Recently, "China High-Tech" have published articles on theories of science and technologies for solar energy companies. "China High tech" is a national-level comprehensive science and technology journal approved by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and organized by the China Society for the Promotion of Science and Technology Commercialization. It publishes articles to the public both domestically and internationally. This journal combines practicality, authority, and professionalism, with high academic value and social influence. The article titled Planting 'Digital' and Cultivating 'Cloud' to Accelerate the Transformation and Upgrading of Digital Intelligence of CECEP SOLAR was published in full page in the 13th issue of the journal in 2022, fully demonstrating the solar energy company's ability to innovate in technology and promote digital construction.
Focusing on Business Transformation and Ushering in a New Era of Intelligent Manufacturing and Maintenance
In recent years, innovation has been accelerated in technologies such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. The 14th Five Year Plan and the Vision 2035 propose to "drive overall changes in production, life, and governance through digital transformation". With the acceleration of industrial transformation by new technologies, there is enormous room for digital and intelligent development in the field of renewable energy.
CECEP SOLAR Energy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as CECEP SOLAR) is the first listed company in China to focus on solar power generation, supplemented by solar cell module manufacturing. It has accumulated rich experience in project planning, development, operation and maintenance in photovoltaic power generation, and have over ten years of experience in the R&D and manufacturing of photovoltaic cell modules.
With the rapid development of the Company's business, promoting high-quality development and the strategic transformation of "digital intelligence" has become an urgent need. Based on the overall grasp of technological development of the photovoltaic industry and his judgment on digital transformation, Chairman Cao Huabin has proposed the digital strategic goal of fostering a "smart enterprise with efficient management, stable operation, risk control, and fast information", which will be targeted at value creation and guided by improving efficiency and efficiency, to advance the digital construction of CECEP SOLAR in a coordinated way.
The digitization development process and transformational change of CECEP SOLAR resonate with each other at the same frequency. As it enters the convergence period of scale development and informatization, the Company will deeply integrate digital technology into business processes to comprehensively enhances its comprehensive competitiveness in the photovoltaic industry chain. Entering a new era, the digital development of CECEP SOLAR will be led by digital technology to create new digital capabilities, so as to promote innovation and transformation of traditional business models, to construct new digital business models, and to open up new spaces for digital management and development.
Based on the actual needs of reform and development, Chairman Cao Huabin will lead CECEP SOLAR to focus on cultivating and strengthening digital productivity and to build an organizational and operational mechanism that is suitable for digital productivity from the perspectives of industrial chain, supply chain, and value chain. . The Company will gather management and technical talents from multiple fields such as the Internet and technology operation and maintenance. Through a cross-department and cross-level collaborative promotion model, it will comprehensively sort out the management ideas and workflow of various business segments in operation and management. Through such sorting, it will achieve internal integration of resources and break through information barriers, laying a solid foundation for achieving interactive innovation and collaborative optimization of technology, business, and organization.
Led by technological innovation and through institutional transformation and upgrading, it will utilize new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, 5G, and blockchain as carriers of digital applications, aiming to foster a "CECEP SOLAR Cloud Platform Ecosphere", so as to empower the company's reform and development and to achieve higher efficiency in green power generation.
Expanding in Two Dimensions and Providing A New Model of Intelligent Operation Management
Smart applications are the foundation of industrial digitization. Chairman Cao Huabin will lead CECEP SOLAR to build a "CECEP SOLAR Cloud Platform Ecosphere" based on years of in-depth research on practical scenarios and a deep understanding of 5G technology and by relying on rich experience in enterprise digital transformation.
On the basis of summarizing the experience in the construction of information systems covering intelligent manufacturing, business management, and financial sharing, the Company closely focuses on digital construction to improve efficiency and efficiency, and extracts commonalities from various aspects of the entire lifecycle, including design, procurement, production, transport, and services. It also endeavors to develop numerous industrial APs involving collaborative design, lean production, and one-on-one full service. All these efforts will help to foster a full lifecycle internet cloud platform suitable for photovoltaic manufacturing as well as operation and maintenance of PV power plants.
This platform will effectively leverage the role of the core element of data based on the integration and innovation of 5G+industrial internet. Besides, the Company makes efforts to improve 7 new informatization capabilities, namely, the "management and control capability for efficient interconnection of the entire production and manufacturing process of solar cells and components", "capability for quick response to and refined management and control of customer orders", "management and control capability for integrated production and manufacturing of industrial internet", "comprehensive information security platform and operation capability", "internet + service integrated capability", "intelligent decision-making and analysis capability for enterprise operation BI", and "comprehensive operation and maintenance capability for PV power plants". Focusing on the "3A" mode (AI, AGV, and AR), the Company will conduct in-depth research on such scenarios as AI cloud computing, AGV intelligent inspection, AR remote operation and maintenance, and AI visual security. Application will be carried out in the two dimensions of integrating the new generation of digital technology with power plant operation and maintenance and with intelligent manufacturing. By this way, a new intelligent operation and management model of "centralized monitoring, data analysis, process diagnosis, real-time maintenance, and equipment control" will be created, further improving the operational efficiency.
Under this architecture, the cloud platform project of CECEP SOLAR has changed the value creation and profit distribution methods of the enterprise through the combination of "technology+management", which reduces the enterprise costs, improves the enterprise efficiency, and fosters new profit growth points. The Platform is constructed to become a supporting foundation and innovation platform for the cooperation of manufacturing enterprises in the industry. Through the design of such aspects as reasonable underlying data platform, software service architecture and operation mode, the Platform can be widely applied to digital control of production and intelligent operation and maintenance of power plants in the photovoltaic industry by using the data platform integration method combining the enterprise edge computing layer and industrial cloud platform, so as to provide an all-round "product+service" integrated solution. Therefore, it has great market potential, high replicability and scalability, and broad application prospects.
