A verbatim breakdown of the 46 minute meeting in Guangzhou: the claimed PLC architecture, the company history, the overseas trail, the Bulgarian structure, the agent model without exclusivity and 46 questions, not one of which was fully closed.
The meeting took place on 24 September 2026 at 15:01 local time, duration 46 minutes, place: the company's head office and demonstration hall in Guangzhou. The format was exploratory: a technical presentation of the technology, a tour of the 展厅 (showroom) and a promise to send materials in English. No commercial parameter was discussed at the meeting.
Substance: the meeting delivered three things. First: a clear and internally consistent technical picture of their solution (Power Line Communication, a data bus over existing power wiring, 主机 as the gateway, a cloud with local deployment capability). Second: an honest, unvarnished description of their overseas model, including the plain statement that overseas business is entrusted to a Bulgarian company that claims all of Europe. Third: six unresolved points, four of which require a written answer before any money of ours is committed.
The main conclusion of the meeting is not technical but territorial. Our target region was named by them as already taken by a partner they themselves describe as more ambitious. This is not a minor detail of the negotiation, it is a fact that changes the structure of any further work.
There is no exclusivity, there are no volume requirements right now, but thresholds will be introduced later, and “the agency will go to whoever performs better”. We invest in a market without rights to that market. This is the central problem of the whole breakdown.
The company was founded in 2006, and its head office is in Guangzhou, Panyu district. The public materials they themselves name as an introductory source are the site web.jinpeng.net, the service mailbox service@jinpengtech.com and the phone number 400-809-1318. Branches and representative offices: Beijing, Nanjing (which also hosts a research institute with South East University), Guangxi and Hong Kong. The Hong Kong legal entity was confirmed at the meeting in a separate remark: «我们有香港公司» (we have a Hong Kong company).
The history splits into two periods, and this matters for judging what they can and cannot do. Before 2019 the company worked on digital top-ups and payment operations and, according to their own materials, moved volumes above 100 billion yuan a year at the peak of that period. In 2019 came the pivot towards power line communication and smart buildings. In 2023 the brand 云影智能 (Yunying Smart) appeared, and in 2024 the rollout of that brand to the market began.
There are three voices on the recording. 发言人2 (Speaker 2) is the technical and solutions lead at Jinpeng, the person who runs the technical part, answers protocol questions and at the end of the meeting sets out the roles himself: «我这边主要是负责技术方案这块商务的话» (my part is mainly the technical solution, commercial matters are separate). He also names the recipient for commercial matters directly: 李总. This means any price approach to this man is pointless, he does not decide commercial matters.
发言人1 (Speaker 1) is the Chinese speaking partner on Dmitry's side, the man who brought us to the meeting. He is an engineer by training (electrical and computer engineering), and he is the one who formulates most of the “right” questions during the conversation: about bandwidth, about compatibility, about the nature of the manufacturing, about the structure of the company.
发言人3 (Speaker 3) is Dmitry, he speaks English, mostly in short confirmations. At the meeting he does not ask extended questions, and that is understandable: the language of the conversation is Chinese and the exchange runs through a remark and its translation. His substantive contribution comes at the end of the meeting, the remark about the pilot: «until the pilot is just a bit, but it could be working in the whole Europe. So not only europe, we can consider yeah» (for now the pilot is a small part, but it could work across the whole of Europe, not only in Europe).
The person who understands the product better than anyone in the room has no authority over price or territory. Every commercial promise made at this meeting is not a promise of the company.
The abbreviation PLC here means Power Line Communication, that is, data transmission over the power line, and not Programmable Logic Controller. This is the first thing to pin down, because confusion over this abbreviation can spoil the whole analysis: these are two different markets, two different certification logics and two different buyers.
A few hundred metres and mid-band. This means: one site is one building or one campus, not a city and not a distributed network. Any business model built on links between sites is technically unproven.
Our internal materials contain an assessment document that refers to Beijing Jinpeng Xinlei Electric Co., Ltd., founded in 2011 in Beijing, a manufacturer of switchgear, packaged transformer substations and automation panels. Only the name matches. In that document the abbreviation PLC was read as Programmable Logic Controller, and the whole analysis is built on the industrial controller market.
