Prof Xiao-Ping Zhang, Director of Smart Grid of Birmingham Energy Institute was invited to give the IEEE PES Distinguished Lecture: “Global Power & Energy Internet Dialogue Industry 4.0” on 30th August 2016.

Professor M.C. Wong of the IEEE Macau Chapter presented a plaque to Professor X.-P. Zhang

Professor X.-P. Zhang with the IEEE Macau Chapter Members

In the presentation, Prof Zhang pointed out that the successful initialization and deployment of Smart Grid has stimulated new demands and challenges on the energy supply and distribution side. The emerging new entities participating in electricity, gas and heat network make it an imminent task to recognize and manage them in an integrated fashion, hence rendering Smart Grid gradually evolving towards global power & energy internet (GPEI). Much like the formation of smart grid and GPEI, the technological concepts of cyber-physical systems, the internet of things (IoT) and the internet of services facilitates the vision of Industry 4.0 which was recently brought forward. Opportunities for business model innovations and added value streams present themselves by opening a dialogue between GPEI and Industry 4.0.