TEHRAN- An official with Iran’s Thermal Power Plants Holding Company (TPPH) announced that upgrading the gas units of the country’s thermal power plants has added 464 megawatts (MW) to their electricity generation capacity, IRNA reported.

According to Esmail Namazi, the director-general of TPPH Research and Construction Office, the implementation of projects to improve the practical capacity of thermal power plants’ gas units has increased the total capacity of such power plants by 1,565 MW in the past five years.

He noted that the generation capacity of the country’s thermal power plants has already increased by 2,000 MW by implementing overall improvement and modernization projects in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 20).

"These projects have been carried out with an investment of 4.27 trillion rials (about $101.6 million) while the construction of a new power plant with 1,000 MW of capacity requires about 15 trillion rials (about $357.142 million) of investment," he said.

Currently, a total of 478 thermal power plants are operating throughout Iran which includes both gas power plants and combined cycle plants.

Over two-thirds of Iran’s thermal power plants are owned and operated by the country’s private sector and private owners are currently generating nearly 67 percent of Iran’s thermal power.

Iran’s total power generation capacity currently stands at about 85,000 MW, more than 90 percent of which is supplied by thermal power plants.

Earlier in September, Hamidreza Azimi, the deputy managing director for planning affairs in TPPH, had announced that 1,239 MW was added to the generation capacity of the country’s thermal power plants since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year.

According to the data released by the Energy Ministry, from August 2013 up to August 2019, a total of 69 thermal power plants were constructed across the country to add 8,991 MW to the capacity of the country’s thermal electricity output.

EF/MA