Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. Mar. 11
By Rahim Zamanov - Trend:
Iran managed to decrease its gas power plant consumption rate by 10 per cent by installing data management systems, Mehdi Jamshidi, an official with the National Iranian Gas Company, said on Mar. 11.
"By doing so, some four billion rials, $133,000 based on the exchange rate of USD have been saved," he said.
"The system has been put into operation in a number of gas power plants so far," Jamshidi said, adding that it will be installed in all the country's power plants in near future.
Iran's power consumption grows eight percent annually.
Iran was forced to limit gas supply to power plants and industrial units in the cold months in order to be able to supply enough to households.
The average Iranian domestic gas consumption level was around 570 million cubic meters on the cold days of February.
Iranian Oil Minister Hamidreza Araqi said on Feb. 22 that households and power plants natural gas consumption has been increased twofold in the past decade, Iran's Mehr News Agency reported.
According to BP's latest yearly report, Iran's dried gas output is 160 bcm, a little more than the domestic consumption level.
Iran exported 7.5 bcm of gas to Turkey and imported 4.5 bcm from Turkmenistan in 2012, according to BP's report.
Hamid Chitchian, Iran's Energy Minister told Shana on March 4 that 120 trillion rials ($4.8 billion based on official USD rate in Iran on March.4 had been allocated based on pay-back contracts in the budget law of the current calendar year which started on March 21, 2013, to increase the efficiency of thermal power plants (TPP). Some 120 trillion rials have been allocated in next year's budget law to improve TPPs' efficiency as well.
He went on to say that the TPPs' efficiency is expected to increase from its current 37.5 percent to 50 percent.
Iran's TTPs produces 57.5 GW electricity which is equal to 210 GWh and shares 85 percent of the country's total electricity generation capacity. However the country's thermal power generation in reality shares 94 percent of the total power output.
The Iranian government has been obliged based on its law on 'Subsidy Reform Plan' to increase the power plant's efficiency to 45 percent from 2010 to 2015. However statistics released during 2013 indicate that the TTPs efficiency has increased just 0.3 percent since 2010.
Iran has aimed to change all gas PPs into combined cycle power plants (CCPP). The efficiency of gas PPs in Iran is about 31 percent while CCPPs is 45 percent.
Alongside a 15 percent efficiency increase, replacing gas PPs with CCPPs can provide an opportunity for Iran to economise on $11 billion fuel usage annually.
Natural Gas shares 60 percent of Iranian TPPs' fuel consumption. The volume of liquid fuel used in TPPs during the current fiscal year is expected to surpass 30 billion litres.
Edited by S.M.