(Bloomberg) --
State Grid Corp. of China started construction of a 18.5 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) ultra-high voltage project that will deliver electricity to the virus-hit province of Hubei.
The move by the country's biggest power distributor is in response to the government's call to accelerate construction of major energy projects as Chinese leader Xi Jinping seeks to stabilize economic growth, State Grid said in a statement Friday.
The power line, measuring 1,137 kilometers (706 miles), runs from Yulin city in Shaanxi, one of China's top coal producing regions, to Hubei's Wuhan city. It's expected to become operational in 2021 and has a transmission capacity of 8 gigawatts.
China has been a keen adoptor of ultra-high voltage technology, which allows electricity to be transmitted across vast distances with greater efficiency than normal high voltage lines. The Shaanxi-Hubei project will boost power supply in Hubei and surrounding regions and help reduce costs, State Grid said.
The project is expected to create more than 40,000 jobs and drive 70 billion yuan of investments in related industries.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Feifei Shen in Beijing at fshen11@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ramsey Al-Rikabi at ralrikabi@bloomberg.net, Jasmine Ng
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