Iran's power sector review for 2015

By Dalga Khatinoglu

Iran boosted the share on natural gas consumption in power plants to above 80 percent by delivering 46.847 billion cubic meters (bn m³) in 9 months, which indicate a 16.8% percent growth year-to-year.

Iran's fiscal year starts on March 21.

the consumed gas amount, mentioned above, indicates that above 42 percent of Iran's total produced sweet gas during spring, summer and fall (110 bn m³ ) was consumed in power sector.

During this period (March 21 to Dec 31), Iran's power sector also consumed 4.342 billion liters of diesel (- 38.4%) and 5.278 billion liters of mazut (-31.5%).

The statistics of Iran's Energy Ministry indicate that the weekly gas delivery of gas to power plants decreased from 1.4 bn m³ in spring and summer to about 0.8 bn m³ in fall, while the figure plunged to around 0.5 bn m³ in winter.

Two reasons pushes gas delivery to Iran's power plants down in cold season:

- The country's power demands soars in warm months, while in cold seasons Iran consumes less electricity.

- Iran's gas consumption in housing sectors almost increases by 400 percent in winter, compared to summer, leaving less home for gas-to-power sector. For instance, currently Iranian households consume above 500 mn m³ per day of gas, while this figure in summer was about 120 mn m³ per day.

From March 21 to December 31, Iran produced a little more than 230 billion kWh of electricity, of which 8 billion kWh was exported, while the country imported 3.275 billion kWh of electricity energy during the mentioned period.

The statistics indicate that despite falling power consumption, Iran increased power imports since winter and electricity exports decreased.

The reason may be this fact that Iran has obligation to consume less liquid fuels in power plants, but regarding soaring the gas consumption in housing sector, it seems Iran prefer to decrease exports and increase imports instead of consuming more liquid fuels in power plants.

During 9 months and 11 days of current fiscal year, Iran added 592 MW to its power production capacity, while adding 2,300 MW power generation capacity has been planned for current year.

Currently the country's power generation capacity stands at 73,744 MW. Thermal power plants share 82 percent, hydropower shares 15.2 percent, renewables 0.31 percent and nuclear power about 1.38 percent.

Coming to power plants efficiency, the combined-cycle power plants which shares 25 percent in total power generation, has about 42 percent efficiency, while this figure for the other thermal power plants stands at around 35 percent.

In total, Iran's power plants' efficiency is about 37 percent in average.

Iran added 360 MW of hydropower to its generation capacity during the current fiscal year.

* The article was exclusively written for Natural Gas Europe. Dalga Khatinoglu is an expert on Iran's energy sector and head of Trend Agency's Iran news service.

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