Only market benchmarks can be taken from that document, and even then with a caveat: the global industrial controller market is valued at 17.0 billion dollars in 2025 with a forecast of 25.26 billion by 2034 and average annual growth of about 4.47 percent, the Chinese automation market in 2024 at about 280 billion yuan, and the Chinese PLC market at about 2.4 billion dollars in 2023. These are benchmarks for industrial automation. They have no direct bearing on Power Line Communication.
Not a single conclusion about Jinpeng can be taken from that same document, not a single valuation of its business, not a single recommendation on the partnership model: all of them refer to a different company. We state this plainly so that no one on the team later cites “the analysis of Jinpeng already done” as grounds.
The part3 report on the PLC industry describes Beijing Jinpeng Xinlei Electric of Beijing (switchgear, founded 2011). The company at this meeting is 广东金朋科技有限公司, Guangzhou, 2006, Power Line Communication. Only the name matches. Any statement about “Jinpeng as a systems integrator of switchboard equipment” refers to a different company and does not hold here.
The architecture was broken down to the mechanics at the meeting, and this is the strongest part of the presentation. The top layer is 主机, which is also the gateway. The technical lead describes it as the core of the system, around which everything else is assembled: «这里边内置模组的话意思就是这个东西跟我们的主机就能进行的一个POC通信... 这个就是我们最核心的东西» (an embedded module means the device talks to our host over PLC, this is the very core).
The host ships in several variants, including a version with a four inch screen. It supports two modes: remote through the cloud, and local. The second mode was stated plainly and is meant for sites where an external connection is not acceptable.
The lower layer, and organisationally this is the most interesting part, is given over to third parties. The remark is direct: «这个就是可以自行去采购的第三方... 我们不会每一个第三方产品，就是这个我们也没必要生产» (these are third parties you can purchase from yourselves, we are not obliged to manufacture every third party product). That is, lamps, appliances, valves, lighting elements and sensors are bought outside Jinpeng, while communication, the host and the system logic stay inside the company.
There is only one entry point into the system: the host. This means that OEM, if it is possible at all, has to touch the host and the app, not just a sticker on a third party item. It also means that leaving the partnership means losing the whole system, not one SKU.
The main claimed advantage is framed as the ability to work over wiring that is already in place: «可以复用原有的电力线... 不需要重新去布线» (you can reuse the existing power line, there is no need to re-lay cables). This is the one argument they consistently set against competitors, and it is also the basis of the slogan about turning every wire into a network cable.
The second claimed advantage is applicability to sites after fit-out. The logic is this: the competitors they name, including Huawei, require a dedicated communication line, which means they can only be installed at the pre-fit-out stage.
Third: three-phase operation and reverse addressing are claimed, that is, the ability to address a device and read data from it without laying additional control cores. Fourth: AES-128 encryption at the level of data exchange. Fifth: self-healing topology, that is, resilience when one node drops out, which for PLC is a standard property of mesh logic but requires testing on the specific wiring.
| Claimed advantage | What confirms it today | How to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Work over existing wiring | Words at the meeting, retrofit cases | A trial site in our territory, our own electrician |
| Applicability after fit-out | Their comparison with Huawei | A site with genuinely old wiring, not a new demo hall |
| Three-phase mode | Description of the architecture | A test on the European 400 V network, not the Chinese one |
| Reverse addressing of nodes | Demo hall, device statistics | Export of addresses and response times from their platform |
| AES-128 | A claim without protocols | A written request for the key schedule and the threat model |
| Self-healing | Not tested | A test with a node deliberately disconnected |
Each of the five advantages is verified either on a site or by a document. Neither was produced at the meeting. Until the first site, all five remain vendor claims.
Beijing, the largest delivered site: more than six thousand nodes in one building. The wording is direct: «我们现在最多做到已经交付的项目，在北京有六千多» (the largest of the delivered projects, in Beijing, more than six thousand). That is not a city total, it is one site, and it confirms the claimed ability to deploy at scale within a single building.
Guangzhou, Yuexiu district, golf club: more than two thousand devices split across many zones. The comment came with a demonstration of the energy panel and the alarm log: «这都是真实案例，这不是开玩笑，这两千多个节点» (these are real cases, these two thousand plus nodes).
