TEHRAN - The electricity output of Iran’s hydroelectric power plants exceeded 12,000 megawatts (MW) in the first three months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-June 21), 415 percent more than the figure for last year’s same period, IRIB reported on Wednesday.

As reported by the portal of Iran’s Energy Ministry (known as Paven), currently 17 hydroelectric power plants with a total capacity of 3,800 MW are under construction across the country, which, once completed, will generate an average of 7,700 gigawatt hour (GWh) electricity on an annual basis.

The increase in the country’s hydroelectric output comes as heavy rainfalls in spring almost filled all the dams across the country.

In early July, the Head of Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company (IWPC), Behrouz Moradi, had put the country’s hydroelectric power plants’ output in the Q1 of the current calendar year at 4400 GWh, saying that so far IWPC has constructed over 12,020 MW capacity of hydropower plants across the country.

Director of Iran’s Hydroelectric Power Plants Management Center Farbod Estiri had also said in June that Iran’s hydroelectric power plants are expected to produce 10,500 megawatts (10.5 gigawatts) of electricity in the current Iranian calendar year (March 2019-March 2020).

According to Estiri, since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20) up to mid-June, over 10.8 billion kilowatt hour (KWh) of electricity was produced by the country’s hydroelectric plants.

The figure was reported to be 1.8 billion KWh in the last year’s same time span.

In late April, Deputy Distribution Coordinator of Iran’s Power Generation and Distribution Company (known as TAVANIR), Mahmoud Reza Haqifam, announced that recent heavy rainfalls in Iran has increased the electricity output of the country’s hydropower plants by up to 5,000 megawatts.

“In the peak consumption hours of the day, between 9,500 MW and 10,000 MW of electricity is charged to the network by hydropower plants,” Haqifam said.

Iran’s current power generation capacity stands at about 81 GW of which the share of hydroelectric power stands at 19.87 percent.

Currently, 54 hydroelectric power plants with a total capacity of over 12000 megawatts are operating in Iran, with an average annual output of about 6,000 GWh.

EF/MA