Huawei Digital Power has been helping industries in the Middle East and globally with its innovative, technologically advanced solutions for a cleaner and greener digital transformation journey. Joseph Yao, President of Huawei ME Digital Power Business Dept., talks with Energy Reivew on the green power solutions’ various activities in the region.
Could you please elaborate on Huawei Digital Power Business?
Huawei Digital Power is committed to integrating digital and power electronics technologies, developing clean power, and enabling energy digitalization to drive energy revolution for a better, greener future. It covers various business domains, including Smart PV, Data Center Facility, Site Power Facility, DriveONE, and Integrated Smart Energy. Our success is rooted in our commitment to innovation. We operate 12 R&D centers worldwide and held more than 1600 patents at the end of 2021. In the Middle East, our focus is on Smart PV, Data Center Facility, and Site Power Facility, with multi-national professionals forming a talented team to serve our customers in the region.
What are the main opportunities in the Middle East for Huawei Digital Power Business within the next 3-5 years, and what is its backdrop?
Nearly 200 countries have signed the Paris Agreement, pledging to tackle climate change and global warming. More importantly, key countries and regions in the Middle East have officially announced net-zero targets with ambitious schedules. For example, the UAE announced its net-zero 2050 Strategy last year, while Saudi Arabia has committed to net-zero fulfillment by 2060, demonstrating that regional industries will accelerate the energy transition in the next 20-30 years.
Renewable energy has played the most crucial role in the energy transition towards carbon-neutral electricity sources. It is estimated that nearly 50 GW capacity of IPP solar PV projects will be implemented in the next five years. In the industrial and household solar PV sector, around 25 GW capacity will be built in our region, encouraged by governments such as Jordan and Pakistan. Huawei Digital Power has been involved in the regional solar PV market with our customers and partners for over ten years.
With the development of 5G, Cloud and AI, digitalization has emerged as the most significant economic driver in the region. It is forecasted that nearly 1GW capacity of data center facilities will be under construction during the next five years. Huawei is closely working with colocation (colo) operators to provide innovative prefabricated data center facilities that will shorten TTM (time-to-market) and higher density design to reduce OPEX through reduced consumption (electricity and water) while boosting O&M efficiency.
In the traditional carrier network business, network expansion continues and over 10,000 telecom sites' power infrastructure needs to be upgraded to 5G within the next five years. Due to the weak commercial power infrastructure in emerging markets, our customers face significant challenges of high OPEX by using diesel generators as the primary power supply at telecommunication sites. Therefore, operators are paying more attention to green power solutions to reduce OPEX.
Many governments in the region have pledged ambitious plans to fulfill net-zero commitments. What capabilities and unique values can Huawei provide toward its customers' sustainability goals in these three major businesses?
By leveraging its strengths in digital and power electronics technologies, Huawei Digital Power integrates innovations such as watt, thermal, energy storage, cloud, and AI technologies. It focuses on clean power generation, green ICT power infrastructure, transportation electrification, and integrated smart energy and collaborates with industry partners to accelerate carbon neutrality. The key capabilities for the three sectors are as follows:
In the solar PV domain, Huawei is dedicated to continuous innovation for PV scenarios through our unique string solution with accumulated shipments of over 200GW capacity. To ensure reliability and safety, we provide smart String-Level disconnector that can quickly cut off energy input, reduce fire hazards, and improve the security of high-current PV modules and high-power inverters. Huawei smart PV controller has the advantages of multiple MPPT, higher conversion efficiency, and lower self-consumption than a traditional central inverter, resulting in higher overall power generation with yields increasing by 0.46% to 0.94%.
In the green data center domain, Huawei solutions address shortcomings in traditional data centers, such as inefficient construction mode, long construction periods, high energy consumption, difficult O&M, and low reliability. Thus, Huawei adheres to the "modular + intelligent" design concept and reshapes the architecture, cooling, O&M, and power supply to build simplified, green, intelligent, and reliable next-generation data centers.
In the site power facilities segment, Huawei aims for low-carbon network construction, operations and O&M. Based on the low-carbon power target network, Huawei has launched full-scenario and full-lifecycle low-carbon site power solutions to help carriers deploy 5G without additional site energy OPEX, minimizing CAPEX and achieving green low-carbon networks.
Could you please share some references that Huawei has successfully implemented in each of the digital power business segments?
In Solar PV, China, Huawei helped Huanghe Hydropower Development, a subsidiary of China's State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC), build the world's largest renewable energy base using wind, solar, and hydropower in Qinghai province. The base hosts a 2.2 GW PV plant producing nearly 5 billion kWh of clean electricity yearly. This plant covers 56 km2 and has more than 7 million PV modules. Each string of modules is precisely managed with intelligent, digital technologies. This improves energy yields by over 2% and O&M efficiency by over 50% while reducing levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).
Second, Huawei Digital Power is building the largest smart PV plant in the Middle East as part of the 4th phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park project in Dubai. The project will supply power to thousands of Dubai homes. Huawei has provided a full range of smart PV solutions for this project, including over 2400 pcs of smart string inverters, 65 pcs of smart transformer stations and the communications and management system, in addition to solution design, power grid simulation, and related design consulting services. Since its commission in October 2021, the Huawei solution has demonstrated higher yield, easier O&M and better reliability utilizing multi-MPPT, modular design and Smart O&M tools, which has strategic significance and set a benchmark for developing the global PV industry
In the ICT domain, Huawei Digital Power has implemented nearly 200MW data center facilities, including 120MW in the UAE, in partnership with top colo operators in the region. Our prefabricated modular data center solution helped UAE customers achieve 12-15 months TTM (time to market), significantly shorter than traditional data center buildouts. We have thus reached a milestone and set a new benchmark for data center construction time in the Middle East
We also cooperate with regional telecommunication companies to modernize remote cell sites with highly efficient power solutions, including solar and hybrid power. For example, in the UAE, we are helping a telecom operator deploy 100% green solar-lithium storage sites in remote areas in the desert and islands. In emerging markets of the Middle East, we have delivered over 15,000 green hybrid power solutions to help our customers reduce the significant OPEX associated with using diesel generators
How will Huawei digital power build an ecosystem of energy Industries?
We are committed to multi-level cooperation with industries. Huawei Digital Power will communicate and cooperate with all partners across industries, including upstream and downstream industry players, governments, industry organizations, standards organizations, and education and research institutions in basic technology research, systematic collaborative innovation, industry chain development, industrial policies, and standards, reducing the energy consumption of various industries through continuous technological innovation.