Strengthening Data Governance and Enabling Continuous Transformation and Upgrading of All Business Formats
The "CECEP SOLAR Cloud Platform Ecosphere" relies on advanced technologies such as 5G+MEC, industrial internet, and machine vision and utilizes the core values of cloud computing and big data to build large-scale and all-round ecological services. Up to now, two major platforms, Industrial Internet and Energy Internet, have been established. Besides, the Company has planned to design 4 major sectors, including 5G+smart park, 5G+smart operation and maintenance, 5G+smart production, and 5G+logo analysis, as well as 33 5G application scenarios. Among them, 20 scenarios including 5G+data collection, 5G+AI machine vision, 5G+product traceability, 5G+AR remote guidance, 5G+intelligent inspection, and 5G+intelligent cleaning robots have been implemented, bringing significant changes to the manufacturing of photovoltaic products as well as the operation and maintenance of PV power plants. Efforts are also made to connect the entire chain of enterprise production and manufacturing systems and power plant operation systems, to achieve vertical and horizontal manufacturing collaboration and to quickly and flexibly respond to changes. In addition, measures are taken to establish a visualized and transparent mechanism for production and operation, to improve refined management, increase the enterprise efficiency and lead a minimalist experience.
Since 2019, CECEP SOLAR Zhenjiang, a subsidiary of CECEP SOLAR, has strengthened investment in intelligent manufacturing applications in factories and carried out comprehensive technical transformation of the modules and battery workshops that were put into operation in 2011. It also carries out 5G full coverage in the factory area and creates the project of "Collaborative Innovation Cloud Platform for Intelligent Photovoltaic Manufacturing and Maintenance Based on 5G+Industrial Internet". Relying on the construction of the industrial Internet platform, it conducts research on the integration and interconnection of systems such as production and manufacturing execution system, quality process control system, data collection system, equipment control system, and decision analysis system.
By May 2022, the Platform has been fully applied in five workshops of the subordinate CECEP SOLAR Zhenjiang, with 271 sets of key main equipment, 60 industrial scanners, 12 industrial APs (edge computing applications), 22000 key indicators collected, 180 million pieces of online data, 53 million identifications, and 100% interconnection of key equipment. Through system integration and automatic code scanning, hardware has been reduced by 2/3, while production capacity has increased by 50.7%. Accurate data collection and product traceability have been achieved, effectively contributing to cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
Transparent Monitoring and Control Of Production
In terms of applications in PV power plants, efforts are made to create a big data and intelligent application capability platform based on the scenario requirements for data, application, and management of PV power plants, aiming to support the capability to collect and store massive multi-source data, as well as the capability to calculate and analyze multiple scenarios. With the help of this platform, the overall control of the big data platform of CECEP SOLAR has been achieved, enabling real-time monitoring of the overall operation status, energy efficiency level, and performance of administrative functions in each region and station. In addition, efforts are also made to establish a testing and evaluation system and implement benchmarking and assessment functions, to guide the healthy development of digitalization of the Company. Grassroots units are the foundation of digital stations. They are responsible for the specific implementation of digital stations, data collection and transformation, sorting out digital needs, and concrete operation and use of digital systems.
Relying on the "Energy Internet Platform", the Company establishes a CECEP smart operation and maintenance system, explores the mode of Energy Internet, and extends the integrated services of "online+offline intelligent operation and maintenance" for PV power plants, building a digital enterprise platform with a full process of "product+service" for intelligent manufacturing of photovoltaic production and for intelligent operation and maintenance services for power generation in power plants. This platform is an intelligent system that integrates such functions as online monitoring, intelligent diagnosis, cleaning decision-making, intelligent inspection, equipment ledger, and security modes. The data involved includes technical indicators such as regional basic information and key parameter benchmarking, effectively solving the problems exposed during the operation of PV power plants. At present, 252 system functions, 183 analysis models, and 203 KPI indicators are planned on the platform. As of May 2022, the intelligent operation and maintenance platform for PV power plants has been applied to 31 power plants subordinate to the company. It has been connected with 3783 main devices, with 71000 data collection points and 490 million pieces of data networked. The efficiency of power plant operation and maintenance has been effectively improved, and the average annual utilization hours have exceeded the provincial and municipal average by 2% -4%. Through platform testing, a total of 2.079 billion kilowatt hours of electricity have been generated, 633700 tons of standard coal have been saved, and 1.7293 million tons of carbon dioxide and 3.3256 million tons of sulfur dioxide have been reduced, with significant achievements in quality and efficiency improvement.
Intelligent Analysis of Big Data on Cloud Platform
In terms of digital construction of intelligent manufacturing and maintenance, CECEP SOLAR has won 27 provincial honors and honors from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, including Green Factory, Industrial Internet Benchmark Factory, Intelligent Workshop, AAA Implementation of the Integration of Informatization and Industrialization Management Systems, Five-Star Cloud-based Enterprise, Four-star Security Enterprise, a bronze medal in the fourth national "Blooming Cup" 5G Application Competition, and 13 software copyrights.
Power Plants of CECEP SOLAR
CECEP SOLAR is continuously transforming and upgrading all its business formats and gradually enriching data collection methods and improving data quality. By focusing on the four core areas of "smart energy", "smart park", "intelligent manufacturing", and "smart office", it actively establishes the CECEP intelligent manufacturing system, smart operation and maintenance system, office standardization system, and operation indicator system, to provide customers with an intelligent reconstruction and digital transformation solution that integrates "hardware+software+cloud+integration+services". It seeks and establishes new cooperative relationships, as so to better play the exemplary role of central enterprises in digital transformation, helping to achieve the goal of "Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality".
Content source: China High-Tech, Issue 13, 2022