November 7, the 4th Sumeru Summit, founded by Wanbang Digital Energy (StarCharge), was grandly held in Changzhou, Jiangsu. Three years on, the Sumeru gathering returned, and Wanbang Digital Energy came with full sincerity! Guided by the philosophy of 'interpreting technology through art, and empowering products with a humanistic spirit,' the event not only treated attendees to a visual feast with a series of creative dance performances, but also sparked lively discussion among industry peers through its systematic product and strategy releases.
Shao Danwei, Chairwoman of Wanbang Digital Energy and founder of StarCharge, spoke on behalf of the host, presenting to attendees StarCharge's development achievements and future strategy in the field of energy management.
01 Remarkable Sumeru Achievements
At the 3rd Sumeru Summit three years ago, StarCharge first proposed the Mobile Energy Internet strategy: using digital platforms to network the full-chain information of distributed energy, covering six major links—energy production, storage, transmission, management, trading, and consumption. StarCharge has advanced steadily along this plan, building up its technology reserves and moving firmly toward a global energy internet ecosystem.
Ms. Shao Danwei first shared the highlights of the company's exploration and achievements across the six major links of the Mobile Energy Internet over the past three years.
1. Technology. On the energy production side, StarCharge has developed a complete range of integrated PV-storage inverters and PCS products, with power ratings spanning 3kW to 200kW and meeting European, American, Japanese, French, and other standards; its energy storage products cover a full range of energy storage system products—from residential, commercial-and-industrial (C&I), to utility-scale storage; from air-cooled to liquid-cooled; from Chinese national standards to international standards.
2. Energy management. The CCS energy router, independently developed by StarCharge, is the soul of the microgrid, solving the problem of on-site coordination of distributed energy resources. In the future, StarCharge will open up all of its CCS capabilities to partners, meeting the needs of energy storage cabinets of almost all brands to connect to StarCharge's algorithms and virtual power plant (VPP) platform.
3. Energy transmission. StarCharge's V2G products strive to offer the industry's most complete series, the highest power, and the most complete product line.
4. Charging hardware. StarCharge's high-power fast charging delivers a full 400 km of range in 7 minutes. StarCharge was the first in the world to release a high-power DC-bus charging solution based on a DC bus and composed of a movable-box transformer + DCDC modules, greatly improving charging efficiency and comprehensively enhancing full-lifecycle business performance.
5. Energy trading. This year, StarCharge's electricity retail business has expanded across 23 provinces. In the January-June electricity retail data for 130 retail companies released by Guangdong Power Grid, Wanbang Digital Energy led the field by a wide margin, with per-kWh revenue from its electricity retail business 0.016 yuan higher than the average! The key to this achievement lies in the StarCharge virtual power plant (VPP) platform.
As early as 2020, Wanbang Digital Energy was fully committed to urging provincial authorities to accelerate the introduction of policies on virtual power plants entering market trading, and had built up a large stock of related technologies, including algorithms, forecasting, control, and strategies.
6. Energy consumption. The number of StarCharge app users has surpassed 14 million, with electricity consumption on the platform exceeding 10 billion kWh.
Through technological breakthroughs and product portfolios across the six links above, Wanbang Digital Energy has achieved full-stack in-house development and a full product line layout in the microgrid field, realizing scenario-level PV-storage-charging microgrid systems, including home microgrids, building microgrids, charging station microgrids, and microgrids for smart factories, parks, and even entire cities.
02 Energy-Carbon Dialogue and Reflection
Ms. Shao Danwei believes there are two paths to achieving 'carbon neutrality': top-down and bottom-up. StarCharge has chosen the bottom-up path. When every energy-consuming unit becomes carbon neutral—every building, every home, every factory, every park, with all energy use carbon neutral—the world will be carbon neutral. Scenario-based microgrids are therefore the 'dual carbon' path at the smallest granularity. But microgrids alone are far from enough; without a platform, they are all isolated grids. Countless microgrids must be aggregated, upholding software-defined hardware and bits defining watts, bringing all charging network piles, charging stations, and microgrids together to interact in a friendly manner with the main grid—only then can microgrids truly gain a soul. The aggregation platform that brings all of this together is called the virtual power plant, and once aggregated, entering the market to trade is called green electricity spot trading.
