Development of European Energy Internet and the role of Energy Union

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. In this Chapter, the novel concept and framework of Global Power & Energy are proposed. The integration and interactions at various levels in Global Power & Energy Internet are explained and active participants in each layer of Global Power & Energy Internet framework are identified. Much like the formation of smart grid and Global Power & Energy Internet, the technological concepts of cyber-physical systems, the internet of things (IoT) and the internet of services facilitate 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 global power & energy internet and Industry 4.0. Then some demo projects of Global Power & Energy Internet developments are illustrated. Finally conclusions are drawn to show the future directions of European global power & energy internet developments.