Tavanir Urges Prudent Power Consumption

Hardwiring the culture of judicious electricity consumption in domestic consumers can help the country make up for part of its electricity shortages in the hot season, a deputy manager at Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) said.

"Instead of allocating substantial budgets to build power plants, subscribers ought to be encouraged to consume power more prudently," Mahmoudreza Haqifam was quoted as saying by ISNA on Thursday.

"Tavanir has managed to curb power consumption in peaks hours by 4,000 megawatts in the last two months by adopting measures, such as raising awareness on the need for cutting down consumption in residential and industrial sectors."

According to the official, regardless of the Energy Ministry's measures to expand power production capacity and infrastructure, "as long as the culture of prudent energy consumption is not ingrained among people, supply cuts cannot be avoided, especially in peak hours".

"The national grid has not been expanded enough in the last few years due to operational and financial constraints," Haqifam said, adding that the power distribution network was largely deprived of investments in the last seven years and that is why the infrastructure has remained underdeveloped.

The official said electricity generation costs, including the cost for generation and transmission, stands roughly at 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, yet it is sold to subscribers at 2 cents per kWh and the difference has imposed a massive debt on the ministry.

Referring to the high rate of energy consumption in Iran that is reportedly 14 times that of Japan, Haqifam said if effective measures are not taken to restrain and reverse the current pattern of overuse and waste, "we will face formidable challenges to generate energy for future generations".