In May 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015, and reimposed Washington’s sanctions on Tehran.

Mostafa Rajabi-Mashhadi, the spokesman of the Iranian Energy Ministry, added on Tuesday that domestic electricity consumption declined by 3,874 MW during the peak season (summer) in the current year through effective, observable and reliable management and daily coordination between the dispatching center and Iranian electricity distribution companies, IRNA reported.

He noted that thanks to collective efforts by those engaged in the domestic power sector, the national electricity network has experienced no extensive blackout for the past 16 consecutive years, thus becoming one of the best in the world in terms of reliability.

Avoiding blackouts over a long period of time is a sign that Iran’s electricity sector has significantly improved its reliability over the years, consistent with plans to increase output and to diversify generation sources, he added.

The performance of the electricity system in Iran is now much better than those in the US and at least 12 major European countries and several others, the Energy Ministry spokesman said.

Rajabi-Mashhadi said in addition since March 2019, power plant with a capacity to generate 100,000 MW of electricity has been repaired in Iran and the national transmission network has been equipped with 10,000 megavolt amperes of power transformers.

The official noted that since March 2019, the Energy Ministry has managed to pay around $1 billion to private contractors for debt settlements despite strained government finances that have come as a result of US sanctions.

Iran has a massive power industry with hundreds of power plants, many of them of the efficient combined cycle type, providing reliable and affordable electricity to households and industries across the country.

Iran has also become the main electricity exporter to countries of the region in recent years as actual production has exceeded 300 terawatt-hours which corresponds to less than half of the current installed capacity in Iranian power plants.

The industry has major plans for switching to renewables as experts believe a current one-percent share of the total output from solar and wind farms and other sources does not match Iran’s potential in the sector.

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“Currently, the country’s electricity grid is completely stable, electricity exports are being ongoing normally and there is no electricity supply cut due to shortage,” he said.
In the past decade, constant temperature rising and significant decrease of rainfalls across Iran has put the country in a hard situation regarding electricity supply during peak consumption periods.

So in the past few years power outages have been imposed in big cities to balance the power generation and consumption in such timespans.

Last year, the volume of water behind the country’s dams went so down that electricity output from hydropower plants fell to a decade low. The situation was worsen by a jump in electricity consumption due to a heat-wave that blanketed the country during summer and consequently led to a huge gap between actual power generation and consumption.

This year, however, the situation has changed drastically and heavy precipitations in spring almost completely filled the country’s dams and the country’s hydropower plants are said to be on full potential and compensate last year’s shortages.

In March, Homayoun Haeri, the deputy minister of energy for electricity affairs, said Iranian power plants are set to produce at least 51 gigawatts (GW) of electricity during the peak hours of consumption in summer.

“The production record high of 47,000 megawatts (47GW) which was achieved in last summer should not only be maintained this year but we need to increase the number to at least 51,000 megawatts (51GW),” Haeri said.

Earlier this month, Head of Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company (IWPC) Behrouz Moradi said that the electricity output of the country’s hydroelectric power plants is expected to reach 20,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) in the first half of the current Iranian calendar year (to end on September 22), four times more than the figure for last year’s same period.

Iran’s current power generation capacity stands at about 81 GW of which the share of hydroelectric power stands at 19.87 percent.

In late May, the Energy Ministry announced that it plans to inaugurate 22 new units with a total capacity of 3,933 MW in the current [Iranian calendar] year along with upgrading and increasing the efficiency of existing power plants to add another 461 MW of new capacity.

The post ‘3000MW added to Iran’s power generation capacity since March’ appeared first on Iran News Daily.