Transmission lines of CGE Transmisión in the Arica y Parinacota Region, Chile.
In April 2026, data flashed on the screens at the dispatch center of Compañía General de Electricidad (CGE) in Chile. After an alert popped up automatically, a corresponding action recommendation was generated instantly: "Priority is advised for sections along the mountainous routes. Please verify in advance the readiness of nearby repair crews, necessary materials and spare parts."
Beyond safeguarding grid operation and maintenance through meteorological monitoring and early warning, this "digital brain" from China is also putting its intelligence to work in field operations, customer service and other spheres. It is quietly transforming the way Chile's power grid operates, standing as a vivid illustration of smart energy cooperation between China and Chile.
A "Handshake" Across the Pacific
In Chile, extreme weather such as snowstorms and cold waves poses some challenges to the local power system. As a major power transmission and distribution company serving 43% of customers in Chile, CGE has an urgent need for digital and intelligent transformation in equipment operation and maintenance, field operations, risk control and customer service.
The Chinese team and the CGE side discuss digital and intelligent cooperation.
On May 20, 2025, a video conference spanning the Pacific Ocean brought together more than 30 Chinese and Chilean grid experts for in-depth discussions on technical standards and application scenarios.
"What we need isn't just technology, but a 'smart brain for energy' that can truly take root in this land," said Cristián Ormazábal, head of digital transformation of CGE. In response, State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co., Ltd. responded that rather than simply providing software, it would integrate standards, frameworks and talents into the project, so that digital, intelligent power applications could take root in Chile.
This video conference laid the foundation for smart energy cooperation between the two sides. The Chinese team quickly formed a digital unit and adopted a coordinated model in which on-site task forces worked in tandem with remote support from the headquarters to turn each demand into reality on the ground.
Interface of the Meteorological Intelligence for the Electric Service.
From "Blurry Map" to "Precise Picture"
In June 2025, a rare winter storm swept through the Chilean Lake District in the southern Andes, a region with thousands of kilometers of power lines where a single fault could cut power supply to countless households. At the time, the only meteorological tool Ormazábal had on hand offered nothing more than a rough weekly forecast. "It was like going into battle with a blurry map. Once the storm hit, all we could do was to wait for customers to report outages and then send someone out to check. The round trip alone could take hours," he said.
Today, the "digital brain" has turned these uncertainties into manageable tasks. In March 2026, the Meteorological Intelligence for the Electric Service, an intelligent meteorological forecasting platform for power system operations, was launched, becoming the seed of the "digital brain" to take root in Chile. It now covers 345 local municipalities, capable of providing weather trend analysis up to 16 days in advance and high-resolution 72-hour forecasts. The forecast is automatically updated every four hours. This has shifted the way of handling meteorological impacts on the power system from manual interpretation to intelligent recognition, proactive prevention and swift response.
For the seed to grow, it needs to be validated with more data. CGE generates more than 18,000 field meter-reading photos every month, but traditional manual spot checks were limited in scope and often failed to detect errors in time. To address this issue, the Chinese team developed an intelligent verification system for meter-reading field evidence, which can automatically recognize photo content, extract readings and meter numbers, and verify location information. Work evidence is now classified precisely into three categories — valid, suspicious and invalid — forming a closed-loop capability spanning photo review, result analysis and management dashboards.
"Spot checks used to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now AI draws a 'precise picture' for every single photo," said a meter-reading staff.
From "Front-End Burden Reduction" to "Back-End Acceleration"
If meteorological forecasting and meter reading represent "front-end burden reduction", then collecting overdue payments is the key to "back-end acceleration". To help CGE tackle the long processing cycles and difficulties in tracking progress that had plagued overdue-payment collection, the Chinese team developed the CNR Integrated Management System, enabling the entire process to be now handled as a single, seamless workflow, covering importing anomaly notices, matching customers and price information, calculating average power consumption, verifying supporting documents, approval workflows, billing and collection, and tracking results. The processing time has been cut from two months to just one week. "In the past, arrears recovery was like running a marathon, now it has become a hundred-meter dash," said Oscar Facusse, CGE's finance director.
User electricity parameters and analysis interface in the CNR Integrated Management System.
Following that, a customer complaint management system, the CGE Claims Management System, was created to cover the entire process of receiving, tracking and responding to customer complaints, achieving over 90% accuracy in intelligently identifying and precisely classifying complaint information, and thus helping boost customer service efficiency.
At the same time, the Chinese team has also helped streamline standardized procedures for local power engineering construction and has supported the development of equipment management and technical oversight systems, contributing to the intelligent and sustainable development of Chile's power system.
In March 2026, in a letter of thanks to the Chinese team, Ormazábal wrote: "Thank you for helping us set up the full life cycle of the digital project, from feasibility through implementation, while showing real judgment in adapting these reference frameworks to CGE's local realities."
Today, Ormazábal has transformed from being a user of the "digital brain" to one of its advocates. He shares his experience at CGE's internal training sessions and guides colleagues through system operations. "This new channel of cooperation runs not just from China to Chile, but also from the past into the future," he said. (Dai Linlin)
A single purchase
