TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian inaugurated major electricity projects worth 13.45 trillion rials (about $320.2 million) across the country on Tuesday, in the sixth week of the ministry’s A-B-Iran program in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21).
The inaugurated projects include the national electricity network’s new dispatching center, numerous power network modification and optimization projects, as well as installing new PV systems for nomadic households.
The national electricity network’s new dispatching center which has been completed with 11.44 trillion rials (about $272.3 million) of investment is using world’s latest technologies in Energy Management System (EMS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Wide Area Management System and Control (WAMS) systems.
The National Dispatching Center manages the entire power grid, including power plants, transmission lines and substations throughout the country.
Also, according to the mega project for modification and optimization of the power network in 10,000 villages during the current year, the power grid connecting 560 villages with 70,000 households will be optimized in the first phase.
Also, based on a program for supplying nomadic households with solar power, the Energy Ministry plans to provide such households with portable PV systems. According to the mentioned program, 20,000 nomadic households will benefit from solar power through PV systems.
The first phase of the A-B-Iran program (the acronyms A and B stand for water and electricity in Persian) was initiated in the Iranian calendar year 1398 (ended on March 19, 2020), during which 220 major projects with a total investment of 335.6 trillion rials (about $7.99 billion) were put into operation across the country.
In the second phase of the program that was carried out in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20) 250 water and energy projects worth 500 trillion rials (about $11.9 billion) were inaugurated in several provinces.
The third phase of the program was officially started in early April and like the previous phases, this year, too, the Energy Ministry is planning to inaugurate numerous water and electricity projects in various provinces every week.
In the last week of the previous Iranian calendar year (which was the last week of the second phase of the A-B-Iran scheme) Ardakanian had inaugurated several new systems for improving services in the water and electricity sectors.
The mentioned systems were put into operation in various areas including resource consumption improvement, asset utilization, human resource management, financial resources management, and reforming work processes in order to create transparency and to facilitate and accelerate affairs while eliminating possible bottlenecks.
A smart system for improving the Energy Ministry’s support and emergency centers called Homa, as well as a new customer services system called Chavoush were also among the launched systems.
A mechanized network monitoring system called Sanam was also put into operation; this system is aimed at monitoring the electricity networks of various provinces in order to reduce electricity losses and improve the efficiency of the country’s power network.
