Construction of a 10 megawatt solar farm in Bafq County, Yazd Province, will start soon.
To be built on 20 hectares in the central dry region, Ghadir Solar Power Plant is expected to come online by next summer, the Energy Ministry news portal Paven reported. It is designed to generate 20 million kilowatt hours of electricity per annum.
If the same amount of power was to be produced by a thermal power plant, it would annually consume at least 5 million cubic meters of natural gas.
The project is an undertaking of the private sector, the Ghadir Energy Investment Company, which, in recent years, has built solar farms in Qom and Isfahan provinces as well as Mehriz County in Yazd.
There are currently seven solar power stations in Yazd with a total capacity of 58.5 MW.
Twenty more solar projects with total capacity of 340 MW are in different stages of construction in this hot and dry region of Iran. The new units are estimated to cost $16 million and will be completed by 2022.
Yazd has the highest solar power output in the country. With 3,200 plus sunlight hours in a year, the ancient and historic city is highly suitable for harnessing solar power as it is situated near an oasis where two deserts meet, namely Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut, the latter known as one of the hottest places on earth.
Iran’s renewable industry is among the slowest-growing sectors and generates less than 1,000 MW of the total power of 84,000 MW that is produced largely by thermal plants feeding on fossil fuels.
Global Status
In the first quarter of 2020, the global use of renewable energy was 1.5% higher than in Q1 of 2019, according to International Energy Agency's recent report.
The increase was driven by a rise of about 3% in renewable electricity generation after more than 100 gigawatts of solar PV and about 60 GW of wind power projects were completed in 2019.
The IEA's Global Energy Review 2020 report said the share of renewables in global electricity generation jumped to nearly 28% in Q1 2020 from 26% in Q1 2019.
"Renewables are also resilient to lower electricity demand because they are generally dispatched before other electricity sources due to their low operating costs or regulations that give them priority," the IEA stated.
According to the IEA, multiple regions have seen record-high hourly shares of variable renewables in electricity demand during lockdowns, including Belgium, Italy, Germany, Hungary, and eastern parts of the United States.
According to the report, in the first quarter of 2020, the renewable industry faced supply chain disruptions and a slowdown in installation activity due to Covid-19 lockdown measures.
"Having paused or reduced production because of lockdowns in several key provinces, China – which accounts for over 70% of global solar PV module manufacturing – is ramping up production again," the agency highlighted.
