TEHRAN – Iranian power plants managed to generate over 434 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20) to register a 5.1-percent rise compared to the preceding year.

Based on the data released by Iran's Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir), some 337 billion kilowatt-hours of the mentioned figure was generated by the power plants run by the government and the private sector, and the rest was generated by power plants owned by major industries.

According to the mentioned data, the total production capacity of the country’s power plants reached 58,076 megawatts (MW) in the previous year’s peak consumption period, indicating an increase of 5.8-percent in the production capacity of the country’s thermal power plants.

The production capacity of hydropower, nuclear and renewable power plants, however, decreased by 15.2 percent to stand at 9,098 MW.

Iranian Energy Ministry managed to supply electricity to 339 rural areas across the country, increasing the number of villages with access to the electricity network to 57,759.

Tavanir data also show that the total installed capacity of the country’s power plants increased by 2.2 percent in the previous year to reach 85,313 MW.

Last year, four units of gas power plants with a total capacity of 685 MW, five units of combined cycle power plants with a capacity of 794 MW, some distributed generation gas units with a capacity of 270 MW, several renewable power plants with a total capacity of 53 MW and a hydroelectric power plant with a capacity of two MW were put into operation across Iran.

As reported, a total of 1,804 MW capacity of new power plants were added to the country’s power generation capacity during the previous year.

Back in February, Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian had said that some good investments have been made in the country’s electricity sector and the development of the country’s power industry is going to continue in the current year.

EF/MA