Iran’s power output, export up, imports remain flat

Baku, Azerbaijan, July 31

By Dalga Khatinoglu, Trend:

Iran has increased both its power generation and exports, while the imports remained flat during four months of the current fiscal year (started on March 21).

According to the latest weekly statistics, published by Iran's Energy Ministry, Iran’s electricity generation reached about 110.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in the first four months of the current fiscal year, indicating a 7-percent growth year-on-year.

Iran's electricity exports also increased by 47 percent to 3.222 TWh, while imports remained flat at 1.591 TWh.

Despite positive results in the power sector, the pace of Iran’s power export growth is decreasing, as the warm season pushed the domestic demand up.

The decline of import went from - 23 percent in the first month of the fiscal year to 1 percent in the fourth month of the year. Iran’s power demand increases in summer, mostly due to rising consumption in housing sector.

Based on Energy Ministry’s weekly reports (GWh)

Iran also decreased its electricity imports by 23 percent in the first month of spring.

The country increased gas and gas oil delivery to its power plants by 9.6 percent and 12.4 percent to 25.104 billion cubic meters and 543 million liters, while fuel oil supply to this sector decreased by 30.8 percent to 552 million liters in the mentioned period.

The actual generation capacity of Iran’s power plants stands at 60.298 GW, but above 11 percent of Iran’s generated net electricity is lost in transmission and distributing process.

Iran has increased nominal power generation capacity by 1.88 GW in July 21, compared to the same day in 2016, of which above 0.5 GW was added during the current fiscal year.

Iran plans to add 4.2 GW more to power its generation capacity during the next eight months of the current fiscal year to March 20, 2018.