China’s state energy actors embrace DeepSeek AI to accelerate digital transformation

According to incomplete statistics from PV Tech, since February this year, major Chinese central power enterprises or their subsidiaries – including State Grid Corporation of China, China Southern Power Grid, CHN Energy Investment Group, China Energy Investment Corporation, State Power Investment Corporation and China Huadian Corporation – have completed the integration of their AI platforms with the DeepSeek model.

Among these developments, the Model Service Cloud (MSC) platform developed by the State Grid Information and Telecom Group, a subsidiary of the State Grid Corporation of China, has fully integrated the DeepSeek model. The deep integration of the two will enhance the platform’s intelligent production capabilities, thereby improving the R&D efficiency of digital grid projects.

Since its launch, the MSC platform has successively supported the product design and development of several large-scale digital systems of the State Grid Corporation, including the Marketing 2.0 Unified Software and the State Grid Science and Technology Innovation Comprehensive Service Management Platform. It has completed the design of 2,245 product prototypes and 4,926 data models, as well as the development of over 300 innovative products and operational management tools for the State Grid Corporation of China.

DeepSeek can analyse the demand, price fluctuations and policy changes in the power market, providing market forecasts and decision-making support for energy trading. For example, China Southern Power Grid has utilised DeepSeek to optimise power dispatch and improve grid operation efficiency.

On 12 February, China Southern Power Grid announced that its Artificial Intelligence Innovation Platform has completed the local deployment of the open-source DeepSeek model. The power-specific model system has fully integrated and adapted the DeepSeek models, which are now officially available for use.

Based on the open technical route of the “Big Watt” model system, the platform has rapidly upgraded the natural language processing (NLP) base model to a higher parameter level. By deeply integrating DeepSeek’s algorithm optimisation and other innovative capabilities, the platform will further enhance the performance of AI applications across various business areas of China Southern Power Grid.

At the same time, Longyuan Power, a subsidiary of China Energy Investment Corporation, has established a dedicated team to deploy and launch the DeepSeek-R1 series models on its New Energy Digitalization Platform. By leveraging the platform for inference training, the company aims to promote its intelligent development across multiple fields and business scenarios.

Longyuan Power said that it had achieved private deployment of DeepSeek-R1 on its New Energy digital platform. Utilising cloud platform capabilities and tools like Ollama for unified management, DeepSeek-R1 features multi-modal processing and dynamic attention mechanisms, enabling efficient integration of diverse data types such as text, code and images. By building vertical domain-specific intelligent agents on the new energy digital platform and incorporating the RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architecture, Longyuan Power has created a proprietary knowledge base using comprehensive production business data and technical documents. This knowledge base can provide strong support for decision-making in new energy production and operations.

For example, in the operation and maintenance of PV power plants, the new system model can act as an industry “expert”. When consulted for PV maintenance instructions, such as generating an inspection work order for a routine inspection plan at a PV site, the model can immediately produce a tailored solution upon receiving the directive.

DeepSeek can also serve as an internal knowledge base and intelligent Q&A system, helping employees quickly access information and improve work efficiency.

On 13 February, Guodian Nanzi, a subsidiary of China Huadian Corporation, announced that the independently developed “Hua Dian Rui Si” digital platform has successfully integrated with DeepSeek. This integration empowers the platform to deliver smarter, more precise and more professional services in intelligent Q&A and document summarisation and analysis. It also supports the intelligent deployment of multiple energy types and various digital business scenarios. Moving forward, as large model technology continues to evolve, Guodian Nanzi plans to further expand AI technology research in knowledge expert systems, smart office solutions and intelligent testing based on the “Hua Dian Rui Si” digital platform.

DeepSeek’s applications in the energy industry are extensive and diverse, ranging from production optimisation and equipment management to supply chain optimisation, market analysis, digital transformation and risk management. Leveraging its powerful data analysis and predictive capabilities, DeepSeek provides comprehensive intelligent solutions for energy companies. We will continue to follow its future developments.