STATE Grid Corp., China’s largest electricity distributor in terms of assets, plans to build a high-voltage power line linking northern China’s Ningxia region with the main electricity grid serving Beijing and Tianjin as part of efforts to help upgrade the country’s aging power grid.

Chui Bo, director of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said the project is awaiting government approval, but provincial officials hope construction of the line will begin this year. The line will see 550 kilovolts of direct current distributed west-east from the resource-rich region of Ningxia and neighboring Shaanxi and Qinghai provinces to the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan grid, Chui said.