Energy Ministry carps about insignificant funding for renewable energy
Energy Ministry’s fundamental plan for renewable energy is to leverage community capacities, said Abbas Aliabadi on Sunday, adding that, “We have not received substantial funding for renewable energy to date."
In an interview with ILNA, he referred to the electricity and gas agreements between Iran and Turkmenistan, and stated, "I have traveled to Turkmenistan twice. We successfully extended the electricity contract, but gas is not part of our responsibilities. Fortunately, we have renewed our electricity supply based on their available capacity."
He noted that Turkmenistan has two electricity generation lines fully utilized to supply power to major cities in eastern Iran, such as Mashhad.
On Saturday, the energy minister said six gigawatts (GW) of new electricity capacity will be connected to the country’s power grid by next summer, noting that the new capacity will include 3 GW of renewable power plants.
Aliabadi stated that the country also plans to change electricity meters for heavy consumers as part of plans to control the demand next summer.
Iran’s peak demand for electricity reached nearly 80 GW in the last summer, nearly 15% more than the summer of 2023.
Authorities said at the time that the consumption was equal to the usage in industrialized countries like Germany.
However, Aliabadi insisted that Iran’s current electricity issues, which have forced closures in the country in recent days, are related to inconsistencies in the supply of fuels to power plants.
Reports earlier this week suggested that some 17 power plants in Iran, out of a total of 143 in the country, had stopped generating electricity because they had been disconnected from the nationwide gas grid due to increased demand for heating in the country.
That came as fuel inventories at those power plants had also declined because of various reasons, including overconsumption in summer months.
Authorities have ordered a ramp-up in diesel production in recent days to offset the shortage.