China Southern Power Grid Showcases AI Innovations for ASEAN Energy

At the 23rd China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, China Southern Power Grid unveiled a suite of innovations aimed at deepening energy cooperation between China and ASEAN. Among the highlights were the DaWatt - Lao Language Large Language Model (LLM) for the Energy and Power Sector V2.0 and the Flexible Grayscale Intelligent Monitoring & Analysis Platform for power system cybersecurity. These technologies underscore the growing opportunities in digitalization, intelligent systems, and green energy. The Lao-language LLM has already been deployed at Electricité du Laos Transmission Company Limited (EDL-T), where it rapidly analyzes thousands of inspection images. After optimizing its algorithms for Laos' mountainous and rainforest terrain, the model completed intelligent inspection analysis for four transmission lines, processing 26,000 drone images and identifying over 3,600 equipment defects.

Liu Ying, general manager of the Digitalization Department at Guangxi Power Grid Co., Ltd., noted that the company is building multilingual professional corpora for the power sector across ASEAN countries, including Laos, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Using the DaWatt foundation model, it is developing energy and power models tailored to ASEAN languages and real-world applications. Talent development is another pillar: the China-ASEAN Institute of Energy, jointly established by Guangxi Power Grid Co., Ltd. and Guangxi University, has enrolled two cohorts totaling 53 students from ASEAN countries, focusing on practical experience. Cooperation is also shifting from one-way training to joint innovation. Guangxi Power Grid Co., Ltd. and the Royal Academy of Cambodia have set up a laboratory for artificial intelligence and safety equipment, while the company has launched peer-to-peer exchanges with Electricité du Laos on improving power supply reliability.

To overcome language barriers in cross-border technical exchanges, Guangxi Power Grid Co., Ltd. developed an AI-powered translation platform backed by a specialized database of terminology for more than 1,800 types of power equipment. It supports accurate translation between Chinese and English, Chinese and Lao, and Chinese and Vietnamese. At a recent training program for Chinese and overseas engineers, the system enabled one-click generation of bilingual course materials and real-time speech translation. The company has also established an international talent pool covering management, technical, and skilled personnel, with 24 hours of courses on international affairs and 20 short-form video courses. “This year, we will also explore joint postgraduate programs with universities in ASEAN countries,” said Sun Xiaohua, deputy director of the Human Resources Department. Looking ahead, Guangxi Power Grid Co., Ltd. plans to advance a model of “R&D in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, integration in Guangxi, and application in ASEAN,” expanding multilingual power-sector corpora and exploring a “Token Goes Global” model for power-sector AI. This initiative aims to create new forms of China-ASEAN energy cooperation and support the green development of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0. The announcement was distributed via Media OutReach Newswire.