“Selling electricity to neighboring states has experienced a downward trend over the past 30 days, decreasing from 3,000 megawatts per day to zero,” Davoud Farokhzad was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Nonetheless, power import from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia has risen to reach 700 MW per day and cannot increase further because the much-needed infrastructure to transfer electricity from neighboring countries to Iran is not developed enough, he noted.
“Less than 300 MW of power were imported to Iran per day last summer when network load reached 58 gigawatts,” he said and noted that things have changed and the widening gap between production (55,000 MW) and demand (66,000 MW) has put transmission substations and distribution networks under huge pressure, due to which explosions are reported in some substations.
Parts of Tehran Pars district in Tehran went off the power grid on Wednesday as scorching heat and rising demand for electricity in the area took a toll on electrical equipment and some transformers and substations broke down.
"Some transformers and substations in the capital have sustained enormous electrical load in the past few days. A transformer caught fire but the blaze was put out soon."
Giving a break down on power consumption, he noted that industries, households, agro sector and commercial units comprise 38%, 32%, 18% and 7% of the total electricity use in Iran respectively. Public places like parks, walkways and bus stations account for the rest.
Iran’s southern cities are experiencing a 51-degree Celsius temperature and the capital Tehran’s temperature has reached 39 degrees Celsius.