The demonstration hall where we were standing: 209 devices, 208 of them online, consumption 11 kWh at the moment of the demo, breakdown by year, month, day and week, statistics by load type (air conditioning, lighting), an alarm log for current leakage and overload.
Beijing with six thousand nodes in one building and the golf club with two thousand devices are proven ability to work at the scale of a building. For us as an integrator this is the most useful part of the meeting, because it removes the question “can they do this at all”.
The overseas trail is assembled from scattered remarks, and it deserves to be laid out separately, because it is the only basis for treating the company as export capable. The following destinations were named: South East Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia), Africa (Kenya), France, Bulgaria, Dubai at the negotiation stage.
Dubai was mentioned as talks about a five or six star hotel, with the caveat that the resources there belong to the Bulgarian structure. This is not a shipment, it is an intention.
The trail proves that shipments outside China exist and that the product physically works outside the Chinese grid at the level of “broadly without problems”. The trail does not prove a single number: not volume, not price, not the number of projects in a given year. The question “how many overseas projects in 2025, as a figure” remained unanswered, and that was expected.
The model is set out in one phrase: «我们更偏向于找当地的集成商» (we lean more towards finding local integrators). The reasoning given is technical rather than commercial: the product is a system, it requires supply, installation and service, so a pure reseller does not fit.
The form of cooperation offered is the softest possible: «你就拿我们做代理就行了» (just act as our agents). Then come three clarifications that matter more than the form itself.
A national agency is possible “later”, the terms are undefined, no assessment criterion is named, and our target region is already promised to the Bulgarian structure. Non-commitment favours us today and endangers us in a year, once the investment has been made.
The part of the meeting devoted to the Bulgarian structure is the main finding of this breakdown. It surfaced spontaneously, in answer to a question about overseas experience, and was described in more detail than was required.
The mechanics: Jinpeng, together with a local integrator, set up an overseas company in Bulgaria, with their contribution structured as technology, that is, equity for the technology rather than for money. The partner's motivation was also named: he works in energy and energy saving, not only in smart buildings, and plans to sell the energy platform to government bodies.
These two remarks together give the full picture. The first means the territory we care about is already taken by a partner to whom Jinpeng delegates its overseas business in full. The second explains why that partner is so confident: behind him stands a figure with administrative weight, and this same fact makes him less accommodating on dividing territory.
What in this arrangement is useful to us and what is dangerous. Useful: the Bulgarian company does not have our skills geography, they will not necessarily want the small projects we are ready to take on, and our technical partner network in Poland is not subordinate to them. Dangerous: any investment in certification and in reputation on the European market creates an asset they already have a claim to, documented in writing, while we have nothing.
Direct quotation: “he wants to do all of Europe” plus “we delegate overseas business to them in general”. Our target region is taken, and this must be closed in writing before the first euro is spent on certification.
On certification the answer was a direct admission of incompleteness, and that is better than an evasive answer.
Four facts follow from this phrase. First: CE does not cover the whole range, and these are their own words. Second: the legal entity to which CE is issued is not named. Third: no EMC protocols were produced. Fourth: on 110 volts and 60 hertz all that was said is that the product supports a wide voltage, and it was never said that a certified version for the US or Japanese market exists.
For Europe a separate conversation is needed about who pays for certification, whose legal entity it is issued to and who owns the result. Certifying someone else's product at your own expense and ending up with an asset in their name is the worst of the possible options.
The statement about voltage came as the key argument for export suitability: «产品的电压是支持一个宽电压，就从110到220，这个其实都支持» (the product voltage supports a wide range, from 110 to 220, all of that is supported). It is on this phrase that the conclusion “所以我们就可以去做海外市场” (so we can go to overseas markets) is built.
There are two gaps here. The first is technical: a range of 110 to 220 volts does not cover the European three-phase network with a line voltage of about 400 volts, and that is precisely the norm for commercial buildings in Poland and Germany. The second is regulatory: a wide input range on the power supply does not equal a product certified for a specific frequency and specific safety requirements. 60 hertz was never mentioned at the meeting.
| Parameter | Their statement | What is required in Europe | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voltage | 110 to 220 V, wide range | 230 V phase, 400 V line | upper limit not covered |
| Frequency | not discussed | 50 Hz | not confirmed |
| Three-phase operation | claimed as an advantage | mandatory for buildings | test not shown |
| Wiring | work over the existing line | ring circuit in the UK | not verified |
Whether a 110-120 V 60 Hz version physically exists, certified as a product and not as a claimed range. Without it the US market is closed entirely, and with it a second sales vector appears.
