A 5 megawatt photovoltaic power station was connected to the national power grid in Khorasan Razavi Province.
Built over 11 hectares in the deprived border town Khaf, it is the 11th solar farm in the province, Paven, the Energy Ministry news portal reported.
Costing $3 million, the plant was constructed by the state-owned Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization, aka Satba.
It will annually generate 8,000 megawatt hours of electricity and help reduce greenhouse gasses and use of water. If the same amount of energy was to be produced by a thermal power plant, 6,856 tons of carbon dioxide would burn annually.
The plant will cut consumption of 2 million cubic meters of natural gas and 2,186 cubic meters of water per annum.
Located in the northeast, Khorasan Razavi is among the largest provinces in Iran. Having a dry climate, it has sufficient solar radiation and in recent years many solar farms and rooftop photovoltaic systems have been installed there.
Launch of the new plant brings renewable capacity in the province to 43.65 MW of which 6,500 kilowatts are generated via rooftop panels.
According to Mohammad Khodabakhshi, spokesman of the Majlis Planning and Budget Commission, homes in small towns wanting to set up a rooftop station are eligible for up to $4,000 in loan that should be paid back in 5 years at 4%.
Parliament has ordered the Central Bank of Iran to allocate $416 million as loan, using banking resources and lending facilities, to help 100,000 households in region to set up 5-kilowatt solar stations.
Private companies have so far invested over 124 trillion rials ($885 million) in the renewable power expansion.
Based on a report by the Energy Ministry, over 3.13 billion kilowatt hours of electricity has been generated from alternative sources in the past 10 years, reducing water and fossil fuel consumption.
This volume of clean energy was produced from June 2009 to the present. It helped cut 2.16 million tons of greenhouse gases and 889 million cubic meters of natural gas. It also saved 689 million liters of water.
Globally there are three key enablers -- price and performance parity, grid integration and technology -- that allow renewables (solar and wind) to compete with conventional sources on price while matching their performance, according to a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.
