Construction on a 500-kilovolt project that will transfer electricity from southwest China's Yunnan province to south China's Guangdong province was begun Thursday.

With an estimated total cost of 2 billion yuan (about 240 million US dollars), the construction of Tianguang Power Grid is expected to be completed by June of next year, said Yuan Maozhen, director of board of the China Southern Power Grid.

The 879-km-long power grid will travel across Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong.

After the completion, the grid will transfer 12 million kilowatts of electricity to Guangdong every year, helping solve the province's chronic power shortage.

Given the country's severe imbalance in power generating capacity, the Chinese government started a massive "West-to-East Power Transfer" project in 2000. Every year, electricity is sent from big power generators such as Qinghai, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and Shaanxi to eastern big energy consumers Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.

According to plan, during the 11th Five-Year-Plan period (2006-2010), Yuannan and Guizhou provinces and Guangxi Zhuang AutonomousRegion will transfer 10.3 million kilowatt of electricity to Guangdong.