Jiangsu Deploys China's First All-Voltage-Level Lightning Fault-Locating System

NANJING, China, Sept. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power Co., Ltd. announced the launch of its lightning monitoring and analysis system for its distribution network on September 5, marking completion of China's first lightning fault location system that covers all voltage levels across both transmission and distribution networks. The system doubles the speed of locating and restoring lightning-caused faults on distribution lines and reduces lightning-related customer outage duration by 50%.

In the first half of 2025, Jiangsu province recorded 380,000 lightning strikes—twice the number reported during the same period last year. "As one of China's largest provincial power grids, Jiangsu's network spans nearly 370,000 kilometers, with extensive coverage and countless nodes, which can make post-storm fault location challenging," said Zhu Zhen, Deputy Director of the Distribution Operation and Maintenance Division, Distribution Network Management Department at State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power. "The newly launched solution uses AI and multi-source data integration to overcome challenges such as pinpointing outage locations and lengthy field inspections, cutting fault-location time to minutes."

According to Zhu, the system introduces three major innovations: generating lightning hotspot heat maps from meteorological data to support real-time monitoring of high-risk areas; using intelligent diagnostics to automatically distinguish between urban and rural operating conditions, tagging affected structures and recording past lightning events; and analyzing surge arrester operation frequency to guide targeted deployment of lightning protection facilities.

"The new system enables rapid and precise location of lightning-related outages and is a practical application of AI for grid operations. It will materially improve service reliability during peak lightning season," stated Li Jian, Deputy Director of the China National Energy Key Laboratory of Lightning Disaster Detection, Early Warning and Safety Protection.

Since entering pilot operation, the system has successfully analyzed more than 20,000 lightning-activity data points, identified over 50 lightning-related faults, and achieved post-verification accuracy exceeding 90% following manual verification, according to company figures.

SOURCE State Grid Jiangsu Electric Power