Global energy digitalization featured at Shenzhen expo

The 2025 International Digital Energy Expo opened on Thursday at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, attracting over 2,000 companies from 50 plus countries and regions to drive global energy digitalization.

The event features more than 300 cutting-edge technologies across a 50,000-square-meter space, showcasing innovations in the industry chain from generation, grid, load to storage. The expo will last till Sunday.

Zhou Jianjun, Huawei's vice-president, highlighted their all-scenario networking technology, which tackles global grid stability challenges with renewable energy.

Using proprietary hardware, dual architectures and smart algorithms, this technology has proved effective in projects like the world's largest renewable energy microgrid in Saudi Arabia and the Yalong River hydro-solar station in China, ensuring grid stability and safety, he said.

Experts from Shenzhen CGN Engineering Design and Cosin Solar have unveiled groundbreaking advancements in the world's largest single-tower 350-megawatt solar thermal technology.

The project employs a three-tower, one-turbine distributed heat storage system, overcoming challenges in large-scale heliostat field control and molten salt energy storage.

This innovation has lowered electricity costs to 0.55 yuan ($0.08) per kilowatt-hour, with experts anticipating further reductions by 2035. This positions solar thermal as an increasingly affordable and stable green base-load power source.

During the expo, the 2025 Shenzhen Digital Energy White Paper was unveiled, detailing the road map for transforming Shenzhen into a global leader in digital energy.

The city, in Guangdong province, has become the world's first megacity to fully electrify its public bus system. It has built an energy infrastructure where ultrafast charging stations now outnumber traditional gas stations, creating the densest urban charging network globally, according to local authorities.

The city's Virtual Power Plant 3.0 platform stands out for its use of AI-driven smart dispatching, significantly improving clean energy consumption efficiency to an industry-leading level, addressing the global challenge of integrating large amounts of renewable energy into the grid.

Yang Kun, executive vice chairman of the China Electricity Council, emphasized that China's power industry is at the forefront of digitalization, supporting new power systems and energy security by creating standard systems and think tank platforms.