ZAOZHUANG, China, Sept. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The traditional manual detection is likely to be made towards the phase A in the lower layer; while the intelligent airborne detection is actually made towards the phase A in the upper layer. This represents the comparison result for the discharge hidden danger of the No. 23 tower insulator of the 10 kV cement plant line in the 110 kV Tendong Substation outgoing line by different detection methods, yet the accurate judgment brought by the innovative application of unmanned aerial vehicle airborne ultrasonic partial discharge detection technology.

By the end of August 12, the application of the self-developed UAV airborne ultrasonic partial discharge detection technology by State Grid Zaozhuang Power Supply Company has reached a year, during which, a total of 450 unmanned aerial vehicles were detected, 63 hidden hazards of partial discharge were identified, leading to a reduction of 37 equipment failures, the reduction of the power distribution network fault outage rate by 68%, and improving the power supply reliability rate to 99.982%.

According to Zhang Jianhua, Director of the Operation and Maintenance Department of Zaozhuang Power Supply Company, this technology is initiated in China, rewriting the tradition and passivity of power distribution network partial discharge fault investigation by hearing voice manually over a long time, and leaping into the era of intelligent imaging diagnosis. As the capillaries of the large power grid connecting thousands of households, the current average height of the distribution network tower is 15 to 18 meters, and both the insulators and cable heads on the top of these towers are important detection parts, the improvement in traditional manual detection methods is badly needed. To this end, they, by boldly integrating UAV with local imaging inspection technology, used the advantages of UAV multi-angle close-range inspection to carry out partial discharge inspection, innovated and broadened the technical dimension of aerial patrol, took the lead in enabling accurate collection of voiceprint local release data, and completed demonstration of putting the technology into practical application.

Innovation is not as simple as one plus one, the technology research took a year. Since June 2022, by means of hardware structure transformation and multi-algorithm fusion optimization, they have successively overcome a range of problems such as the inability of traditionally partial discharge inspection to lock the discharge part, the partial discharge detection of UAV propeller noise interference, and the geographical conditions of inspection, and enabled the high-quality and efficient partial discharge imaging detection of the power distribution network. In July 2023, the technology was put into trial use, and later in December of the same year, it was inspected and accepted by the State Grid Shandong Electric Power Company.

During the trial use, the Zao Zhuang Power Supply Company, by giving full play to its advantages as being directly managed and operated by State Grid Corporation of China, coordinated 162 power distribution network lines, and allocated 35 UAVs for the seven power supply centers affiliated to it in a unified manner, and trained 26 drone pilots. Beyond that, it repeatedly carried out technical verification and optimization in the trial use, reducing the time to inspect the base tower 1 from 25 minutes to 15 minutes, indicating an efficiency improvement by 1.8 times compared to the traditional manual inspection, making the accuracy reach 100%.

Instead of revolving around the tower, staring at the equipment for a long time, and being anxious but unable to do anything, Li Yanlin, the specialist staff from Operation and Maintenance Department of Zaozhuang Power Supply Company expressed the pleasure that thanks to the intelligent airborne detection technology, the partial discharge failures found in the power distribution network could be eliminated as soon as they are identified, leading to the great transformation of the operation and maintenance of distribution network from “eliminating present problems” to “preventing them before they are present”, and the formation of a sound situation of intelligent operation and maintenance.

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SOURCE State Grid Zaozhuang Power Supply Company

Five-year, multi-billion-dollar strategic partnership to drive AI transformation for more than 650 thousand businesses and 17 million consumers across Korea 

Korea-customized AI model collaboration, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o through Azure OpenAI Service, to enable emerging AI use cases for different industry verticals   

KT and Microsoft collaborate on Korean sovereign cloud solution development and market launch to drive cloud and AI innovation for the public sector and regulated industries 

KT will launch a new AX-specialized service company delivering Microsoft-powered AI transformation service to enterprise customers  

KT and Microsoft to further partner for AI ecosystem development and joint R&D, through initiatives including an AX co-innovation center and a Microsoft Research collaboration  

SEOUL, South Korea and REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — KT Corporation and Microsoft today unveiled a five-year multibillion-dollar partnership, which includes an investment from KT in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud technologies, and IT business, and a resource commitment from Microsoft in the areas of infrastructure and people. Through this partnership, the companies will propel KT’s AI and ICT (AICT) transformation, and accelerate the advancement of AI services and innovation in Korea. 

Following the agreement in June, KT and Microsoft have engaged in ongoing discussions to strengthen ties and outline key areas of collaboration and support. This strategic partnership is expected to drive progress in five pivotal areas: Development of customized AI solutions for Korea, delivering Korean sovereign cloud solutions, the establishment of an AI transformation (AX)-specialized service company, AI R&D capabilities advancement across Korea and KT’s AICT transformation. 

Developing Customized AI Solutions for Korea
KT and Microsoft will engage in engineering collaboration to develop a customized version of GPT-4o and explore developing a customized version of Microsoft’s Phi family of small language models, with KT’s extensive set of high-quality data around Korean culture and industries. These models will be used for both KT’s internal and consumer-facing applications such as customer service chatbots, and also for building industry-specific AI solutions for B2B customers across industry verticals to best serve the needs of Korean consumers and businesses. KT will leverage Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Studio to develop custom AI agents aimed at differentiating customer experiences. KT plans to expand the development and utilization of KT-custom AI agents not only for consumer use cases in education, healthcare, and in-vehicle infotainment, but also for business applications. Importantly, Microsoft and KT will collaborate closely on further evolving KT’s Responsible AI framework to help ensure the delivery of safe AI services for the Korea market. 

“We are delighted with the partnership between KT and Microsoft, which presents a valuable opportunity to enhance our digital competitiveness,” said Shinhan Bank, a leading financial group in Korea. “By utilizing the KT GPT model, specialized in Korean language and financial services, we aim to deliver innovative AI-driven services to the domestic financial consumers.” 

