TEHRAN – Iran’s largest solar power plant located in central Tehran is nearing completion and will soon come online as part of a sweeping national push to expand renewable energy, a senior official said.

Farhad Shabihi, managing director of Tehran Regional Electricity Company, told IRNA that the solar plant—being built on the company’s premises—is advancing at a “remarkable pace” and is designed to boost the stability of the capital’s power grid.

The project is part of a larger government initiative to develop 1,000 solar plants, each with a three-megawatt capacity, across the country. According to Shabihi, construction of the 3.6-megawatt facility in Tehran began just one day after the official groundbreaking ceremony on Feb. 6 and has since moved swiftly into the operational phase.

Shabihi said the team completed land delivery to contractors, soil testing, and cable route design by the end of March 2025. The first shipment of solar panels arrived on April 12. “This marks a new record in solar plant execution,” he said.

The plant is equipped with bifacial dual-glass N-type solar modules with a capacity of 595 watts per panel. Shabihi emphasized that the panels are domestically produced, underscoring the project's contribution to local technology development.

"Over six full panel rows have already been installed. Excavation and foundation work across the entire site is finished, and concrete casting has been completed," he said.

Work at the site is ongoing around the clock, with minimal disruption to the nearby administrative facilities in the Saadat Abad district. “The scale and speed of this operation have delivered peak efficiency in record time,” he added.

In a move to enhance energy efficiency, Shabihi said the company is in talks with a battery storage firm to install Tehran’s first industrial solar energy storage unit as part of the plant. If implemented, the battery system would serve as a pilot for future solar-plus-storage developments in the capital.

Despite a brief interruption following Israel’s attack on Iran earlier this year, which delayed panel installation for several days, “a major portion of the panels have now been installed, and equipment testing will commence shortly,” he noted.

The Tehran project is one of 1,000 distributed solar plants planned under Iran’s national 3,000-megawatt renewable energy initiative. The projects are being executed as complete packages by the Power Development Organization of Iran in partnership with contractors.

“We’re implementing this pilot in the heart of Tehran’s distribution network with rapid, low-cost grid integration,” said Shabihi. “Our goal goes beyond power generation—it’s about quickly reducing imbalances in the grid and easing pressure on the national electricity network. And we’re seeing results in under six months.”

EF/MA