Construction starts on world's highest power transmission in Tibet

LHASA - Construction started Thursday on the world's highest power transmission project in southwest China's Tibet autonomous region.

The 16.2 billion yuan ($2.35 billion) project includes the construction or upgrade of 16 110-kv substations and transmission lines, with a total length of 2,738 km. The average altitude is 3,750 meters, with the biggest altitude gap of 494 meters between two adjacent transmission towers.

The project also includes power supply facilities for the railway between Lhasa, the regional capital, and Nyingchi. The Lhasa-Nyingchi section of the Sichuan-Tibet railway began construction in December 2014.

Shu Yinbiao, chairman of the State Grid, said the project would ensure stable power supply and assist with the transmission of Tibet's clean energy to other places.

Currently, the backbone grids in Tibet are not all interconnected, resulting in unstable operation.

The complicated grid project will be completed in 2018.

From 2011 to 2015, the State Grid spent 27 billion yuan building key power projects, connecting Tibet's grids to those of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and enabling 480,000 people in Tibet to have power.