What is Energy Internet? Concepts, Technologies, and Future Directions

The climate change crisis, exacerbated by the global dependency of fossil fuels, has brought significant challenges. In the medium to long term, extensive renewable-energy-based electrification is considered to be one of the most promising development paths to address these challenges. However, this is tangible only if the energy infrastructure can accommodate renewable energy sources and distributed energy resources, such as batteries and heat pumps, without adversely affecting power grid operations. To realize renewable-energy-based electrification goals, a new concept—the Energy Internet (EI)—has been proposed, inspired by the most recent advances in information and telecommunication network technologies. Recently, many measures have also been taken to practically implement the EI. Although these EI models share many ideas, a definitive universal definition of the EI is yet to be agreed. Additionally, some studies have proposed protocols and architectures, but a generalized technological overview is still missing. An understanding of the technologies that underpin and encompass the current and future EI is very important to push toward a standardized version of the EI that will eventually make it easier to implement it across the world. In this paper, we first examine and analyze the typical popular definitions of the EI in scientific literature. Based on definitions, assumptions, scope, and application areas, the scientific literature is then classified into four different groups representing the way in which the papers have approached the EI. Then, we synthesize these definitions and concepts, and keeping in mind the future smart grid, we propose a new universal definition of the EI. We also identify the underlying key technologies for managing, coordinating, and controlling the multiple (distributed or not) subsystems with their own particular challenges. The survey concludes by highlighting the main challenges facing a future EI-based energy system and indicating core requirements in terms of system complexity, security, standardization, energy trading and business models and social acceptance.