School-enterprise collaboration liberal arts course
Schneider Electric: Digitalization to build an energy future
In the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20th, the corporate partner of Sino-French Engineering School, Schneider Electric held a Global CEO online sharing session, together with Beihang University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Beijing University of Science and Technology, North China Electric Power University, Northeast Electric Power University, China Three Gorges University, Shandong University and China University of Mining and Technology. All students of grade 2018 of the Sino-French Engineer School and the Chinese and French teachers participated in this online sharing session.
As China enters the "post-epidemic era", the ascendant wave of "new infrastructure" has begun to stimulate new momentum in many industries. We can see, the "new" in the "new infrastructure" mainly focus on new technologies, high efficiency, and the supporting role of future social and economic innovation models. This wave is bound to bring unprecedented innovation and upgrade opportunities for traditional infrastructure such as electric energy, transportation, and communications.
Schneider Electric's global CEO Mr.Zhao Guohua （Jean-Pascal Tricoire） shared with the students that digitalization and electrification are bringing disruptive changes to society. Mr. Zhao Guohua believes that digitalization will rapidly improve efficiency and sustainability, and build a smarter future. Electrification will make the energy world greener and build a green future. The “gray rhinoceros” of the Covid-19 has accelerated the development of digitalization and demonstrated its power in remote control, resilience, efficiency, and sustainability. The fields of energy management and automation control are undergoing digital transformation, which requires regional distribution, collaboration, continuous innovation, and talent value propositions to jointly contribute to a smart and green future.
In this online sharing session, Zhou Ziyu, a junior student of the Sino-French Engineer School, asked Mr. Zhao Guohua in fluent French about Schneider Electric's scientific research investment ratio to traditional energy research and development and digital transformation. Mr. Zhao Guohua said that the actual engineering problem is often a multi-disciplinary problem. It is difficult to absolutely separate the two areas. The two areas are often complementary and indispensable. Schneider Electric's investment in these two areas is roughly 1:1. Finally, Mr. Zhao Guohua encouraged the students to master one more language and have more opportunities for direct communication with the world. He hoped that the students would have a solid theoretical foundation, learn engineering and technical knowledge, and make contributions to society in the future.
This sharing meeting aroused a lot of thoughts from the students. A few excerpts are as follows:
18241080 Du Xinran:
What I am interested in is that the new generation of EcoStruxureTM launched by Schneider Electric provides an open and interoperable system architecture for the building, infrastructure, industrial and data center markets. This has promoted comprehensive innovation in three levels, from interconnected products to edge control, to applications, analysis, and services. Among them, EcoStruxureTM grid is an open and secure architecture specifically oriented to power distribution. It collects and manages rich data and achieves a higher level of asset management, grid operation and grid flexibility. This responds to the "3D+E" development trend of the new energy world, helping the power distribution sector to create more efficient operations, optimize asset management, and accelerate digital transformation.
18241062 Li Jinwang:
Combining the two is the solution proposed by Schneider Electric. As students of the Sino-French Engineer School, how should we meet such challenges? I think I should broaden my horizons, integrate with the reality of life, propose suitable solutions to both foreign and domestic, and combine Chinese and Western experiences to explore the path that is most suitable for the future.
18241051 Zhang Xin
As one of the giants in the industry, Schneider has demonstrated an extraordinary sense of grasping the development direction of the times. It is keen and forward-looking to propose digital and electrified reforms. In the context of this global epidemic, digital construction has gradually shown its advantages in remote control, efficiency, and sustainable development. As a student, knowing in advance the forward-looking ideas and future-plans for some large companies on this topic is likely to be of great help to my future career path.
17241037 Yu Renjie
Today, we are in a new era of digitalization and electrification. This has had a huge impact on the entire society, especially in energy.
General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the energy development strategy of "Four Revolutions, One Cooperation". Its contents include as follows: promoting the energy consumption revolution and curbing unreasonable energy consumption; promoting the energy supply revolution and establishing a diverse supply system; promoting the energy technology revolution and driving industrial upgrading; promoting the energy system revolution and opening up the fast lane of energy development; strengthening the international Cooperation to achieve energy security under open conditions.
In this era, the thirst for innovative talents are greater than ever. College students are about to enter society, and universities are also a springboard from school to society. As college students in the new era, we should not be just stare at the space in front of us. We should take a long-term view and pay more attention to the frontiers of science and technology and new technologies applied to enterprises. Both schools and enterprises have carried out in-depth cooperation in personnel training. We should also seize this opportunity, strive to improve ourselves, and contribute our strength in this new era of digital transformation.
