“Thermal power plants’ installed capacity has risen by 1,200 MW since March 2019, and will expand by a further 1.8 GW before summer sets in,” Mohsen Tarztalab was quoted as saying by IRNA Saturday.
Giving a breakdown on completed projects, he said new steam units in six combined-cycled power plants including Ferdowsi Power Plant in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi, Caspian Power Plant in northern Mazandaran Province, Sabaln and Heris Plants in East Azarbaijan, Urmia Power Station in West Azarbaijan and Shirvan Power Plant in Shirvan County, North Khorasan Province are ready to help stabilize power supply during peak hours.
Each new (steam) unit will add between 250 MW and 300 MW to the national grid.
“Operations to synchronize the new units with the national grid in underway and are being completed gradually.”
According to the official, gas units in Qeshm Power Station in Hormozgan Province and Dalahou Power Plant in Eslamabad-e-Gharb County, Kermanshah Province will be linked to the network after summer, plus 1 GW to thermal power capacity, raising output from the current (69 GW) to 70 GW.
Development projects in combined cycle power stations in Tehran, Assalouyeh (Bushehr Province) and Bandar Abbas (Hormozgan Province), Khorramabad in Lorestan Province and western Ilam Province increased daily domestic output by 1.2 GW in 2019.
Installed power generation capacity has reached 84,000 megawatts.
Referring to other measures to meet high summer demand that is predicted to surpass 60 GW, he said 50 power stations with total capacity of 70 GW have undergone routine overhaul and will join the national grid by June.
Shifting Consumption
State-run Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) has signed a contract with farmers and industry owners, based on which the latter is obliged to shift consumption from on-peak to off-peak periods.
“If they (industries and farmers) fulfill their commitment, there will no blackouts this summer because consumption will fall by at least 5,000 megawatts hours.”
Network load reached 58,000 megawatts during peak hours in the last fiscal year and is not expected to exceed 61 gigawatts this summer. The number of electricity meters has reached 36.5 million with 1 million new consumers having joined the grid since 2019.
Thermal power stations account for 80% of total power generation in Iran (69 GW) and enhancing the efficiency of such infrastructure at regular intervals is crucial, Tarztalab said, adding that by the end of the current year (March 2021), efficiency of thermal power plants will increase by 1% to reach 39%.
A total of 123 thermal power plants are operational in Iran. In thermal power generation Iran is ninth in the world.
The government has said it wants to phase out inefficient power plants, improve aging electricity infrastructure and make use of modern technology.
"Under regulations outlined by the Energy Ministry, all new power plants must have efficiency rats of 58% and above," the TPPHC boss said.
Converting conventional plants into efficient combined-cycle units has been one of the priorities of the government in recent years. A combined-cycle power plant uses both gas and steam turbines to produce up to 50% more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple cycle plant.
The waste heat from the gas turbine is sent to nearby steam turbines that also generate electricity.