China Southern Power Grid (CSG), the country's second largest electricity distributor, will invest 71 billion yuan (about 10.38 billion U.S. dollars) this year in its 20 key projects, the English newspaper China Daily reported Tuesday.

    The total amount of injection includes 62.2-billion-yuan to reconstruct urban grids and upgrade grid infrastructure in rural areas, and 8.8 billion yuan to construct new power grids.

    The money would partly go to 11 major grid expansion projects, including improvements for a west-east power transmission project and the 500-kV Guishan Mountain-Cangjiang River-Shuixiang electricity transmission project, according to the company's website.

    CSG said the investment would also go to construction of existing key projects, including the 800-kV Yunnan-Guangdong high voltage direct current transmission project and construction of the Huizhou Xuneng power station.

    Electricity transmission capacity of western regions to Guangdong province would be raised to 19.8 million kV after the completion of improvements on the west-east power transmission project. The Yunnan-Guangdong project will further lift the capacity to 21.2 million kV.

    The company would increase investment by 30 percent to 102.5 billion yuan this year, the newspaper quoted CSG chairman Yuan Maozhen as saying.