Factories in Ningbo, a major manufacturing hub in eastern China, are increasingly turning to rooftop solar panels to meet rising electricity demand, prompting upgrades to the city’s power grid.

Ningbo now has more than 10 million kilowatts of installed rooftop photovoltaic capacity, equivalent to about 5,000 standard football fields. The panels not only help manufacturers reduce energy costs, but also allow surplus electricity to be fed into the grid.

The rapid growth of distributed solar generation has also prompted State Grid Ningbo Power Supply Company to improve grid management. Technicians are using real-time data and weather forecasts to predict solar power output and power flows, raising forecasting accuracy to more than 96 percent.

The upgrades reflect a broader push to build stronger new-type power grids as China’s renewable energy capacity continues to expand.

The effort forms part of the infrastructure development priorities under China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, which calls for traditional infrastructure to be upgraded alongside new networks for power, computing, communications, logistics and water.