Supplying electricity to villages in far-flung areas is on the agenda of Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir), the head of the rural electricity supply project said.
“Tavanir plans to link 400 villages to the national power network that do not have a rural code and are hard to access,” Valiollah Maslehati Sharabiani was quoted as saying by ILNA on Monday.
Noting that 30% of Iran’s population live in rural areas, Sharabiani added that the Energy Ministry aims to supply power to all villages with at least 10 households.
According to the official, some Iranian villages, such as those in north Kerman Province, are now being provided with electricity from renewable sources.
The North Kerman Electricity Distribution Company and Tavanir signed a memorandum of understanding worth 20 billion rials (over $440,000), to connect seven villages to electricity grid and provide lighting in 76 villages through renewable energy. Last month, Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said 57,000 villages are now connected to the national power network.
Plans are underway to build new power plants with a distributed generation system with a capacity of 4,000 megawatts by 2021.
Stressing that total installed capacity of distributed generation power plants stood at 800 MW in 2016, Arash Kordi, Tavanir’s managing director, said supplying electricity to villages is one of the industry’s main missions, Mehr News Agency reported.
Small-scale distributed generation power plants are suitable for remote areas owing to their fuel efficiency of more than 65-70%, compared with that of normal power plants, not exceeding 40% on average.
There is increasing interest in establishing small-scale power plants since they can be constructed with relatively lower investment compared to larger units.
Proximity to end-users, accompanied by potentially less transmission loss and energy waste, is among the merits of DG plants.
