Programs underway to prevent power outage in peak consumption period
Programs underway to prevent power outage in peak consumption period
The rising trend of electricity consumption in Iran has created serious concerns about power outage in the summer peak period.

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The rising trend of electricity consumption in Iran has created serious concerns about power outage in the summer peak period.

On Monday, Mohammad-Hassan Motevalizadeh, the managing director of Iran’s Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir), warned, “This year, we will have a difficult peak period”, and called for the people’s cooperation so that this period can be passed without outages.

Mentioning three major factors creating some severe condition in terms of power supply in this year, the official last week explained, “This year, we are facing three issues. First, there was a very severe drought during which we saw a reduction in the water supply of the country’s hydropower plants to less than half. In this way, we lose the generation of about 4,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from hydropower sources.”

On the other hand, due to the intense premature heat, the cooling equipment entered the consumption circuit earlier than usual, he mentioned.

“And a new problem we are facing this year is the power consumption of illegal cryptocurrency mining units”, Motevalizadeh added.

Although every year nearly 3,000 MW is added to the country’s power generation capacity, the reduction in the rainfalls and the decline in the water storage behind the dams has reduced the electricity generation offsetting the added capacity.

In the past decade, constant temperature rising and the significant decrease of rainfalls across Iran have put the country in a hard situation regarding electricity supply during peak consumption periods.

In this regard, the Energy Ministry has been following new strategies in recent years to manage the consumption and lessen the electricity losses in the national grid.

In late July 2020, Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said that his ministry was considering new incentive packages for low-consuming households and industrial electricity subscribers.

He also said that two programs were prepared for high-consuming subscribers so that by implementing these plans, these subscribers would also join the low-consumer group.

The official described the first program as a training course to teach consumption management methods with the help of knowledge-based companies and start-ups, and said: “Start-up companies will be formed in this field and will help us optimize the consumption of high-consuming subscribers by providing simple solutions.”

The second plan was to install solar panels on the roofs of high-consuming subscribers’ houses so that such subscribers would meet their electricity needs by installing these PV stations.

Meanwhile, the managing director of Tavanir has recently announced that his company has defined 40 programs for maintaining electricity supply and preventing power outages during the hot season peak consumption period.

Motevalizadeh underlined early increase in the temperature and water shortage for hydropower plants as the most important challenges this year, saying: “These issues have forced the early implementation of preventive programs and in this regard, 40 programs have been prepared by Tavanir, and will be implemented across the country.”

Based on the mentioned programs, the responsibilities of various ministries and specialized parent companies have been determined and assigned, the official said.

He noted that the ceiling for incentive packages allocated to each province has also been determined and the governorates of the provinces have been notified in this regard.

“Government organizations and entities are the first priority for implementing consumption management programs, and in this regard monitoring and optimization of air conditioning and lighting systems in such offices should be seriously pursued”, he stressed.