Delivering Korean sovereign cloud solutions
KT and Microsoft are partnering to develop and launch Secure Public Cloud services, which is KT’s sovereign cloud solution built on Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty for Korean-regulated industries. KT will drive its Secure Public Cloud business with support from Microsoft, enabling public sector and regulated industry customers to use new platform capabilities for securing data and workloads, providing access to the latest cloud and AI features available on Azure and helping them comply with local privacy and regulatory requirements. 

Accelerating AI transformation through AX-Specialized service company 
KT will establish a new AX-specialized service company to help businesses in Korea transform with the latest AI innovation. The forthcoming KT’s AX-specialized service company will provide advanced Microsoft Cloud and AI expertise and solutions to the Korean market, with plans to expand to broader markets, including ASEAN. Microsoft will support this initiative over the next three years with professional consulting resources to build core practices and capabilities for the new entity. 

Advancing AI R&D capabilities across Korea
Microsoft will support KT in establishing a co-innovation center aimed at accelerating Microsoft technology-driven AI transformation in the Korean market. This center will help businesses build, develop and prototype new AI solutions with Microsoft technology and KT’s AI specialists. Furthermore, KT will invest in fostering new AI startups and developing a partner ecosystem to support nationwide AI transformation. Microsoft will support this initiative by providing Azure credits and technical expertise. For the future of technology collaboration, KT and Microsoft Research (MSR)’s research leaders and business visionaries will explore high-impact research initiatives in network modernization, AI for healthcare, and industry AI adoption and further collaborate with leading academic institutions partnering with KT. 

Accelerating KT’s AICT Transformation with organization-wide upskilling
KT will migrate and modernize existing IT workloads including mission-critical applications, to Microsoft Azure while developing a new data platform and AI services powered by Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service. This collaboration will enhance KT’s overall IT infrastructure, making it more agile, resilient, and secure, driving innovation and elevating the customer experience through intelligent automation. KT also intends to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot, for all KT employees and developers to supercharge productivity of the entire business. Microsoft will assist KT in equipping more than 19,000 employees with cloud and AI skills and enabling more than 5,800 AX specialists to lead a successful transformation through KT group-wide skilling and co-engineering support. 

“The partnership with Microsoft presents a pivotal opportunity, not only for technological collaboration but also for expanding Korea’s AI foundation and driving transformative innovation across industries and daily life,” said KT CEO Young-Shub Kim. “Leveraging this strategic partnership, we aim to rapidly evolve into an AICT company with unparalleled competitiveness in domestic and global markets.”  

“Our strategic partnership brings together KT’s industry expertise with the power of our entire tech stack, from Azure AI to Microsoft 365 Copilot,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. “Together, we will help accelerate the AI transformation of Korean organizations across the private and public sector and build new AI-powered experiences for millions of consumers.”

About KT Corporation
KT Corporation is a leading company in Korea’s telecommunications and ICT industries. By building an AX innovation platform based on differentiated AI, Big Data and Cloud competitiveness, and offering it with outstanding network infrastructure, KT is driving evolution into an AICT (AI and ICT) company.

About Microsoft 
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. 

For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rapidresponse@we-worldwide.com

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SOURCE Microsoft Asia

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The two crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission launched at 1:17 p.m. EDT Saturday, for a science expedition aboard the International Space Station. This is the first human spaceflight mission launched from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and the agency’s ninth commercial crew rotation mission to the space station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Dragon spacecraft into orbit carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The spacecraft will dock autonomously to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at approximately 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, where Hague and Gorbunov will join Expedition 72 for a five-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory.

“This mission required a lot of operational and planning flexibility. I congratulate the entire team on a successful launch today, and godspeed to Nick and Aleksandr as they make their way to the space station,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Our NASA wizards and our commercial and international partners have shown once again the success that comes from working together and adapting to changing circumstances without sacrificing the safe and professional operations of the International Space Station.”

During Dragon’s flight, SpaceX will monitor a series of automatic spacecraft maneuvers from its mission control center in Hawthorne, California. NASA will monitor space station operations throughout the flight from the Mission Control Center at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA will provide live coverage of rendezvous, docking, and hatch opening, beginning at 3:30 p.m., Sept. 29, on NASA+ and the agency’s website. NASA also will broadcast the crew welcome ceremony once Hague and Gorbunov are aboard the orbital outpost. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.

The duo will join the space station’s Expedition 72 crew of NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Don Pettit, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexander Grebenkin, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner. The number of crew aboard the space station will increase to 11 for a short time until Crew-8 members Barratt, Dominick, Epps, and Grebenkin depart the space station in early October.

The crewmates will conduct more than 200 scientific investigations, including blood clotting studies, moisture effects on plants grown in space, and vision changes in astronauts during their mission. Following their stay aboard the space station, Hague and Gorbunov will be joined by Williams and Wilmore to return to Earth in February 2025.

With this mission, NASA continues to maximize the use of the orbiting laboratory, where people have lived and worked continuously for more than 23 years, testing technologies, performing science, and developing the skills needed to operate future commercial destinations in low Earth orbit and explore farther from Earth. Research conducted at the space station benefits people on Earth and paves the way for future long-duration missions to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis campaign, and beyond.

More about Crew-9

Hague is the commander of Crew-9 and is making his second trip to the orbital outpost since his selection as an astronaut in 2013. He will serve as a mission specialist during Expedition 72/73 aboard the space station. Follow @AstroHague on X and Instagram.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov is flying on his first mission. He will serve as a flight engineer during Expeditions 72/73.

Learn more about NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission and the agency’s Commercial Crew Program at:

https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

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SOURCE NASA