China's power consumption in the first half of this year will see an annual increase of 5.5 to 6.5 percent, the China Electricity Council said on Saturday.

For the whole year, consump-tion will rise by 6.5 to 8.5 per-cent.

Wang Zhixuan, secretary of the council, told a news briefing on Saturday that economic growth will increase after the first quarter of this year, resulting in greater power consumption.

Between 2.51 trillion kilo-watt-hours and 2.53 trillion kWhs are expected to be used in the first half of the year, and this is predicted to reach up to 5.38 tril-lion kWhs over the entire year.