Iran's Electricity Production Capacity Increases to 76,000 Megawatts

The Deputy Minister of Energy in Iran announced that the country's electricity production capacity has increased to over 76,000 megawatts. This increase in capacity has also been confirmed in the official statistics of the Ministry of Energy. According to the Mehr News Agency, Sattar Mahmoudi, the Deputy Minister of Energy, stated during a conference on the relationship between the electricity industry and universities that today, various types of energy, energy baskets, energy markets, energy economics, electricity economics, changes, and developments in the electricity industry are all areas that need to be addressed separately. Based on the latest weekly statistics from the Ministry of Energy, which include data on the electricity industry up to January 13, the current electricity production capacity of the country is approximately 76,082 megawatts, showing an increase of 1,979 megawatts since the beginning of the current year. It is expected that by the end of the year, 1,034 megawatts of new power plants will be operational. If the government's target for launching new power plants, detailed in the weekly statistics from the Ministry of Energy, is achieved, the electricity production capacity will increase by more than 3,000 megawatts this year, marking the highest growth since 2012. According to official estimates, Iran needs a 5% annual growth in electricity production to meet the increasing domestic consumption, but for instance, the annual statistics from the Ministry of Energy indicate that last year's electricity production growth was about 943 megawatts, equivalent to 1.3%. During the summer of this year, with peak electricity consumption, even the capital faced power outages. According to the latest updates from the Ministry of Energy, Iran has reduced its electricity exports by 27% this year, bringing it to 6,183 million kilowatt-hours. Iran has also increased its electricity imports by 6%, reaching 3,640 million kilowatt-hours. This marks several consecutive years of increased electricity imports and decreased exports. According to the Ministry of Energy's planning, it is expected that next year 3,440 megawatts, in 2024 about 4,575 megawatts, and in 2025 more than 10,000 megawatts of new electricity production capacity will be created. Overall, Iran needs to increase its electricity production capacity to 100,000 megawatts within the next five years, with 5,000 megawatts (5%) of that coming from clean renewable sources (solar, wind, etc.). Currently, renewable sources account for only 0.32% (less than half a percent) of the country's electricity production, and this year only five megawatts have been added to the country's clean electricity production, which is a negligible figure. Iran has increased gas consumption in power plants by more than 8% this year, reaching about 52 billion cubic meters. Diesel and fuel oil consumption has decreased by 24% and 48% respectively this year, totaling about 6.5 billion liters. Iran intends to reduce liquid fuel consumption in this sector as much as possible by increasing gas supply to power plants.