Minister: Solar power, consumption efficiency to ease electricity crunch
Iran’s Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on Tuesday that the country’s electricity shortages will be addressed through solar power plants and greater efficiency in consumption, but added that, "We still have problems in the water sector and must solve them with the help of consumption management."
Speaking at a ceremony in Tehran to launch a campaign for distributing and installing water-saving devices, Aliabadi said that building new transmission lines was time-consuming, while "production at the site of consumption" provided a faster solution, IRNA reported.
He noted that new projects are being connected to the grid weekly, boosting power generation capacity, and that significant savings in electricity use have also helped. "With these measures, we can hope electricity problems will gradually decline," he said.
The minister explained that because the solar generation plan operates within the distribution network, "it is currently not possible to transfer its electricity from one district to another," which means some regions may still face outages while others do not. "This situation will gradually improve," he said.
Aliabadi added that given the lengthy timelines of conventional power plants, the ministry prioritized solar stations because of their "high speed and low cost."
There is the unbalanced growth between power production and consumption over the past decade in the county. According to Energy Ministry, "In the last 10 years, electricity production has increased 13-fold while consumption has risen 23-fold, leading to a grid imbalance."
The government had granted all administrative departments a deadline — effective June 21 — to supply part of their required electricity from solar energy. It has also offered incentives for industries to build dedicated power plants, particularly solar farms, to cover part of their own demand.
Aliabadi also said that the country still has problems "in the water sector and must solve them with the help of consumption management." He stressed the effectiveness of water-saving devices in efficient use and called on households to install them.
Aliabadi also called on experts and academics to assist the ministry in developing technologies to reduce water consumption.