State Grid Guyuan Empowers PV Data Collection with "Digital Employees"

"Previously, we had to log into the system and manually retrieve data household by household. Now, 'digital employees' perform batch executions and provide automatic feedback, which has significantly improved our work efficiency."

Recently, the State Grid Guyuan Power Supply Company pioneered the application of "digital employees" (robotic process automation) to automate data polling for distributed photovoltaic (PV) systems. This initiative provides robust digital support for meeting higher standards in PV data collection success rates and continuously improves the efficiency of anomaly handling.

In recent years, the number of distributed PV users in Guyuan has surged alongside expanding grid-connected capacity, bringing a sharp increase in the workload for operational data collection and polling. This year, stricter standards for the timeliness, integrity, and accuracy of data collection posed new challenges for frontline operation and maintenance (O&M) teams. Faced with large volumes of daily collection failures, time-consuming manual retrieval processes, and heavy repetitive workloads, the company proactively rolled out the automated "digital employee" solution.

Following pre-set user lists, these digital assistants streamline the workflow:

Automated Polling: They automatically log into business systems to complete batch data polling for distributed PV users.

Data Aggregation: They sort and aggregate the polling results, helping staff quickly identify data feedback statuses, failed retrievals, and clues to the root causes of anomalies.

Targeted Resolution: For issues such as missing data and offline terminals, frontline staff can carry out targeted inspections and eliminate defects based on the result lists generated by the digital employees, significantly accelerating fault identification and resolution.

During implementation, the company integrated the development of "digital employees" with broader efforts to rectify collection anomalies and reduce frontline workloads. Empowered by these digital tools, repetitive manual work for personnel has been drastically cut down, while timely and accurate data support is delivered for O&M, indicator control, and PV management. Since the start of this year, the company has achieved steady growth in the success rate of distributed PV data collection, marking phased progress in its digital transformation initiatives.

Moving forward, the company will continue to focus on the goals of improving management efficiency, reducing frontline workloads, and driving data empowerment. Building on the PV data polling application, the company plans to expand the use of "digital employees" to more business scenarios, including marketing inspections, power connection applications, and anomaly verification. By shifting highly repetitive and rule-based tasks from manual handling to digital collaboration, these tools will inject fresh momentum into lean marketing management and high-quality power supply services. (Story by Wang Dongliang)