STATE Grid Corp of China has agreed to buy Australian power assets from Singapore Power Ltd, in its second purchase Down Under in just half a year as part of its global expansion drive.

It will buy a 60 percent stake in SPI (Australia) Assets Pty Ltd, or SPIAA, an energy infrastructure company now wholly owned by Singapore Power. State Grid will also buy a 19.9 percent stake in listed company SP AusNet from Singapore Power for A$824 million (US$810 million), the companies announced yesterday.

The deal value for closely-held SPIAA was not disclosed. SPIAA had A$1.7 billion in sales for the year ending on March 31, 2012.

SP AusNet operates and owns more than A$10 billion of electricity and gas distribution assets in the state of Victoria. The Singapore- and Australia-listed company was 51 percent owned by Singapore Power before State Grid's purchase. It will remain publicly listed.

Both SPIAA and SP AusNet are operating from Australia's rich southeast region and present good quality assets and low-risk returns, analysts say.

State Grid is seeking to quadruple its overseas assets by 2020 to as much as US$50 billion, President Liu Zhenya said last year, because overseas assets yield higher returns than domestic operations. State Grid in November agreed to buy a 41.1 percent stake in ElectraNet, which operates South Australia's main electricity transmission grid.