China International Industry Fair (CIIF), formerly known as Shanghai International Industry Fair, has borne witness to the development of China's manufacturing industry in the past two decades. Shanghai Electric has presented itself to the society, the industry and the general public on this platform and made great achievements, and will continue to do so.

Statistics show that over the past 20 years, Shanghai Electric has won 10 gold awards, 1 industrial design gold award, 22 silver awards, 17 bronze awards and 8 innovation awards at the CIIF. These award-winning exhibits represent the innovative achievements and progress made in the advanced equipment manufacturing industry at home and abroad, and demonstrate the capacity of Shanghai Electric for innovation in national strategic industries, for instance, green energy.

One of the first winners of the gold award

The first CIIF was held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center from December 13 to 17, 1999. Shanghai Electric has participated in the event since then, bringing its most advanced technologies and products there every year, hence a veritable super VIP at the CIIF.

"This is the photo of us making our debut at the CIIF," recalled Sun Meijunbo, Deputy Head of Corporate Culture Department at Shanghai Electric. In the third CIIF in 2001, awards were officially granted. The 600MW subcritical thermal power generation unit of Shanghai Electric won the gold award. This is the first gold award won by Shanghai Electric at the CIIF, which is of great significance.

In 2006, Shanghai International Industry Fair was officially renamed China International Industry Fair, upgrading from a regional exhibition to a national industrial event. At that time, Shanghai Electric quickly improved the capability and level of its equipment by accelerating cooperation with and technology introduction from joint ventures. Therefore, most of the exhibits at the CIIF during that period were products of joint ventures controlled by foreign investors.

In the following years, after transformation and upgrading, Shanghai Electric presented its innovative achievements in diverse fields, including cutting-edge products in industries (such as coal power, gas power, wind power, nuclear power, solar thermal power, power transmission and distribution) in the energy sector, and core products (such as robots, rail transit and standard components) in the industry sector.

In fact, in the past five years, its exhibits have changed from individual equipment to integrations of system solutions, which demonstrate its capacities for IT, intelligent, and digital innovation and transformation. Its integrations include wind power remote operation and maintenance systems, elevator IOT operation and maintenance systems, and rail transit precision driving systems.

Over the past two decades, Shanghai Electric has never forgotten why it started, namely contributing to China's mission of becoming a power of manufacturing. Realizing the transformation from traditional energy equipment to clean and efficient energy equipment, from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing, and from manufacturing alone to system solutions consisting of "manufacturing + services", it has been leading the transformation and upgrading of the equipment manufacturing industry.

Fruitful achievements in exhibitions in the past 20 years

At the CIIF this year, Zheng Jianhua, Secretary of the Party Committee, Chairman of Shanghai Electric (Group) Corporation, said in an interview with Shanghai media, "In the past 20 years, we have gained strength and transformed from a manufacturer of traditional equipment to that of high-end and modern equipment. In the process, the CIIF has become increasingly influential. With its help, we have promoted our technologies and products to overseas buyers. We could have never gone this far without the CIIF."

It is fair to say that the CIIF is a specialized platform for enterprises to get to know domestic and foreign advanced technologies and to present their own technical strength. As the CIIF has been expanding its global presence, it has significantly increased the public awareness of the brand Shanghai Electric.

The projects of Shanghai Electric winning the 10+1 gold awards at the CIIF mainly involve such fields as thermal power, heavy machinery, nuclear power, lithography machines and collaborative robots. This not only aligns with the green energy policy advocated by the government, but also highlights the mainstays of Shanghai Electric, namely independently-owned technologies in advanced manufacturing such as thermal power and nuclear power.

Take the gold-award-winning main equipment of the third-generation nuclear power AP1000 nuclear island in 2017 as an example. Its core intellectual property right of the independent manufacturing technology is owned by Shanghai Electric. Compared with a coal-fired power plant of the same scale, the two 1,000 mW units in the third-generation AP1000 nuclear power plant can reduce the consumption of coal by about 6 million tons per year, leading to the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by about 14.82 million tons, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions by about 136,400 tons, which contributes significantly to environmental protection.

