# The Emerging Energy Internet: Architecture, Benefits, Challenges, and Future Prospects
## 1 Introduction  
Overdependence on fossil fuels, such as coal, natural gas, and oil, for energy needs in the current energy consumption scenario leads to two major issues--the fast exhaustion of conventional energy resources leading to an energy crunch, and global warming, due to increased greenhouse gas emissions. To address these issues, harnessing energy from non-conventional energy resources, such as solar, wind, biomass, ocean, and geothermal, and the development of an efficient and reliable energy utilization regime are required. These non-conventional energy resources are usually distributed in geographic areas, and demand energy utilization from distributed energy resources (DERs) [1]. This has led to a paradigm shift from the traditional centralized power generation to distributed power generation. These distributed generation plants are governed by centralized players that manage and control them through advanced communication technology. This has led to the emergence of the smart grid (SG) [2; 3]. SG is a unique and advanced concept combining interconnected power systems, intelligent networks, and smart monitoring, which greatly improves the utilization of energy resources [4]. The centralized control scheme in SG is gradually transforming to a hierarchical distributed control, with the aid of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) [5; 6; 7]. Thiscontributes to the higher participation of small- and micro-level prosumers in the energy market, and the development of a distributed and active energy production regime with bidirectional power transmission. The distributed, collaborative Internet will converge with the energies that are also distributed and collaborative. Today, we have millions of potential micro power plants (MPP) with clean and renewable non-conventional energy sources. Each consumer can produce their electricity from the installed MPPs and accomplish their energy needs. If excess energy is produced, it can be sold to the grid, and the consumer gets paid for it in peak load periods. In case there is a shortage of supply, the energy is purchased from the grid in order to manage the demand supply. These prosumers act as distributed renewable energy resources (DRERs) during grid energy deficient periods, and as distributed energy storage devices (DESDs) during grid energy excess periods, and thus provide better efficiency and grid stability [8; 9; 10]. In order to effectively manage the operation of DRERs and DESDs, and to lower the energy production, transportation, and storage costs, greater emphasis is laid on the integration of information technology with the energy sector [11; 12; 13]. It will be a complete paradigm shift in the energy system direction of today's world, to deploy a ubiquitous energy control system. This has evolved the concept of the management of energy, and is known as the energy Internet (EI). EI is a combination of the energy sector and Internet of things (IoT), as described by its originator [PERSON] in his book \"Third Industrial Revolution\" [14]. EI is also known as \"Enernet\", which is an Internet of energy (IOE) [15]. EI is an integration of DRERs, DESDs, real-time energy monitoring, information sharing, real-time pricing, and energy transactions. EI aims to transform energy production, storage, and transport into an Internet-enabled form. EI aims to realize a scenario where every household can be involved in an energy transaction [16]. The EI revolution will present quantum leaps in terms of energy security, and will aid to develop a cleaner, healthier, and safer environment for energy exchange [17]. Research has shown that the concept of EI has surpassed the geographical barriers of energy transmission, because of the low-cost of information transmission [18]. In the literature [19; 20], a hierarchical energy management system to address economically- and environmentally-viable operations of micro EI by handling the power flow exchanged between the micro EI and the host grid is proposed.