This topic was entirely absent from the meeting. The abbreviations G3-PLC and PRIME were never spoken, the question about conflict with metering devices was not asked, and in the record of the meeting it stayed outside the discussion. This is the most underrated risk of the whole direction, and it needs to be explained separately.
European grid operators make mass use of power line communication inside the electricity meters themselves. G3-PLC and PRIME are the two dominant narrowband and mid-band power line standards for smart meters. They operate in the same physical channel as a building management system, that is, over the same wire.
If the signal from the management system interferes with the meter, the consequences fall the wrong way for us. The operator records a metering quality violation, the site is not accepted into service, and the party at fault becomes the equipment supplier, that is, us. Fixing such a conflict is not just a matter of swapping a device: the spectrum has to change, or the topology, or some functions have to be dropped.
No tests for coexistence with metering devices were claimed, no failures due to interference were mentioned. In Europe this is the key technical risk of the project: the site may not be accepted, and liability will fall on the supplier, not on the maker of the protocol.
Architecturally the answer was good and given without evasion. Today the cloud is hosted in China on Alibaba Cloud, but the stack is portable: «我们这个云是可以下放到当地的服务器上面的，我们可以做本地部署» (our cloud can be pushed down to local servers, we can do local deployment). The motivation was named unprompted: government buildings and defence-related sites with their own servers.
For Europe an important distinction follows from this. Technically, local deployment closes the question of data residency: if the server sits at the customer's premises, the data does not leave the jurisdiction. Legally, three questions stay open: who is the controller of the personal data, on what basis it is processed and who is liable for a breach. An energy platform carries consumption by zone and by schedule, and that is indirectly personal data when housing is involved.
Whether servers exist outside China, who is the data controller under local deployment, whose accounts sit in the app stores and whether a build can be issued under our brand. These three points determine whether we own the product or rent access to it.
The question about manufacturing was put by our partner directly, and the answer came back short and honest: «委托生产，没有生产» (contract manufacturing, we have no production of our own). The company is responsible for development, the protocol and the module, while the factory housing is assembled by a contractor.
The second half of the answer matters for understanding their real asset: they design and manufacture the modules and sell them to third parties. That is, the value of the company is the protocol, the module and the host, not a factory and not a warehouse range.
Write “developer of the technology and protocol, contract manufacturing” and do not call the company a factory. Otherwise we repeat the mistake of inflated claims that we already caught on the website.
Where their advantage is real and where it is overstated. Real: work over existing wiring on retrofit sites, where laying a new line costs more than the equipment itself. Overstated: replacing KNX in a typical European project, where the specification was written by the designer around KNX and where certified devices with a long track record are required.
Three conclusions follow for us. First: our margin is formed by works and service, not by a mark-up on hardware, and this lowers our sensitivity to their price list. Second: we need an engineering partner with installation experience, because we have to cover half of the project cost with something. Third: a floor of one million means the portfolio has to be built from large sites, not from private apartments.
No export price list, no discount grid, no MOQ, no payment terms, no Incoterms. The conversation was technical and exploratory, and the entire economics stayed outside the room, with 李总.
Our value to them was stated at the meeting by them, and it is worth recording, because our negotiating position depends on it. The technical lead stresses twice that what is needed is not a salesperson but an integrator with engineering experience, capable of taking a site through to handover.
We bring three things. First: territory, Poland and access to European projects where they have neither a channel nor a track record. Second: integrator connections and a partner with engineering experience in electrical installation and project management, which is exactly what, by their own account, a system product requires. Third: a willingness to work with small sites as entry points, which does not pay off for a large partner but suits us fine.
They need us as an executor in a territory where they have nothing, and as a risk filter. That is not a weak position, but it only becomes a strong one with the territory secured in writing.
At the same time, our written application to the payment service on compliance declares a closed list of markets: the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, with a direct statement that there are no clients outside these ten markets and that payments through third countries are not accepted. In the analysis of the previous refusal this list was named as the way to close the question: do not mention the excluded jurisdictions at all, not even to deny them.
