolution will inevitably develop towards extremely simplified architecture, intelligent management, green power consumption, and networked operation, so as to help operators achieve network energy efficiency improvement, energy conservation and carbon reduction.
It is understood that data centers are known as "energy consumption giants", and how to reduce the energy consumption of data centers has always been the pursuit of the industry.
According to the latest forecast of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2023, the average annual growth rate of the national data center rack scale will remain around 20%.
In order to cope with many challenges such as the backward construction model of traditional data centers, long construction periods, high energy consumption, difficult operation and maintenance, and low reliability, Huawei adopts the "modular + intelligent" design concept to create a minimalist, green, intelligent, and secure solution. of next-generation data centers.
ZTE's business strategy in this field is also similar. It provides prefabricated full-module data centers, micro-module data centers, container data centers and other solutions for global operators, Internet, finance and other government and enterprise customers.
"Because the digital energy industry is still relatively new, everyone is exploring, and it is uneven, and there are some shoddy products or solutions in the market; in addition, due to the rapid changes in technology, new entrants and traditional energy companies are accelerating changes, etc. The competition in the industry is quite high. Intense." A digital energy industry source told reporters.
The reporter checked the company and found that the registered capital of existing digital energy companies is very different. Many such as Huawei Digital Energy have a registered capital of 3 billion yuan, and as few as only 50,000 yuan.
Huawei revealed that Huawei Digital Energy currently has about 6,000 employees, and R&D employees account for 60%. It has set up 12 R&D centers in China, Europe, Asia-Pacific and other places, and has more than 1,600 patents (as of the end of 2021). The energy business showed a steady growth trend.
"Huawei Digital Energy is one of the few companies in the industry that has both digital technology and energy technology. Traditional energy companies understand energy but not digital technology, and some digital companies understand digital technology but not energy." tell reporters.
Qi Haishen, President of Beijing Teyi Sunshine New Energy, said in an interview with a Securities Times reporter that the development of the digital energy industry will bring many changes to my country's energy production and consumption structure transformation and adjustment, such as the greening of human society's production and lifestyle and Digitization, changes in the structure of people's travel and consumption services, etc., all require the digital economy to deeply empower the energy industry, which will create more realistic needs and new business models and new business models under the integrated development of new industries.
Huawei Digital Energy A Share Circle of Friends
Authoritative reports show that new energy, new materials, and new technologies developed around "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality" will form a trillion-level industrial market scale. At present, a number of listed companies have joined the digital energy track.
The reporter combed and found that up to now, in addition to Huawei, ZTE, Fulian, etc., Inspur Group, Guoxuan Holding Group, Shanxi State-owned Assets, etc. have all established digital energy subsidiaries. Zhidian, Yangtze Power, Keller, Yunding Technology, Longjin Technology, Inkerui, Kexin Technology, Wasion Information, INVT, CIMC Enric, Longshine Technology, Tianyu Digital Technology, Zhongfu Circuit, More than 20 listed companies, including Linyang Energy, Ronglian Technology, Creative Information, Nissin Technology, Sungrow, CATL, and Donghua Software, have entered the digital energy field, and many of them have commercial cooperation with Huawei's digital energy business.
According to the Yiou think tank report, in 2020, the power digitalization market will reach 221 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 370 billion yuan in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.8% from 2020 to 2025.
Among them, around Huawei's layout, a number of listed companies have followed closely and built corresponding business lines to benchmark Huawei's digital energy business.
EAST has been deeply engaged in the two fields of industrial digitalization and smart energy for a long time. It is mainly engaged in the three strategic sectors of smart power supply, data center and smart energy. At present, it has registered and established EAST Digital Energy Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. and EAST. Te (Baise) Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd., according to the company's plan, will continue to make breakthroughs in new energy fields such as industrial digitization and wind power, photovoltaics, energy storage, and battery charging in the future.
The company maintains cooperation with Huawei in various business fields such as energy storage and charging piles.
E-Hualu has established the Digital Energy Division, which is responsible for digital energy cooperation with Huawei. Its Blu-ray software and hardware products have been certified by Huawei, and E-Hualu has become a Huawei supplier. It is planned to jointly establish a joint laboratory for digital energy.
Linyang Energy and Huawei Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement to jointly develop innovative large-scale lithium-ion energy storage related products and system solutions, and jointly create energy storage system solutions based on lithium iron phosphate energy storage batteries.
Zhongfu Circuit is a supplier of Huawei's digital energy, supplying multiple product lines of Huawei. The company's products are used in the field of Huawei's digital energy industry.
As an independent software developer of informatization in the power industry, Yuanguang Software has recently passed the mutual compatibility certification of its digital innovation application platform Realinsight V6.0 with Huawei Cloud Kunpeng Cloud Service and Huawei Cloud Stack 8.0 (Kunpeng).
In addition, listed companies such as Nissin Technology, Creative Information, and Ronglian Technology have also cooperated with Huawei's digital energy business. Among them, Nissin Technology and Huawei focus on building a "digital energy platform", in smart photovoltaics, household green electricity, corporate green electricity, In-depth and comprehensive cooperation in the fields of microgrid and energy storage.
There are also some companies that have previously engaged in digital energy-related businesses.
Founded in 2004, Wasion Information is one of the earliest companies specializing in energy Internet in China. It provides comprehensive solutions for energy Internet at all levels, builds digital energy systems for customers, and collaboratively builds new power systems and digital twin cities.
Kexin Technology is an overall solution provider of network energy, which can provide one-stop network energy solutions for communication base stations, data centers, industrial and commercial scenarios, etc. The company claims that its competitors include Huawei Digital Energy and Vertiv.
Bangdao Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Longshine Technology, is the main body of the company's energy digital operation services. Benefiting from the energy reform brought about by "dual carbon", Bangdao Technology's performance from 2018 to 2020 has greatly exceeded expectations, and will continue to maintain good performance in 2021. development momentum.
"At present, the company's digital energy business is growing rapidly and has a good momentum of development. The company will continue to increase investment and business expansion in this field." Langjin Technology told the Securities Times reporter.