A glance at Iran's power sector in last quarter
By Dalga Khatinoglu
Although Iran's power generation capacity remained unchanged, the delivered fuel to power plants increased by 2.43 percent to about 17 billion cubic meters of gas equivalent during first three months of Iran's fiscal year, started on March 21.
According to the latest weekly report, published by Iran's Energy Ministry covering a period from March 21 to June 20 (spring), Iranian power plants consumed 15.585 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas (+18.7 percent), 441 million liters of gas-oil (-71.9 percent) as well as 940 million liters of fuel oil (- 49.7 percent) during spring.
In total, the fuel usage in power sector increased by 2.45 bcm, while the power generation capacity increased 8 megawatt (MW, a unit for measuring power) to 73,157 MW during the mentioned period.
However, during spring the actual power production capacity reached 46,824 MW, while this figure was 45,426 MW during the same period in the last year.
During last fiscal year, ended on March 21, Iran added 2.87 GW to its power generation capacity while for the current year growth in production of some 2.5 GW power is planned.
Besides wasting electricity in the network, the other major
problem in Iran's power sector is the low efficiency of the
country's power plants, which stands at 37 percent.
Among 10 thermal power plants, whichare planned to become
operational during the current year, only two power plants are
combined cycle power plants with about 45 percent efficiency.
Iran has aimed to change all of gas thermal power plants with 31 percent efficiency into combined power plants (CCPP). CCPPs share currently about 25.28 percent of the country's total power generation capacity.
During the last fiscal year, Iran decreased electricity export by 14 percent to a 9.95 billion kWh (a unit for measuring energy), while its electricity import increased by 2 percent to 3.769 billion kWh.
The new statistics indicate that Iran decreased electricity power export decreased by 27 percent to 2.21 billion kWh and imports increased by 15 percent to 1.2 billion kWh during spring.
---
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz