The nation's largest electricity grid builder, the State Grid Corp of China (SGCC), made a pre-tax profit of 29.67 billion yuan (US$3.65 billion) in the first half of this year, as China's demand for power continues to soar.

Profits were up 34.5 percent up compared with the same period last year, Wang Min, spokesman of SGCC said at a press conference yesterday in Beijing.

The company collected sales revenue of 327.1 billion yuan (US$40 billion) from January to June, a year-on-year increase of 19.9 percent, achieved by selling 13.8 percent more electricity at 696.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kwhs).

"Improved management, reduced costs, an intensified effort to expand the nation's power transmission lines, as well as China's surging demand for power, are behind the improvement of the company's performance in the first six months of the year," Wang yesterday said.

Wang Yonggan, secretary-general of the China Electricity Council, earlier predicted China's total electricity consumption for this year to increase 13.5 percent year on year to 2,456 billion kwhs.

And more transmission facilities will consequently be needed to transmit electricity from the resource-rich areas such as China's western provinces, to the economically developed coastal areas in the east.

By the end of June, SGCC had made fixed asset investments of 43.9 billion yuan (US$5.4 billion), 6.3 billion yuan (US$776 million) more than the same period last year.

Some 91.3 percent of the investment, a total of 40.1 billion yuan (US$4.9 billion) has been poured into construction in, and the upgrading of the electricity transmission network.

According to company sources, 6,502 kilometres of transmission lines capable of handling over 220 kilovolts, had gone on stream during the six-month period, thereby benefiting most of the country's power consumers.

With the advanced transmission capacity, SGCC accordingly transmitted 16 percent more electricity across different regions and provinces year-on-year to reach 32 billion kwhs in the first half.

SGCC recently completed a major power transmission project to link the northwest and central China grids, which marks a significant step forward in connecting the six provincial grids managed by SGCC and China Southern Grid (CSG).

The newly completed projects include a converter station based in Henan Province linking the central China and northwestern grids, as well as an upgrade to the existing Gezhouba-Nanqiao 500 kilovolt transmission line, which transmits electricity from Sichuan to Shanghai.

In an effort to further enhance the country's electricity grid capacity, SGCC have also initiated work into an ultra high-voltage transmission network.

A major pilot project to transmit electricity from the coal-rich Shaanxi Province to the central Hubei Province is well under way, said the company.

The feasibility study has been finished, and major approval procedures have been passed, with construction of the pilot infrastructure project to begin by the end of this year.

(China Daily July 27, 2005)