TEHRAN, Iran, June. 9
Trend:
Iran's Minister of Energy said the global studies revealed that Bitcoin mining counts for less than 10 percent of the country’s electricity production.
Despite the predictions, we faced unusual situations compared to last year, one of which was extreme heat, Reza Ardakanian said among reporters on the sideline of the cabinet of Ministers` meeting, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"Extreme heat meant the earlier use of cooling devices, which itself leads to considerable electricity consumption. On the other hand, the considerable drought led to a significant reduction in the capacity of hydropower plants," he added.
The Minister of Energy noted that the installed capacity of hydroelectric power plants is 12,000 MW. There are also about 73,000 megawatts of installed thermal power plants, which, including hydropower plants, will be a total of 85,000 megawatts.
Ardakanian stated that our maximum output power from that 73,000 MW is about 50,000 MW.
In addition to extreme heat and drought, which led to a reduction in the capacity of hydropower plants, he says that Iran faced a cryptocurrency mining issue.
The Minister of Energy explained that the total authorized mining consumption was estimated by the Energy Ministry as 321 MW, but domestic and foreign estimates that Bitcoin mining counts for less than 10 percent of the country’s electricity production.
"Our colleagues' estimates show that about 2,000 megawatts of electricity per day are used for cryptocurrency mining in Iran, but only 320 megawatts of which were authorized and turned off," Arkadian noted.