Plan to Curb State Power Consumption

State-owned buildings constitute nearly 7% of total electricity use in Iran, so the government plans to reduce consumption.

"We may ask people to moderate their consumption only when we (the government) embark on effective measures to cut back power consumption in our own buildings," Mahmoud Reza Haqifam, a deputy at Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir), was quoted as saying by ISNA on Sunday.

According to Haqifam, the government is considering a scheme that will require government organizations to cut power consumption by 10% by the end of the present fiscal year in March 2018. He did not provide details.

President Hassan Rouhani's administration approved a scheme in September, which obliges state-owned organizations to install solar panels to meet at least 20% of their electricity needs via clean energy over two years.

Prior to this scheme, a small number of state companies and organizations had reportedly installed photovoltaic panels.

Iran has pledged to increase the share of renewables in its power mix to 7,500 MW by 2030.  According to government data, installed power production capacity of renewables, including solar and wind, is approximately 240 MW, which account for just 0.3% of the country's total electricity generation capacity.

Efforts to curb power consumption nationwide comes, as the country is forecast to experience a peak demand of 58,000 megawatts this summer, up from around 53,000 MW in the previous fiscal.

In the past several years, there has been a systemic increase in power consumption during the hot summer months, as temperatures rise and homes and offices turn on their cooling systems.