As a national pillar industry, electric power is crucial to the security and development of the whole country. As the core device, the main control chip involves the key devices of tens of millions of power grid, and is the brain of the power industry control.
China Southern Power Grid Corporation, which started the research on chip protection technology in 2013, spent nearly 10 years and finally solved a series of problems such as the synchronous timing of the protection device, then successfully developed China’s first domestic energy industrial control chip- “Fuxi”, with a series of patent achievements established. This marks the transformation of the core chips in the field of China’s power industrial control to “independent and dedicated”, and provides technical support for accelerating the digital transformation of China’s power grid.
It is understood that “Fuxi” chip has been selected as the top 10 “national weight” in 2021, is China’s first energy industrial control based on the domestic instruction architecture, using the domestic core developed special chip. Compared with similar competing products at home and abroad, the comprehensive performance has been improved by 1.5 times. The mass production of “Fuxi” chips has promoted the transformation of the core chips in the field of power industrial control from “import general use” to “independent special use”, which is of great significance for the national power energy security and the independent control of science and technology in the field of industrial control.
Industrial Control of The “Nerve Center”, Accelerate The Digital Power Grid
Power industrial control equipment runs according to the internal clock signal, and it is particularly important to ensure the “synchronous update of time signal”. The traditional practice is to set up the clock signal disaster recovery track through the double-line update, that is, “the line A is difficult, the B line is in support”. But there are also defects in the dual-line synchronous update: no matter how high the clock accuracy is, there is still a time difference between the two lines, who should listen to? If the “first come, first served” occurs, the industrial control equipment has to be frequently switched between the dual lines, leading to central disorders, and also causing abnormal phenomena such as clock jitter and lack of messages, which will affect the safe and stable operation of the power grid.
After many years, the scientific research team of China Southern Power Grid has successfully developed multi-clock source cross-inspection technology and chain credit assignment technology, creating a “nerve center” for industrial control and timing. This is like the human eyes which can present a non-overlapping clear world under the command of the nerve center. This patented technology can not only guarantee the timing accuracy, effectively improve the communication technology level of the core power grid, but also strongly support the operation accuracy and reliability of the power grid.
“Fuxi”, To Realize The Breakthrough of Power Grid Equipment Core Devices From 0 to 1
In the early development stage, the chips are mostly designed by specialized chip manufacturers, so most chips are oriented to the general field and general demand. While in the long run, especially the energy industrial control segments will pay more attention to the specific requirements in function, performance and power consumption. This means more specialized chips need to process specialized data. Heterogeneous computing will gradually become the mainstream computing mode and computing is strongly related to the field. Dedicated field chips will be incubated in the professional field of companies. Therefore, based on a deep understanding of the field of energy industrial control and a grasp of the future development trend of the power grid, China Southern Power Grid, led by Academician Li Liqiang and team chief Li Peng, started the research and development of the domestic power special chip “Fuxi” in 2015.
In March 2019, the team officially named the chip as “Fuxi”, and tried to achieve a breakthrough in the core components of the power grid equipment from 0 to 1. The patent and a series of results, focusing on the layout of digital power grid key areas of domestic new track, incubated the first domestic based on domestic instruction architecture, domestic core power special master control chip, embedded security algorithm module, the comprehensive performance is 1.5 times that of similar products from international suppliers. The network storm resistance capability has been improved by 60 times.
At present, the patents have been widely used, and the relevant devices operate stably and reliably, which play important role in ensuring the implementation of the national power transmission strategy from west to east. All these afterwards help to promote the external transmission of clean energy and regional economic development.
