According to on-site test data, when the indoor temperature stays around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (or 21 degrees Celsius), the HUAWEI CLOUD Enterprise Intelligence (EI)-based intelligent heating service reduces the use of heating energy by 10 percent compared with manual control.
For the residents in northern cities who face extremely cold weather during the winter months, indoor heating is one of their most essential services.
However, while enjoying the warmth brought by indoor heating, government and industry must also calculate the costs of energy consumption and air pollution. 2015 statistics covering the cost of government-provided heating for an area of 13.1 billion square meters (5,057 square miles) of northern China was shown to be growing at a rate of 10 percent per year. Further, by 2020, the subsidized heating area for northern China is projected to reach 21.1 billion square meters (8,146 square miles), and the consumption of approximately 420 million tons of standard coal. This heat footprint will produce more than 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide each winter. For Chinese citizens, the idea of more heavy pollution days is difficult to stomach, and many public and private organizations are looking for ways to prevent such high rates of pollution caused by household winter heating.
Exploring Measures to Reduce Consumption of Heating Energy
Facing the situation head on, China's heating industry is actively exploring improvements in the point-source efficiency of generating heat while simultaneously reducing energy consumption and air pollution. Among the intuitive ideas already put into action are revolutionary heating technologies for improving boiler-operation efficiency, and the availability of new thermal insulation materials from the construction industry that that are designed to reduce in-home energy consumption. Heating enterprises that bridge heat-source power plants and end users are also researching a variety of similar measures.
For example, there is one particular integrated home-heating enterprise that invests in technology R&D, operation management, and construction that is applying the innovations that are available using cloud computing, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to the heating industry with the goal to implement 'green heating' and improve the satisfaction of customers. Currently, the enterprise is providing heating services for multiple provinces across northern China along the way to building China's largest, market-oriented green heating group.
The heating principle is very simple. Heating enterprises send heat from heat source power plants to households using heat exchangers.
Figure 1-1 A typical heat-generating plant and heat exchangers
How the Current Heating System Works
Today, heat-generation facilities transport hot water from point-source power plants to households. On-site heat exchangers convert the concentrated energy into radiant heat.
The working principle is that valves are dynamically adjusted based on the difference between outdoor and indoor temperatures to ensure that the end result meets customer requirements for comfort and economy.
It is often difficult to determine exactly when and how much to adjust the open valves as there is a natural delay between the operator actions and the affect change in each household. The most challenging scenario is when the outdoor temperature is falling sharply and the open valves are not adjusted quickly enough to preserve the comfort for the people at home. It is in cases like this that a large number of complaints will be recorded. Similarly, when the outdoor temperature is rising, if a reduced position for the open valves is not well anticipated, there will also be user complaints and wasted heat. The technical staff for generating heat has a demanding job that requires skill and experience.
Innovative heating enterprises are now coming to HUAWEI CLOUD to learn how they may apply the latest IT technologies to resolve such problems. The HUAWEI CLOUD EI team recommended that the latest AI technology be used to control heating capacity based on the available capacity on the heat generation side and target indoor and outdoor temperatures on the user side for the purpose of minimizing energy consumption while ensuring comfortable indoor temperatures. The leading heating companies are uploading historical production data to the HUAWEI CLOUD EI platform in order to research and develop an intelligent heating service model.
With a shared effort by R&D personnel from both parties, the first instance of the HUAWEI CLOUD EI-based intelligent heating service was completed quickly. The HUAWEI CLOUD EI-based intelligent heating service is now able to anticipate and report optimal heating suggestions based on rising or falling outdoor temperature and the target comfort levels on the user side. The AI-driven service model achieves optimal results based on access to current and historical data. Service-control policies are expected to be adjusted and updated based on the collection of ever more accurate going into the future.
Internal testing data confirms that the HUAWEI CLOUD EI-based intelligent heating service reliably maintains indoor temperatures around 70oF (21ºC) while reducing costs by 10 percent when compared with simple manual control. Abrupt changes in outdoor temperatures cause the automatic adjustment of hot water valves for the benefit of user satisfaction and the avoidance of energy waste caused by excessive heating.
Figure 1-2 A HUAWEI CLOUD EI application is used to adjust heating capacity to keep the indoor temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Looking Forward to Making the City Smarter
In the future, the intelligent heating service will be launched on HUAWEI CLOUD for all Chinese heating enterprises. In turn, they will be able to provide intelligent heating control that keeps indoor living comfortable. The benefits will include further annual reductions of coal consumption and air pollution by tens of millions of tons. The future for the HUAWEI CLOUD EI team is to apply AI technologies to urban water, power, logistics, and transport sectors to introduce more EI services to other industries for the purpose of making smarter cities that meet people's desire for an improved society.
