Power Fiber-to-the-Home: Triple Play Progress
Tapping a few keys on a mobile phone in the office or in the car, by the time you push open the front door, the air conditioner has already been turned on, the water heater has heated the water, and the rice cooker has cooked steaming hot rice... This is the life now enjoyed by more than 210 households in the Hupan Mingzhu Yuan smart power consumption demonstration community on Hubin East Road, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province.
Meanwhile, 468 households in the "Manbu Paris" community in Qunli New District, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, will also experience the benefits of the smart grid before October this year. The project plans to implement seven system functions in the community: distribution automation, power fiber-to-the-home, power consumption information collection, an interactive smart power service platform, a photovoltaic power generation system, electric vehicle charging pile management, and smart home services.
This year's Government Work Report emphasized "vigorously developing the low-carbon economy, promoting high-efficiency energy-saving technologies, actively developing new and renewable energy, and strengthening smart grid construction."
Smart power communities achieve power fiber-to-the-home, creating the conditions for "Triple Play"
Wang Kairui is a resident of the Hupan Mingzhu Yuan community. "Through this screen, I can remotely control all home appliances, adjust the temperature of the air conditioner and water heater at will, and even when away from home, I can control appliances via a 3G phone or the Internet." Pointing to the smart interactive terminal on the wall, she said that by tapping the screen, she can access options such as electricity bill inquiry, power consumption curves, energy consumption analysis, and charging status.
"The community has uniformly replaced smart electricity meters and smart terminal equipment, enabling automatic collection of power consumption information," explained a staff member of the Hupan Mingzhu Yuan community. The smart meter features bidirectional metering, automatic control, and automatic collection, providing important support for the future planned integration of rooftop solar distributed energy in the community. "In the future, residents will no longer be mere electricity consumers; they can also sell surplus electricity generated by rooftop photovoltaic systems to the power supply department."
In addition, power department staff stated that smart homes allow residents to choose a series of value-added services such as "smart security." For example, in the event of a gas leak or other emergency at home, the system will automatically send an alarm to the property management center and also send the alarm information to the resident's mobile phone. This guides people to use electricity resources more scientifically and rationally and promotes the development of the low-carbon economy. For instance, during peak electricity consumption periods, residents can choose to turn off some home appliances according to preset power usage strategies, and they will automatically restart during off-peak periods.
Tan Yongxiang, Deputy General Manager of Jiangxi Electric Power Company, told reporters that compared with ordinary communities, the smart power community has achieved power fiber-to-the-home, creating the conditions for "Triple Play" — that is, while providing electricity, it can simultaneously transmit telecommunications networks, broadcast television networks, and the Internet over the same network, avoiding duplicate construction of community communication networks.
"The 'Triple Play' of telecommunications networks, broadcast television networks, and the Internet has become a major trend in future urban information services. Through the construction of smart communities, we are striving to achieve 'Quadruple Play,' which not only reduces overall costs but also facilitates later operation and maintenance," said Zhao Zihui, Deputy Director of the Marketing Department of Harbin Electric Power Bureau. "While laying power lines, a fiber optic line is wrapped around the outside of the cable, allowing signals from the telecommunications network, broadcast television network, and Internet to be transmitted simultaneously. Tests have shown that a transmission rate of 100M to the home can be achieved. Users can download a high-definition movie in just 2 minutes, which is 50 times faster than traditional ADSL Internet access."
Smart communities are still in the "conceptual" experimental stage, but their future development prospects are broad
Jiangxi Electric Power Company is building the smart community at Nanchang Hupan Mingzhu Yuan, with the hope of transforming it into the nation's first practical smart community in an existing residential development. "Compared with the smart power communities currently under construction in Beijing, Shanghai, and other places, its biggest feature is not just functional demonstration, but its practicality," a staff member explained. In addition to the demonstration room, 210 of the more than 500 households in Mingzhu Yuan community have been included in the first batch of smart power renovation plans. Installation and commissioning of smart equipment for more than 160 households have been completed, enabling these ordinary families to achieve smart power consumption.
In the construction of smart communities, the power intelligence portion is directly invested in by the grid company, while residents are responsible for installing necessary supporting smart terminal equipment indoors, without needing to replace existing home appliances. "As long as you purchase a smart socket, you can meet the 'smart' conversion needs of ordinary home appliances. Therefore, from the user's perspective, smart power consumption will not significantly increase usage costs," said a person in charge of the Marketing Department of Jiangxi Electric Power Company. Since smart power renovation is a systematic project, considering cost input and economies of scale, applications from ordinary residents for individual renovation will not be accepted separately. Moreover, the government and relevant departments have not yet issued relevant policies and regulations regarding smart power construction for new buildings or communities. Therefore, there is still a process ahead for the construction and promotion of smart power applications.
"Although smart communities are still in the 'conceptual' experimental stage, their future development prospects are broad, and they will serve as a demonstration for future grid upgrading and residents' information-based lives," said Wang Zhibin, Deputy Director of Harbin Electric Power Bureau.
The traditional grid is expected to leap toward a modern smart grid
"The smart grid features robustness, self-healing, compatibility, economy, integration, and optimization. This is not simply an improvement in a few technical parameters, but a leap from the traditional grid to a modern grid — an upgrade from Grid 1.0 to Grid 2.0," said Huang Wu, a dedicated engineer in the Marketing Department of Harbin Electric Power Bureau.
In 2009, the concept of building a "strong and smart grid" was first proposed by State Grid Corporation of China. It features informatization, automation, and interactivity, covering all aspects of the power system and achieving a highly integrated convergence of "power flow, information flow, and business flow."
"The smart grid is a comprehensive system that includes multiple segments such as power generation, power distribution and delivery, and user terminals. Some parts are visible to users, and some are invisible. The invisible distribution automation is the key to ensuring safe and reliable power supply and is also a major highlight of the smart grid," Huang Wu said. "'Smart' is reflected in functions such as automatically selecting and isolating faulty lines, effectively reducing the scope of power outages, shortening outage duration and fault handling time, and also replacing current manual recording, judgment, and subsequent operations with 'unattended' operation on a global scale, fundamentally ensuring the stability and reliability of urban power supply." By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the power supply reliability within the Harbin power supply area will reach 99.99%, and the comprehensive voltage qualification rate will reach 99.8%.
According to the smart grid development plan published by State Grid Corporation of China, 2011 to 2015 is the comprehensive construction phase, forming strong and smart grid construction standards, rolling out revisions to development plans, and fully advancing the construction of the strong and smart grid.