Azerbaijan, Iran increased electricity swap
By Nigar Abbasova
Azerbaijan and Iran have increased the swap of electricity by 2.5 times, Hamid Chitchian, Iran’s Energy Minister told Trend. He said that a new ETL (electrical transmission line) with the capacity of 330 kilowatt and length of 52 km was commissioned on August 4.
“The countries have increased exchange of electricity from 200 to 500 megawatts,” he said. He went on saying that Iran has increased its power generation by 26,500 megawatt, while the volume of investments stood at $30 billion in the past five years. Currently, production capabilities of the country in electric-power industry are approximately 75,000 megawatts.
Chitchian added that the figure is expected to reach the level of 125,000 megawatt by 2025. Generation capacity of electric energy system of Azerbaijan, which stands at 7,160 megawatt, allows the country to generate about 24 billion kilowatt-hours of electric energy per year. Moreover, the country is also able to export some 2.1 billion kilowatt-hours a year.
Earlier, Azerishiq reported that the total capacity of electrical networks of Baku have increased from 3,048 up to 6,200 megawatts in the past 10 years, while technical losses in the networks decreased from 16.9 to 7.8 percent.
By synchronizing their energy systems, Azerbaijan and Iran are expected to create the basis for the future electricity exchange with third countries like Russia and Georgia.
Iran, which is considered to be the largest exporter and importer of electricity in the Middle East currently ranks 14th in the world in terms of electricity generation. The country exports electricity to such countries as Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Earlier, the two countries concluded 11 documents covering various areas of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Iran preordaining development of bilateral relations between friendly and brotherly countries of Azerbaijan and Iran for several decades in advance. One of the agreements of significant importance includes "The Framework Agreement on the sale of electric power between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran", which stipulates diversification of electricity systems as well as establishment of a common electricity network of the region
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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova
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