The problem arises at the seam. A spoken conversation about the Belarusian and Russian contour is not itself a transaction and breaks nothing. But if projects, payments or shipments through those jurisdictions appear, our written statement to the bank will turn out to be inaccurate, and such a discrepancy is discovered quickly.
Either the Belarusian and Russian markets are outside our working scheme and this is recorded within the team, or the statement to the payment service has to change before operations begin, not after. The owner makes the decision, but the discrepancy has to be recorded: the report on the previous refusal says plainly that a false statement is worse than a refusal.
Below is the list of topics that did not come up at the meeting at all, not once, in any form. These are not gaps in the recording, they are an absence of substance.
| # | Flag | What was said verbatim | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bulgaria claims all of Europe | he wants to do all of Europe, we entrust overseas business to them | written agreement on territory before investment |
| 2 | There is no exclusivity and there will not be one soon | thresholds later, the agency goes to whoever performs better | secure a specific site, not a country |
| 3 | CE does not cover everything | part of the range passed CE, the rest we will close later | a list of models and the legal entity for each certificate |
| 4 | This is not a factory | 委托生产, we have no production of our own | exact wording in the supplier register |
| 5 | Belarus and Russia in the spoken conversation | partner network and family in the Belarusian energy sector | do not move into the payment scheme without the owner's decision |
| 6 | Not one number on economics | prices, MOQ, Incoterms, payments never came up | a letter to 李总 as the next step |
All other risks are settled by documents and tests. The territory risk is settled only by contract, and until it is settled any investment in certification becomes a gift to a partner we did not choose.
Option A: ignore. Not replying, closing the topic, returning to it when free time appears. Risk: the Bulgarian structure establishes itself in Europe first, and entry becomes more expensive.
Option B: agent without exclusivity. Working in the format they proposed, running one pilot site, but securing that site in writing together with a right of first refusal over the lead funnel in our territory. Minimal investment, certification is not ours to pay for.
Option C: pilot with the right secured in writing. The same as B, but with a contract: a specific country, a specific volume, a specific site, a term, a procedure for transferring the agency. It requires their consent, which was not given at the meeting.
Option D: decline. The technology is rejected, the topic is closed. Risk: losing the only candidate found so far in this retrofit niche.
| Criterion | A ignore | B agent | C pilot with rights | D decline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Our money at entry | 0 | minimal | medium, the site only | 0 |
| Protection of territory | none | none | written | not required |
| Time to first site | none | high | medium | none |
| Who pays for certification | nobody | not us | under contract, more likely them | not applicable |
| Risk of conflict with Bulgaria | high | high | removed by contract | absent |
| Recommendation | none | yes, as a transition | yes, as the goal | only if the letter comes back empty |
Act on B immediately and press for C at the second step. In practice this means: one small site of ours, that site secured in writing, and only after it is delivered a conversation about country and terms. Do not start certification at our own expense before that.
Do not start EU certification, do not publish a case study carrying their name without written consent, do not build an integration with another party's building management system and do not promise a client compatibility with the operator's meters before a written answer.
| Term | Trigger for stopping | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Day 60 | No export price list, MOQ or Incoterms | Stop the preparation, draft a letter closing the topic |
| Day 60 | No written confirmation on territory | Do not invest in certification or in samples |
| Day 90 | The pilot site is not agreed or not started | Move the partnership into passive mode |
| Day 90 | No answers on 400 V and metering devices | Do not sign off on any client promise |
They protect us not from Jinpeng but from our own inertia. An exploratory meeting is pleasant to hold and demands no decisions, so without an external deadline it can repeat indefinitely without progress.
The addressee was identified at the meeting by the hosts themselves: the technical lead said plainly that commercial matters sit with 李总. We write this week, briefly, one paragraph per point.
Three commercial points. First: the English presentation, specifications, cases and a list of certificates with the legal entity named for each one, including the EMC protocols. Second: an export price list with the discount grid, MOQ per item and Incoterms, plus a separate OEM price under our brand. Third: a written clarification on territory, how our Poland and Europe relate to the Bulgarian structure that claims all of Europe.
Three technical questions are addressed to the technical lead personally. First: compatibility tests with the PLC meters of grid operators under the G3-PLC and PRIME standards, and operation on the European 400 volt three-phase network. Second: which exact models hold a valid CE and what the remaining part of the range includes. Third: local deployment to meet GDPR requirements, where the servers are hosted and who is the data controller.
