This paper systematically proposes a novel concept of energy Internet access equipment (AE) integrating cyber-physical systems (CPSs). First, based on the concept and characteristics of energy Internet AE, we comprehensively investigate its global system development, including overall framework and functions design, core hardware equipment development, and software system design and development. Among these, the hardware part containing five major types of equipment is used to achieve a unified connection of various distributed energy equipment; the software part, consisting of three categories of system platforms (i.e., local energy management system, cloud Web page system, and user-side APP), is applied to integrate energy management and distributed coordination control. Moreover, we carry out an initial practice for this proposed energy Internet AE. Based on this, finally, we prospect future application scenarios for the energy Internet AE from multiple aspects. As a unified interface platform, the proposed energy Internet AE is directly applied for end-users to connect various energy supply and utilization equipment to the energy Internet, so as to monitor and coordinate the distributed energy equipment in real time and, finally, to realize the bidirectional circulation of energy flow and information flow in smart grid. The biggest innovation of this paper lies in comprehensively proposing a novel concept of energy Internet AE from the perspective of the CPS, with an aim of hoping to provide some thoughts for end-users to access the energy Internet efficiently and conveniently through such equipment in the future.INDEX TERMS Energy Internet access equipment, energy Internet, comprehensive energy systems, cyber-physical systems, unified interface platform, energy management, distributed coordination control, energy flow, information flow, bidirectional circulation, smart grid, distributed energy and equipment.
