Li Bingjun began his career in 2015 as a transmission line operator in northern China, enduring harsh conditions while digging pits, assembling towers, and stringing cables. By 2018, he had moved to maintaining substation secondary equipment—the 'nervous system' of the power grid. Colleagues called him a 'grid doctor' for his ability to manually diagnose failures.
When the AI wave surged in 2021, many of his colleagues watched from the sidelines. Li, however, sensed a revolution. He dedicated his nights and weekends to mastering MySQL, Python, and machine learning algorithms from scratch. His learning method was simple yet grueling: memorizing code by repeatedly rewriting it and comparing it with standard answers.
This persistence paid off in 2022 when he clinched first prize in a corporate AI skills competition.
The true test came when his company introduced an inspection robot that proved clumsy and unreliable. Li volunteered to become the robot's mentor. For months, he collected data, fine-tuned parameters, and guided the machine through trial and error. Today, that robot completes daily patrols in just two hours, down from seven—saving the company over 120,000 yuan (about $17,570) annually.
Now, Li spearheads an 'AI Vanguard Team.' Their flagship project is an intelligent agent powered by the State Grid's large language model. By synthesizing real-time fault data, historical records, and an expert knowledge base, the system can rapidly pinpoint outage causes, suggest alternative power routes, and automatically generate reports.
Another breakthrough: 'automatic signal verification.' Before a substation goes live, thousands of alarm signals must be checked—a traditionally tedious process. Li's team applied image recognition and digital twin technology to automate the task. In one test, they verified 175 signals in just 15 minutes with 100% accuracy.
His remarkable transition recently earned him the National May 1 Labor Medal, one of China's highest honors for workers.
"Li has an insatiable drive to learn and a genuine passion for new technology," said Wang Wei, Li's own mentor. "His growth serves as an inspiration to us all."