Iran ahead of many industrial nations on power grid reliability: Spokesman
Iran’s energy ministry says the electricity network in the country has become one of the best in the world in terms of reliability by avoiding any blackout for the past 16 years.
A ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that the performance of the electricity system in Iran was now much better than that of the United States and at least 12 major European countries and several others.
Mostafa Rajabi said avoiding blackouts over a long period of time was a sign that Iran’s electricity sector had significantly improved its reliability over the years consistent with plans to increase output and to diversify generation sources.
He said around 3,250 megawatts (MW) of new generation capacity had been launched across the country since March 2019 on top of extensive repair works carried out in power plants with 100,000 MW of production capacity.
He said electricity transmission network in Iran had expanded by 1,600 kilometers while capacity for power transformers had increased by 10,000 mega-volt ampere (MVA) over the same period.
The official said the energy ministry had managed to pay around $1 billion to private contractors for debt settlements despite strained government finances that have come as a result of the American 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 a main electricity exporter to countries of the region in recent years as actual production has exceeded 300 terawatt hours (TWh) which corresponds to less than a half of the current installed capacity in the 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 potentials in the sector.
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