The long-awaited Firouzkouh 400-kilovolt substation has been inaugurated, said managing director of Tehran Regional Electricity Company.
Seyyed Zaman Hosseini added that the substation, located in Firouzkouh, Tehran Province, will stabilize power supply in greater Tehran during the peak hours.
According to Hosseini, the project was implemented at a cost of $13.5 million, IRNA reported.
"The new substation will integrate the output of three major power plants, namely Shahid Salimi Power Plant, Damavand Combined Cycle Power Plant and Semnan Combined Cycle Plant, and will supply electricity to more than 500,000 subscribers in and around Tehran and Alborz provinces," he said. The official noted that the substation's capacity is 400 megavolt amperes.
"The current demand of the region stands at 90 MVA, which means the surplus can be used in industrial, agricultural and tourism projects," he said.
"The project was designed and implemented by Iranian experts and only 8% of the equipment were imported."
According to the official, in such projects, 400 kilovolts of electricity are first converted to 230 kV and then to 63 kV, whereas in the current project 400 kV were directly converted to 63 kV and supplied to subscribers as result of which energy wastage decreases dramatically.
Hosseini announced that the development of 69 other projects has been approved.
Power Subscribers Exceed 32m
"More than 2.9 million new subscribers have joined the national power grid in the past two years, bringing the total number of power subscribers in Iran to more than 32 million," Houshang Falahatian, deputy energy minister, said on Sunday.
He said Iran's installed power generation capacity has reached 74,000 megawatts and plans have been made to upgrade the aging electrical equipment in Tehran, ISNA reported.
According to reports, power consumption in Iran is three times higher than the global average and subscribers in residential and industrial sectors consume an estimated 200,000 million kilowatt-hours annually, or nearly two-thirds of electricity produced in Iran.
Falahatian added that more than 500 new energy projects will go underway across Iran in the current week, while 3,870 projects are near completion at a cost of $80 million.
Iran’s electricity industry ranks 14th in the world and first in the Middle East in terms of electricity generation. It is the largest exporter and importer of electricity in the Middle East and exports electricity to Armenia, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan. Azerbaijan and Armenia supply electricity to Iran under a swap agreement. Iran’s electricity industry ranks 14th in the world and first in the Middle East in terms of electricity generation with an installed power generation capacity of 74,000 MW.
