At Mobile World Congress, Jason Li, President of Marketing & Solutions Sales, Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit, Huawei, discussed the Intelligence Distribution Solution (IDS) with Fierce Networks’ Founder, Steve Saunders.
In two years, Huawei's Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit has become a global leader, providing digital intelligence solutions to nearly 200 power companies worldwide. Its strategic shift to systematic digitalization has gone beyond single-point digitization, addressing challenges in power plants, substations, and transformer districts.
Highlighting innovative solutions amid the global green transition, the IDS Solution, the "brain of the district," promises outage reporting within one minute, fault locating within three minutes, and line loss analysis within 15 minutes.
Huawei's rapid growth and commitment to global service position them as leaders in transformative intelligence across multiple vertical industries. Watch the full interview now.
Steve Saunders:
Jason, we all know Huawei as a leading provider of ICT solutions and products around the world, but how can you accelerate the intelligence of the electrical power industry?
Jason Li:
So as you know that Huawei set up that KDT two years ago, the Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit. So our positioning has upgraded from finding scenarios for technologies to finding right technologies for scenarios. And specifically, Huawei has extensive accumulation in three aspects. So communication, computing, and the enterprise digital operating system.
Enterprise digital foundation platform, which is like an operating system. So the operating system is the most important part in the digital transformation framework. With this OS, it is able to reach five enablements as R&D enablement, application enablement, data enablement, AI enablement and integration enablement.
And also full synergies, as Davidson just launched. Okay? This is application synergy, data synergy, AI synergy, and O&M synergy. So in this way, we are able to move from single point digitalization, such an individual power plant and individual substation and individual transformer district and so on, traverse and open sustainable and systematic digitalization.
Steve Saunders:
So you launched your business unit two years ago. What have you achieved since that?
Jason Li:
I think a lot. So currently we're providing digital intelligence solution and services to nearly 200 power companies around the world, not just in China.
Steve Saunders:
I know that renewable energy is really taking off in China. Also actually in Europe, I think partly because of the energy crisis in Europe. How has this impacted your customers in the electrical power industry?
Jason Li:
I think the trends are quite similar in everywhere. So both China and the EU are promoting the green transition of their economies as the most important means of combating climate change with wind turbines, the PV, solar PV, and other new energy resource. Among others being crucial to the realization of the green transition. China's installed renewable power generation capacity reached 760 gigawatts in 2022 and expected to exceed 1,530 gigawatts by 2025, almost doubled. So big challenge and how can I say? Incredible. How can I say?
Steve Saunders:
Demand for you? Yes.
Jason Li:
Demand. Yes, for sure.
Steve Saunders:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Jason Li:
So we believe that this change will bring maybe five major systematic challenges to the grid. So especially to the distribution power. So the green structure on the power generation side, this is the first one. The second one that if electrification and direction on low side. The third one is that flex of power grid regulation and also measurement and also interaction across the power source grid load storage system. And the need to build an effective market mechanism and a complex electric carbon trading system.
Steve Saunders:
So you've just had a big announcement here at MWC on Monday. Tell us about that. What's it called and what does it do?
Jason Li:
Okay, we just launched the IDS solution. So we call it the Intelligent Distribution Solution. So IDS is an overall solution based on the cloud-pipe, edge-pipe device architecture. We call it a brain of the district, and also integrates communications sensing and the computing capabilities. We have achieved our outage reporting within one minute. And also fault locating within three minutes, and also the light loss analysis within 15 minutes, which means a lot for the power company.
Steve Saunders:
And the product is available now?
Jason Li:
Yes, definitely. More than 140,000 ECUs has already been installed in Shanxi. And the 28 application has been developed with more than $700,000, which means it comes from the pilot project to a real commercial use. So the solution implements proactive sensing of abnormal distribution transformers, and real-time monitoring of transformer district light loss within 15 minutes as I mentioned before.
Steve Saunders:
My last question for you Jason is Huawei is developing solutions for lots of different industry verticals. Is it one of the fastest growing?
Jason Li:
I would like to say maybe it's one of the fastest growing, but right now when the carbon-neutral era comes and when the new energy access more and more, that we see a lot of big changes and we see a lot of challenges happens in this industry, that means that we have a lot of more new opportunities. I think it's very promising.
Steve Saunders:
And you're really helping to save the planet at the same time as well as creating commercial success for your customers. And it's great to see Huawei serving as customers globally and helping them to undergo that transformation to intelligence. Thank you so much for talking with me.
Jason Li:
Thank you, Steve.