TEHRAN – Iranian Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian said private contractors have signed contracts with the ministry to build several renewable energy power plants with a total capacity of 11,000 megawatts (MW) across the country.
Mehrabian said Iran’s electricity demand will increase by about 5,000 MW every year, so the government must prepare the necessary plans to address the imbalance between electricity supply and demand of about 15,000 MW, IRNA reported.
According to the official, the country’s power generation capacity has been increased by more than 10,382 MW in the last three years and power plants with a total capacity of 22,000 MW are currently under construction across the country, with construction progress ranging between 10 and 95 percent.
Mehrabian estimated the country’s current power generation capacity at 93,000 MW and said that based on the Seventh National Development Plan, Iran’s power generation capacity is expected to increase to 123,000 MW in the next five years.
“Over the past three years, Iran’s electricity generation has increased by 45.7 terawatt hours, and this increase in production has made Iran the seventh largest electricity producer in the world,” he noted.
According to the Ministry of Energy, renewable energy sources currently account for almost seven percent of the country’s total electricity generation capacity.
Solar power plants account for 44 percent of the country’s total renewable capacity, while wind farms account for 40 percent and small hydroelectric plants generate 13 percent of the total renewable capacity.
Earlier this month, the Iranian Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization (SATBA) announced that Iranian renewable energy power plants have generated over 923 kilowatt hours of electricity since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19).
At the end of July, SATBA chief Mahmoud Kamani said that 600 renewable energy power plants with a total capacity of 13,500 MW were under construction across the country. With the commissioning of these power plants, the share of renewable energy in Iran’s electricity generation will reach 15 percent.
“We hope that the realization of these power plants will increase the share of renewable energy in Iranian electricity production to over 15 percent in the next two years,” said Kamani.
Earlier this month, SATBA reported that the capacity of Iran’s renewable energy power plants had reached 1,199.71 MW.
In recent years, the Iranian government has taken serious measures to accelerate the growth and development of renewable energy in the country.
The main measures to this end are diversifying financing models for renewable energy projects, increasing the ceiling on guaranteed electricity purchases, creating the opportunity to buy and sell electricity from renewable energy sources on the Green Board of the Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX), and creating the opportunity to export electricity from renewable energy sources.
The Iranian Energy Ministry has also put on the agenda the goal of increasing the capacity of the country’s renewable energy plants by 10,000 MW by the end of the current government (August 2025).
Considering that the country’s renewable energy generation capacity was around 800 MW when the current government took office in August 2021, the mentioned increase in renewable energy capacity would represent a 13-fold increase.
As early as January 2022, the Ministry of Energy and some of the country’s private contractors signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to cooperate in building new renewable power plants across the country.
EF/MA
