Azerbaijan, Baku, May.20/ Trend F.Karimov/
The first unit of Iran's first pumped-storage power plant will come on stream today in northern Mazandaran province, IRNA reported.
Some 13 trillion rials (about $1 million) has been spent to construct the plant.
In a pumped-storage plant, pump turbines transfer water to a high storage reservoir during off-peak hours. The stored water can later be used to generate electricity to cover temporary peaks in demand from consumers or unplanned outages at other power plants.
The energy used for pumping the water comes from other energy sources, including nuclear, fossil and intermittent renewables, that are less efficient to adapt to load fluctuations.
"Iran has constructed power plants twice as many as the average number of power plants which have been constructed in the world during the past decade," Mehr News Agency quoted deputy energy minister Mohammad Behzad as saying.
"The power generation capacity in Iran has grown by 7 percent annually during the past 10 years," he said, adding that the figure has averaged 3.5 percent in the world.
The country's power generation capacity is currently at 68.38 gigawatts, he added.
Iran currently trades power with Turkey, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan (including Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic), Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.
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