Industries Keen on Generating Their Own Electricity
EghtesadOnline: Big power users, including automakers, steel complexes and cement factories who say load shedding will sound the death knell of their industry, want the government to pass regulations to help them generate their own electricity because they no longer want to be at the mercy of the state-run Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir), the Energy Ministry's deputy for economic and planning department said.
“Industries want us to pave the way for them to build their own small-scale power stations to be used during peak demand when they have to turn off all their equipment,” Mohsen Bakhtiar was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
“Talks are underway between the Energy Ministry and the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade so that the infrastructure can be developed for industries to enable them to use their own small-scale power generating plants and not be dependent on the national power grid,” he said.
“If and when heavy industrial customers are equipped with their own power generation systems, they will not need to shift consumption from peak [11 p.m. to 7 a.m.] to off-peak hours. Nor will they have to stop their business in summer when demand exceeds supply.”
Mining and manufacturing industries have borne the brunt of the recent power supply crisis, as they were forced to halt operations repeatedly in June and July because the state-run utility company could not produce sufficient electricity.
Frequent power outages in Tehran have adversely affected industrial units, taking a toll on electrical equipment and reducing efficiency.
According to IRNA, the Energy Ministry has announced the daily timetable of blackouts in the metropolis since past three weeks.
However, industrialists say unplanned outages have led to a disruption and decline in production, in addition to damaging expensive machinery.
Mohammad Amin Emami, Tehran governor general’s deputy for economic affairs, said blackouts will cause no serious harm if industrial units take precautionary measures, one of which is installing power generators.
A manufacturer at Abbasabad Industrial Town, 50 km southeast of Tehran, noted that the units are not equipped with electricity generators because it is too costly to install devices capable of supplying sufficient power.
“Most high-tech tools in factories, like furnaces, use more than 1 MW of electricity and even an emergency generator cannot produce this amount of power,” Seyyed Sajjad Hashemi, the industrial town’s head of the board of directors, said.