In the field of gas turbines, Shanghai Electric has put three models of gas turbines into operation and won the orders for 49 turbines and 10 long-term service orders in China since its cooperation with Ansaldo in 2014. Boasting strong R&D and manufacturing capabilities, the gas turbines of Shanghai Electric won the silver award at the CIIF. It will establish a "smart chain" of the gas turbine industry to enhance the core service capabilities during the entire life cycle.

Many people may not know what a lithography machine is. It is the most technically challenging and most expensive key integrated circuit equipment, integrating advanced engineering technologies in such fields as precision optics, mechanics, control and materials. Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (Group) Co., Ltd. (SMEE), a subsidiary of Shanghai Electric, is specialized in the R&D of all kinds of lithography machines. Since winning the gold award when making its debut at the CIIF in 2012, SMEE has been launching competitive and innovative products.

With twenty years of relentless efforts, Shanghai Electric will continue to forge ahead with dreams into the new era. With the help of the CIIF, it has been gaining strength and becoming a manufacturer of advanced equipment step by step. Shanghai Electric has been and will be part of rapid development of "Made in China" in the past two decades and many years to come.

Guaranteed brighter future

In the new era, guided by the "Made in Shanghai" three-year action plan, Shanghai Electric takes on the mission of "empowering industries around the globe and creating a better and intelligent life". By benchmarking against the world's highest standards and best practice, Shanghai Electric has been manufacturing high-end, intelligent and advanced equipment driven by innovation and transforming into a provider of green, eco-friendly, intelligent and interconnected technology integrations and comprehensive system solutions.

At the 20th CIIF, Shanghai Electric, which has been specialized in the field of energy for more than 60 years, explored infinite possibilities for new energy and devised a bright future for smart energy.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) generation is the dream and hope of Shanghai Electric to usher in a new era of renewable energy. In Dubai, General Secretary Xi Jinping praised the world's largest CSP project whose general contractor is Shanghai Electric as a critical project marking the transformation from the traditional thermal power generation to new energy. Different from PV, wind power and other renewable energy sources, CSP enables continuous power generation 24/7 as it is not as instable and intermittent as solar energy.

The intelligent microgrid, which integrates "wind and light energy storage and charging", becomes part of the "green, stable, interconnected and intelligent" energy system, providing infinite possibilities for energy production and consumption structure in rural areas. More than 80% of the devices used in the smart energy project of Shanghai Electric in Sanxing Town, Chongming District are its own products. This project demonstrates the transformation of Shanghai Electric into an integrated smart energy solution provider.

With strong strength in equipment integration, Shanghai Electric is competitive in such fields as PV, CSP, wind power, CCHP, energy storage and microgrid, biomass power and industrial energy conservation and capable of providing customers with the most secure, optimized and cost-effective full-life-cycle solutions in the field of comprehensive energy.

In the field of compressors, Highly, a manufacturer of household air-conditioner compressors, presents itself as an emerging exhibitor in the hall of new energy and intelligent connected automobiles this year. Over recent years, Highly has been expanding business in the field of auto parts by cooperating with large renowned auto parts companies at home and abroad, such as Valeo, Schaeffler, John Deere, Sachs and Hubei Tri-Ring. Since 2015, dozens of models of products have been sold. The automotive castings exhibited this year have been widely used in automotive steering, braking, transmission and air conditioning systems.

In the field of robotics, by using cloud-based remote service systems of IoT and big data, Shanghai FANUC provides robots with the function of deep learning (artificial intelligence), which are part of the IoT of an automated factory, and solutions for digital management of production workshops, developing brand-new digital factories aided by automation and IT.

To sum up, continuous innovation is where Shanghai Electric is built and its core competitiveness comes from. Despite the fact that it has become a serious competitor of multinational giants in some areas, Shanghai Electric is still developing new technologies to enhance its competitiveness and future development as a world-class provider of high-end equipment.