The computational power that drives artificial intelligence is also a major consumer of energy, with the electricity costs for a single large model training run potentially reaching millions. When this most energy-intensive industry meets Zhangjiakou's exceptionally clean energy, the city's solution is to power computing with green electricity and use the computing industry to consume that green power locally, forging a distinctive development path of "computing-power synergy."
As the nation's only national-level renewable energy demonstration zone, Zhangjiakou holds a strategic position in the national computing landscape due to its abundant wind and solar resources and cool climate. As AI models move from training to inference, the demand for computing power is rising exponentially, making energy consumption a critical bottleneck for the industry's sustainable growth. The concept of "computing-power synergy" was formally introduced in the 2026 State Council Government Work Report, which called for implementing new infrastructure projects like ultra-large-scale intelligent computing clusters and computing-power synergy.
From Energy Exporter to Synergistic Hub: An Unreplicable Green Foundation
Zhangjiakou is the most important clean energy base for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. By the end of 2025, its cumulative installed renewable energy capacity had surpassed 45 million kilowatts, accounting for over 88% of its total power capacity, solidifying its position as the nation's top city for non-hydro renewable energy. Its wind power capacity leads among all prefecture-level cities. This energy endowment is being redefined for its strategic value in the computing industry competition. The advantage lies in the cost reduction of approximately 0.1 yuan per kilowatt-hour after direct green power connection, translating to annual operational savings of tens of millions for data centers with monthly consumption in the millions of kilowatt-hours—a cost advantage rooted in Zhangjiakou's unique resources, climate, and policy benefits.
From One-Way Supply to Mutual Benefit: Making Computing-Power Synergy a Reality
Integrating green power with computing is more complex than simply connecting a power line. The intermittent nature of wind and solar power must be reconciled with the stable operation data centers require. At the Heying Data (Huailai) Technology Industrial Park, real-time output curves for wind and solar power are dynamically matched with computing load curves from data center racks. When clean energy is abundant, computing tasks run at full capacity; when it fluctuates, energy storage projects supply power. This "source-grid-load-storage" intelligent scheduling enables precise, symbiotic adaptation. This model, where computing tasks actively follow the rhythm of green power supply, represents the true form of computing-power synergy and has been recognized as a national best practice.
Several major computing center projects in the city have been approved as green power direct connection demonstrations. At the institutional level, Zhangjiakou has pioneered mechanisms for direct green power connection and multi-party transactions, promoting new models of aggregated green power supply through long-term power purchase agreements between data centers and renewable energy generators.
From Policy Mandate to Market Choice: The Leading Effect of Green Benchmarks
The drive for green transformation is shifting from policy constraints to market-driven cost-benefit choices. Leading companies are adopting advanced technologies to maximize efficiency. For instance, the Tencent Huailai East Garden Cloud Data Center maintains an annual average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of around 1.20. The Alibaba Zhangbei Cloud Computing Miaotan Data Center, a dual-award recipient for national green data center and low-carbon典型案例, achieves a PUE below 1.20 and utilizes waste heat from its servers for district heating. These examples illustrate how green transformation has evolved from meeting requirements to becoming an active strategy for enhancing core competitiveness.
From Energy Hub to Computing Hub: The Future Vision for Green Computing
Looking ahead, Zhangjiakou's blueprint is clear. At the infrastructure level, the city aims to build a national-level ultra-large-scale green computing cluster, ensuring new computing centers use over 80% green power. It will implement plans to multiply computing capacity and deepen computing-power synergy projects, guiding national computing projects to concentrate in Zhangjiakou to form the country's largest green, high-end intelligent computing cluster.
On the technological frontier, the Zhangbei Flexible DC Grid project, with its 12 world-first achievements, provides a "Chinese solution" to the global challenge of large-scale renewable integration. Supporting projects like the Shangyi 1.4-million-kilowatt pumped storage power station and rapidly expanding energy storage capacity are crucial for stability. Computing centers are evolving from storing energy to storing computing power, locating computation closer to the power source for efficient conversion.
At the network level, Zhangjiakou will leverage the national integrated computing network monitoring platform to coordinate resources, manage monitoring, and operate scheduling as a unified system. It will gradually achieve interconnectivity with other national computing hub clusters, playing multiple roles in the national network by supplying real-time computing power for the Beijing region, demonstrating computing-power synergy, and facilitating east-west computing coordination.
Green electricity generates computing power, and computing power fuels development. As "Zhangbei's wind" now powers not just Beijing's lights but also the high-speed operation of the "digital brains" across the region and the nation, Zhangjiakou has transformed from an ecological shield into a vital stronghold for the synergistic development of the digital industry and green energy.