STATE Grid Corp of China, the power network operator that plans an initial share sale to fund expansion, increased profit by 75 percent last year as the nation's electricity consumption climbed.

Profit in 2007 was 47.1 billion yuan (US$6.5 billion), the bigger of two Chinese electricity distributors said yesterday.

Sales rose 18.9 percent to one trillion yuan, the Beijing-based company said.

China's economy, the biggest contributor to global growth, expanded 11.5 percent in the third quarter, boosting last year's electricity use by 14 percent.

The nation plans to invest at least 200 billion yuan annually to expand and upgrade its power grid network, State Grid's smaller rival China Southern Power Grid Co said a year earlier.

State Grid's 2007 power sales rose 16 percent to 1,974.2 million megawatt-hours, the company said.

It increased fixed- asset spending by 19 percent to 225.4 billion yuan, including 213 billion yuan to upgrade the transmission system, it said.