AI maps 300,000+ solar and wind sites across China for grid stability

A groundbreaking national inventory of solar and wind energy installations in China has been developed by researchers from Peking University and Alibaba Group’s Damo Academy using artificial intelligence. This AI model analyzed 7.56 terabytes of satellite images, revealing 319,972 solar photovoltaic systems and 91,609 wind turbines as of 2022. The results were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Liu Yu, a professor at Peking University’s School of Earth and Space Sciences, referred to the project as offering a “God’s-eye view” of the new-energy sector in China, which could facilitate power-grid optimization and environmental assessments. This effort is intended to support the stabilization of the national grid in response to increasing demands from data centers.