Iran Plans to Boost Power Plants’ Efficiency to 45%

Iran plans to boost the efficiency of its power plants to 45-47 percent over the next three years, said Deputy Energy Minister Houshang Falahatian.

The average efficiency of power plants will reach 45-47 percent through turning gas-fired plants into combined cycle ones without increasing the volume of input fuel, IRNA news agency quoted Falahatian as saying on December 20. 

Currently, power plants are running at 32-33 percent efficiency on average, he noted. But, the average efficiency of thermal plants is 37 percent.

No investment had been made over the past decade to turn gas-fired plants into combined cycle plants, he said, adding that a deal was signed last year to turn gas-fired plants with 16,000 megawatts of capacity into combined cycled, which will add 7,000 megawatts to the country’s power generation capacity.

The ultimate goal of the Energy Ministry is to improve the efficiency to over 50 percent, he said. 

Iran’s power generation capacity is currently 73,744 megawatts, according to Iran Power Transmission, Generation and Distribution Company.

Manoochehr Taheri, director of the dispatching center at the National Iranian Gas Company, said on November 7 that natural gas accounted for 69 percent of fuel needed by the power plants in the past Iranian year (March 2014-March 2015), and is predicted to be 81 percent in the current year (March 2015-March 2016).