Thermal power stations are operating at full capacity and their output has grown by 14% in the first four months of the current fiscal year (started March 21) compared with the corresponding period of last year, the head of Technical Affairs Department of the Thermal Power Plants Holding Company said.
“Thermal power plants generated 106 million megawatt hours of electricity in the 114-day period. The figure barely stood at 93 million megawatt hours a year ago,” Esmaeil Namazi was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
The whole national power grid, including power plants, transmission substations and distribution networks, is functioning efficiently to avoid outages, he added.
Namazi said about 123 thermal power stations are operational, of which 20 were built over six years.
With installed capacity of 64 gigawatts, Iran ranks ninth in terms of thermal power capacity in the world.
Total power capacity in the world is 6,628 GW, of which 4,017 GW are using fossil fuels.
In Iran, steam-powered, gas-powered and combined-cycle plants comprise 80% of the total electricity production of 80 GW, he added.
China, the US, India, Japan, Russia, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia have larger thermal capacity and are ranked first to eighth respectively.
According to the official, steam, gas and combined-cycle units constitute 16 GW, 25 GW and 23 GW of the thermal stations respectively.
THPCC oversees dozens of fossil fuel power plants with an installed capacity of over 64,000 MW, which constitute the bulk of Iran's electricity demand.
Iran's power industry is 14th in the world in terms of output. However, most of the electricity is produced by plants using fossil fuels. This is causing concern among climate activists and environmentalists who have been crying hoarse for effective measures by the government to expedite the move toward renewables.
Iran’s electricity consumption reached an unprecedented record of 66,000 megawatts last Monday at 1 p.m., up 25% (12,000 MW) compared with the same time and day of a year ago.
