Construction of a second submarine power cable to be laid under the Qiongzhou Strait in southern China will start before the end of the 2015, helping ease a power shortage in Hainan province.

The 3.3 billion yuan ($532.25 million) cable will be built parallel to a first 32-kilometer link, the longest of its kind in the world which was put into operation in 2009 to carry excess capacity from the provincial grids of Guangdong to the nearby Island province.

The new cable, to be completed by 2017, will link the Gangcheng transformer substation in Guangdong's Zhanjiang to the Fushan transformer substation in Hainan's Chengmai county, and transmit about 300,000 kilowatts of power daily, and have a total transmission capacity of 600,000 kW.