China’s largest grid developer, State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), has successfully developed its first holographic digital power grid in the eastern province of Jiangsu, with integrated technologies like BeiDou satellites, cloud computing and artificial intelligence to facilitate smart grid functionalities and improve grid monitoring.
Further, the digital features enable three-dimensional restoration of the local power grid, covering 100,000 km of overhead transmission lines and 280,000 towers. This can help shorten restoration times by about 10 per cent, thereby improving transmission safety and reliability during peak hours. It can also simulate and predict the real grid operation environment under extreme conditions such as typhoons and freezing weather. SGCC has also deployed unmanned drones to inspect the transmission lines and towers with much higher precision levels than manual inspections.