TEHRAN- Iran’s deputy energy minister for electricity affairs announced that power consumption in the country has risen 7,000-8,000 megawatts (MW) since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21), as compared to the same period of time in the past year.

“We have started a warm year, Homayoun Haeri said, adding, “In the first two months of this year, the average positive temperature was four or five degrees, so the use of cooling equipment was started earlier and due to the drought, agricultural water wells were used earlier. Due to the decrease in rainfall, we will experience a reduction of about 3,000 to 3,200 MW of electricity generation from hydropower plants.”

“We hope that with the help of the people and the executive bodies, especially the governorates, we will spend the summer with the least difficulty and cover the shortage of electricity generation. We predict peak load consumption this summer to reach more than 60,000 MW”, the official stated.

The rising trend of electricity consumption in Iran has created serious concerns about power outage in the summer peak period.

On Monday, Mohammad-Hassan Motevalizadeh, the managing director of Iran’s Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir), warned, “This year, we will have a difficult peak period”, and called for the people’s cooperation so that this period can be passed without outages.

Mentioning three major factors creating some severe condition in terms of power supply in this year, the official last week explained, “This year, we are facing three issues. First, there was a very severe drought during which we saw a reduction in the water supply of the country’s hydropower plants to less than half. In this way, we lose the generation of about 4,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from hydropower sources.”

On the other hand, due to the intense premature heat, the cooling equipment entered the consumption circuit earlier than usual, he mentioned.

“And a new problem we are facing this year is the power consumption of illegal cryptocurrency mining units”, Motevalizadeh added.

Although every year nearly 3,000 MW is added to the country’s power generation capacity, the reduction in the rainfalls and the decline in the water storage behind the dams has reduced the electricity generation offsetting the added capacity.

MA/MA