As the mercury rises and pushes up power consumption, the failure rate of equipment used in the distribution network grows causing blackouts, deputy of operations and dispatching at Tehran Power Distribution Company said.
“Equipment breakdown is inevitable. But with timely care and maintenance the failure rates can be reduced and TPDC carries out such programs every year,” Mehr News Agency quoted Hamidreza Mansouri as saying.
According to the official, 50% of Tehran’s electricity distribution network is over 30 years old. This is while useful life of power grids at the most is 20 years. Machinery and equipment must be replaced after two decades.
The state-run Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) earlier announced that if power demand in summer surpasses 60,000 MW, load shedding and outages cannot be avoided.
Although electricity consumption is around 58,000 megawatts, power outages have been reported frequently in Tehran and other provinces since the start of summer.
In the past officials have said that there would be “no major problem” supplying that amount of electricity and higher (up to 60,000 MW). Common sense (then) has it that power outages should be due to old and faulty infrastructure like production, transmission and distribution networks.
“Uncontrolled rise in consumption also increases the breakdown rate,” Mansouri noted.
Tavanir has routinely warned homes and offices to rethink their high and rising consumption. Few if any have complied. Failing to conserve electricity means blackouts in many regions causing disruptions to livelihoods, businesses and the economy as a whole.
Maintenance, expansion optimization and upgrading the electricity network in the capital costs $10 million per annum.
The money is spent also on linking new subscribers to the network, improving old and dilapidated distribution systems and developing infrastructure because ageing equipment waste power and cause irritating outages, especially when large numbers of people universally are working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Doing away with malfunctioning equipment, supply lines, utility poles, cables and electric meters are among government measures to help reduce electricity loss.
According to official data, 1,200 km of the power distribution lines (of the total 32,000 km) in Tehran are old. Ten to 15% of the worn out grid is renovated annually. It is reported that 1,200 electrical substations (out of 18,000) in the sprawling capital need renovation.
Ageing networks in three provinces, namely Tehran, Alborz and Qom increase the vulnerability of the grid, utilities have warned.
Twenty percent of the national grid’s generation and transmission facilities and 25% of the total subscribers (18 million in the three provinces) are handled by the Tehran Regional Electricity Company.
The number of electricity meters in Iran (37 million) increases by 1 million every year. As and when average temperature goes up by 1 degree Celsius, power consumption jumps by almost 1,500 MW.