No ultimatums and no threats. Soft in form and hard in substance: if the three named documents exist, we start with samples; if not, we keep talking as acquaintances and stop spending each other's resources.
If an honest answer to the first question leads to “no, we do not need this”, then the right course of action is D, and the rest of this document becomes material for a future reassessment. That is an acceptable and cheap outcome.
Statuses: an answer means a substantive answer at the meeting, partial means the topic was touched on without confirmation by figures or documents, no answer means the topic did not come up at all.
| # | Question | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who is the exporter under the 报关单 (customs declaration), they or the agent | no answer |
| 2 | Whether 进出口权 (import and export rights) exist, who exports | no answer |
| 3 | Who receives the 13 percent VAT refund | no answer |
| 4 | Invoicing in foreign currency, payment from a foreign legal entity | no answer |
| 5 | Incoterms, port, freight and insurance | no answer |
| 6 | 报关单 (customs declaration) or bill of lading for the last shipment | no answer |
| 7 | HS code for the host and the panels | no answer |
| 8 | Export price list separate from the domestic one | no answer |
| 9 | Discount grid and MOQ per item | no answer |
| 10 | FOB price for 500 and 2000 units | no answer |
| 11 | Validity of the price if components rise | no answer |
| 12 | OEM price and what it includes | no answer |
| 13 | Lead time for the first and repeat orders | no answer |
| 14 | Payment terms for the first order | no answer |
| 15 | Countries of shipment and the names of distributors | partial |
| 16 | Channel price in Kenya | no answer |
| 17 | Exclusivity by country, term, volume | partial |
| 18 | Consequences of failing to meet the volume | no answer |
| 19 | A written refusal to sell into our territory | no answer |
| 20 | Handover of leads in our territory | no answer |
| 21 | Closed markets and prohibited items | no answer |
| 22 | Which certificates exist today | partial |
| 23 | Whose legal entity the certificates are issued to | no answer |
| 24 | 110-120 V 60 Hz version for the US and Japan | partial |
| 25 | 220-240 V 50 Hz and the 400 V three-phase network | partial |
| 26 | British ring circuit | no answer |
| 27 | Who pays for certification in our country | no answer |
| 28 | Duties and local approvals in the target country | no answer |
| 29 | Real field range and speed | partial |
| 30 | Coexistence with G3-PLC and PRIME | no answer |
| 31 | Multiple transformers and long lines | no answer |
| 32 | Servers outside China, GDPR, residency | partial |
| 33 | Own server and own app, whose accounts they are | partial |
| 34 | SDK, open protocol, integration with BMS and KNX | partial |
| 35 | Matter and Thread in the roadmap | no answer |
| 36 | MTBF, warranty, return rate | no answer |
| 37 | Imported components in the product | no answer |
| 38 | Rights to the firmware and protocol in a custom build | no answer |
| 39 | Warranty abroad and chargeable logistics | no answer |
| 40 | Spare parts warehouse outside China | no answer |
| 41 | Remote firmware updates and who controls them | no answer |
| 42 | Training and support for the first overseas project | partial |
| 43 | Why they wanted this meeting and what they want | partial |
| 44 | What they have already tried abroad and why it did not work | no answer |
| 45 | What would have made them turn us down | no answer |
| 46 | How they will measure the success of the partnership in a year | no answer |
| Term | Explanation and what it means for us |
|---|---|
| PLC (Power Line Communication) | Data transmission over the power line. Not to be confused with Programmable Logic Controller, that is a different market and a different product. |
| 主机 | The host, the central device of the system, their key product. It appears in the interfaces as gateway. |
| 网关 | Gateway. For them this is effectively the same device as 主机, in several models, with support for remote and local modes. |
| KNX | The European bus standard for building management. Their own competitive benchmark, which they describe as expensive. |
| G3-PLC | A power line communication standard used in the electricity meters of grid operators, including in Europe. Risk of conflict with our system. |
| PRIME | The second widespread European power line communication standard for metering devices. The same risk. |
| 委托生产 | Contract manufacturing. Jinpeng has no factory of its own, they are responsible for the protocol and the module. |
| 报关单 | The Chinese customs declaration. The document confirming the fact of export and the name of the exporter. |
| 出口退税 | VAT refund on export, up to 13 percent. A direct price difference and a subject of negotiation. |
| CE | The European conformity marking. In their case it is claimed only in part, with no legal entity named and no EMC protocols. |
| 专精特新 | A Chinese status for a specialised innovative enterprise. It brings subsidies, but it is not a product certification. |
| 技术入股 | A contribution to share capital made with technology rather than money. This is exactly how the Bulgarian structure is set up. |
A few hours after the meeting the company sent the promised pack: JINPENG_Technology_Smart_PLC_Solutions_and_Case_Studies20260703.pdf, dated 3 July 2026. Seventy four pages, thirteen chapters by vertical, forty six case blocks, English only. Below is the read on substance, not on volume.