For years, one question has lingered in Ms. Shao Danwei's mind: how should carbon be positioned? Is it a right or an obligation? An allowance or an administrative matter? Different definitions of carbon directly determine costs for society as a whole. If carbon is a right, then no one should pay for it; rather, everyone should earn benefits from saving carbon; if it is an obligation, then all companies should bear additional costs for reducing carbon. How carbon is positioned therefore directly determines the thinking and business models that follow.
With this question in mind, at the recently concluded meeting of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee, Ms. Shao Danwei consulted Zhou Qiang, Vice Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee and former President of the Supreme People's Court, who is working on the institutional top-level design for legislation on the national carbon trading market.
Vice Chairman Zhou Qiang clearly stated: carbon is a right! If carbon is a right, then all companies can surely make money as long as they reduce carbon, rather than spending more to do so. Wanbang Digital Energy's solutions are therefore built around carbon inclusion and the notion that carbon is a right.
Guided by this core idea and business model, Wanbang Digital Energy's R&D team has kept refining its work. Building on the virtual power plant, it has opened up the nation's first truly and completely free carbon inventory platform, which all companies may use free of charge. In the future, the platform will also explore carbon emission functions for materials, logistics, and many other fields.
As for StarCharge's international expansion, three years of pandemic did not halt its global march. StarCharge products now cover 66 countries worldwide, and the company has established deep cooperation with more than 200 Fortune Global 500 companies.
StarCharge has also set up factories in Vietnam and the United States, built a settlement center in Singapore, and established R&D institutions in four overseas cities. Upholding market orientation and technology leadership, StarCharge has become the undisputed leader among Chinese charging companies going global.
In terms of international cooperation, CAMS, the joint venture between StarCharge and Volkswagen, has just celebrated its fourth anniversary. This year, CAMS received additional capital injections from Volkswagen and FAW Group, which will further improve the pace of building and operating the private car charging network.
Wanbang Digital Energy has also established a joint venture with CQC (China Quality Certification Centre) and TÜV Rheinland—the two largest testing and certification centers in China and Germany respectively—named Zhongren Guochuang Testing. After three years of development, Zhongren Guochuang Testing has become one of the leading testing and certification centers in the charging field for automakers.
In the future, Wanbang Digital Energy will also pursue joint ventures and cooperation with a number of Fortune Global 500 companies.
At the summit, Ms. Shao Danwei happily announced that the Aurora AC charging pile, independently developed by StarCharge, and the household PV-storage-charging product series had successively won the IF Design Award, known as the 'Oscar of industrial design.'
03 Future Strategy Leading the Way to Zero Carbon
After sharing the many achievements of the past three years, Chairwoman Ms. Shao Danwei also unveiled Wanbang Digital Energy's core strategy for the next stage.
1. In products, Wanbang Digital Energy will remain firmly committed to full products, a full matrix, global standards, and full-stack in-house development across the six links of the Mobile Energy Internet.
2. In brands, the Star Energy brand was officially launched. Going forward, there will be the StarCharge brand centered on the charging network and the Star Energy brand centered on energy microgrids, and the aggregation of the two constitutes the Wanbang virtual power plant.
Ms. Shao Danwei simultaneously disclosed Wanbang's most important business strategy for the future—openness! It will run through the entire lifecycle of Wanbang Digital Energy. Wanbang Digital Energy will comprehensively open up its charging network, microgrids, and virtual power plant operations network—all of its capabilities, including hardware capabilities, software capabilities, and service capabilities—using hardcore-tech products to empower society together with everyone, cooperating with industry peers, and building digital and energy infrastructure for society as a whole.
Ms. Shao Danwei stated: energy, information, and transportation are the three great universal foundational platforms driving human civilization ever forward. Every industrial revolution has been the result of major technological leaps occurring simultaneously across the three platforms. Today, the watt world of new energy, the bit world of new intelligence, and the meter world of new transportation are all undergoing great transformations unseen in a century.
When one day, with green electricity spot trading, our descendants can enjoy clean energy; with electricity trading, our descendants can share energy generously; and with natural resources such as wind and solar, our descendants can enjoy free energy—then our descendants will no longer be caught in endless competition. Our descendants should have more time to listen to heaven and earth, awaken to inner freedom, and spend more time with what is true, good, and beautiful. So no matter what, the new era is created by all of us together, and everything is driven forward by our own hands.
