APSARA Conference | StarCharge Empowers the Global Energy Transition with Digital Intelligence, Joining Hands to Build a New Green Charging Ecosystem

Against the backdrop of the accelerating development of the global new energy industry and profound adjustments in the energy structure, charging piles — as key hubs connecting new energy vehicles and energy networks — have drawn much attention for their technological innovation and global expansion. Recently, at the APSARA Conference, Wang Di, Senior Vice President of StarCharge and Dean of its Digital Energy Research Institute, shared the company's practical achievements in charging network construction, energy ecosystem building, and global development, demonstrating the responsibility of Chinese enterprises in supporting the global energy transition with digital intelligence.

01

Building a Full-Dimension Product System, Creating a Mobile Energy Internet Ecosystem

As a key player in the energy services sector, StarCharge has always aimed to 'build the world's largest Mobile Energy Internet ecosystem', constructing a full-dimension product family covering three major areas — charging networks, microgrids, and virtual power plant networks — to provide professional solutions for different scenarios.

In the charging network field, StarCharge has laid out a nationwide charging network. Through big-data-based intelligent site selection and construction, precise and efficient operations, and customized platform-based management, it connects charging users with operators. Its AC/DC series charging products meet diverse charging needs, effectively solving charging challenges in different scenarios.

In the microgrid field, StarCharge's business covers a broad range. On the grid side of energy storage, it provides centralized energy storage and shared energy storage services; in commercial-and-industrial energy storage, it empowers enterprises through EMC/EPC/BOT models; for residential scenarios, it offers integrated solutions for residential PV, energy storage, and charging, along with equipment such as the Vesta series residential PV inverters and the vBox residential battery system, complemented by park and enterprise station energy management systems and energy management routers (ECC) to achieve efficient smart energy management.

In the virtual power plant network field, StarCharge relies on the StarCharge Virtual Power Plant platform, energy trusteeship platform, and energy-carbon management platform to provide ancillary services and demand-side response, driving full-path digitalization of energy and low carbon, and supporting the implementation of PV-storage-charging-trading and green electricity trading. Notably, the company has built the industry's first digital energy cloud platform integrating the charging network, microgrid, and VPP through three-network integration, providing strong support for the energy industry's digital transformation through services such as open APIs, energy trading decision support, and virtual power plant data reporting.

02

Deepening the Global Footprint, Solving Industry Development Challenges

As the new energy industry goes global, StarCharge has been actively expanding overseas markets, with its business now covering more than 60 countries and regions. In its globalization process, the company has faced challenges such as the complexity of interconnecting and networking millions of devices, urgent demands for rapid service launches, high requirements for system security and reliability, and room for improvement in AI application efficiency. Through technological innovation and cooperation, StarCharge has tackled these challenges one by one, driving the efficient operation of the global charging network.

To address the challenge of networking millions of charging pile devices worldwide, StarCharge built a solution based on Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN). For the data communication needs of charging pile device systems across global locations, no dedicated lines are needed — simply creating an instance on the system enables cross-national and cross-border networks to be activated or expanded within 30 minutes. Facing overseas multi-cloud deployment needs, it worked with partners to connect multi-cloud dedicated lines in the US, Germany, and Singapore within 7 days. Meanwhile, with two billing options — by bandwidth and by traffic — cross-border and cross-national usage costs were reduced by more than 50%, balancing efficiency and cost advantages.

To safeguard the secure and stable operation of charging piles numbering in the millions and a charging APP with tens of millions of users, StarCharge introduced Network Load Balancing (NLB) and cloud-native gateways (ALB Ingress). NLB and ALB can elastically scale automatically across a wide range of specifications without manual tuning, while NLB's new-connection rate limiting effectively guards against connection storms during sudden power or network outages. In addition, both support multi-datacenter disaster recovery deployment by default, combined with inspection reports for timely risk screening, safeguarding stable system operation.

In AI applications, StarCharge partnered with Alibaba Cloud Bailian to build an AI business system. The system can be applied to scenarios such as work order review, charging pile diagnosis, and inspection. With private-network transmission ensuring data security, it has not only improved work order review efficiency by 90% and saved 700 working days per year, but also kept invocation costs within 10% of public-network invocation, achieving the dual goals of higher efficiency and lower costs.

03

Anchoring a Digital-Intelligence Future, Drawing a New Blueprint for Energy Development

Looking ahead, StarCharge has set a clear overall business strategy of integrating 'digital intelligence, energy, and globalization'. Centered on end-to-end comprehensive solutions of 'software + hardware + services', and guided by the philosophy that 'software defines hardware, algorithms define software, scenarios define algorithms, and transactions connect scenarios', the company will advance the new paradigm of 'globalized digital energy' while formulating a medium- and long-term plan for full-process digital intelligence, working across multiple areas to open a new chapter in energy service upgrades.

In terms of business layout, StarCharge will focus on six domains — asset operations, manufacturing, supply chain, R&D, business, and integrated services — with workforce efficiency, experience enhancement, revenue growth, and cost reduction as core goals, while advancing brand innovation and security and compliance in parallel. Among these, the asset operations domain will focus on optimizing charging assets, virtual power plants, and energy asset management; the other domains will drive full-chain digital-intelligent transformation based on their own business characteristics, building an efficiently collaborative business ecosystem.

AI technology will become an important engine for StarCharge to empower its business. The company plans to drive AI through the full value chain of business operations. At the commercial product level, intelligent construction investment, operations, and O&M will improve development efficiency, operational efficiency, and charging pile utilization, while achieving ROI growth and higher service fee revenue. At the technical level, it will strengthen AI capabilities and algorithm R&D in intelligent site selection, demand forecasting, and computer vision, and integrate multi-dimensional data resources to provide data support for AI applications, helping upgrade investment and construction, operations, marketing, finance, and other functions with intelligence.

In the future, StarCharge will continue to be driven by technological innovation, deepen its digital-intelligent transformation, and expand its global footprint, injecting new momentum into the global energy transition while advancing its own development, and joining hands with industry partners to build a greener, more efficient, and smarter new energy ecosystem.