It is a sales brochure of solutions and case studies, not an export pack. The promised material arrived, but it contains no certification document, no technical specification and no commercial figure.
| Site | Scale | Nodes | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Wall Motor research and development building, Baoding | 119,500 sq m, single floor above 10,000 sq m | 220 hosts, 10,000+ nodes | June 2026 |
| China Institute of Building Standard Design and Research, Beijing | 8 floors, 10,000 sq m, carbon platform | per floor energy collection | January and November 2025 |
| China Real Estate Association, Beijing | 1,500 sq m, national cooperation agreement | 320 | December 2024 |
| Kunlun Group, Nanning | 10,000 sq m, astronomical clock street lighting | 805 | August 2025 |
| Dikenni Fashion, Guangzhou | floors 21 and 31, over 2,000 sq m | 208, stated 99.99% link stability | April 2026 |
| Jinpeng headquarters | 1,000 sq m, 30 percent energy reduction | about 1,100 | June 2023 |
| Macau, Galaxy | two model rooms, completed in two days | guest rooms | November 2024 |
Macau was presented in conversation as a major site. In the material it is two model rooms. The gap between the brand on the cover and the actual supplied scope is what has to be checked case by case.
Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, MRANTI GITP. A technology showroom inside a national innovation centre, part of the fully AI enabled park programme.
Kenya, Konza Technopolis, Smart City Experience Center. An experience centre completed in May 2024, part of the Kenya Vision 2030 national programme.
Both sites are demonstration spaces, not operating systems in production. The company's overseas record is two showrooms from 2024. Asking us to fund certification and build a market on that export record means moving the risk onto our side.
Cambodia, described in the meeting as a residential development of more than one hundred apartments, is not mentioned once in the material. Kenya was called a Huawei campus in the meeting and is Konza Technopolis here. Both gaps must be closed in writing, because both were used in the conversation as proof of export capability.
Certification: zero. No CE, no RoHS, no ISO, no certificate numbers, no test reports. The meeting claimed partial CE; the brochure does not even claim that.
Technical specification: zero. No voltage, no 50 or 60 Hz frequency, no bandwidth, no distance in metres, no reference to IEEE 1901, no G3-PLC or PRIME, no MTBF, no warranty term. The claimed 110 to 220 volt range is supported by not one line.
Commercial terms: zero. No price, no MOQ, no Incoterms, no OEM terms, no export terms, no tariff codes.
Operation over existing wiring, including aged wiring, and suitability for single wire circuits without a neutral. This appears in the wooden club case in Guangzhou and matches what was said at the meeting. Everything else technical remains at the level of words.
First. The technology and the depth of Chinese delivery are seriously confirmed: two hundred and twenty hosts and more than ten thousand nodes on a single site, a retrofit for a research institute inside the State Grid structure, a national cooperation agreement with the real estate association.
Second. The overseas base is weak: two showrooms, both from 2024.
Third. Of our forty six questions the pack closed not one commercial, certification or technical question. It closed one question: what the company can do inside China, and it can do a lot.
Fourth, and practical. The letter to the commercial lead now has an exact wording: you sent materials, the materials contain no certificates and no specifications, so send exactly those, by list.
The material confirmed there is something worth buying. It also showed there is nothing yet to decide on: not one document on which a decision can be based. The conversation moves from interesting to send the paperwork, and until that paperwork arrives there must be no investment on our side.
ARLI membership: the notes from the workshop
One site of yours, measured, with the price for the work in the same document
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