TEHRAN - Head of Iran's Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution Management Company, known as Tavanir, says 60 percent of the country’s power generation capacity has been created by the private sector funding and more investment is being made in this sector.

The energy ministry has been pursuing the construction of over 3,000 megawatts (MW) capacity of new power plants in the current Iranian calendar year (ends on March 19), Mohammad-Hassan Motevalizadeh told IRNA on Sunday.

In early May 2019, the energy ministry had announced that the government was going to inaugurate 22 new power plant units with a total capacity of 3,933 MW in the current Iranian year along with upgrading and increasing the efficiency of existing power plants to add another 461 MW of new capacity.

Motevalizadeh further underlined the implementation of consumption management programs across the country and said, currently there is no problem regarding the supply of electricity across the country.

During the summer peak period, of the total 29 million household electricity consumers, 24 million subscribers consumed electricity based on the standards set by the energy ministry and even eight million households consumed less than the set level, the official said.

"This year [in the summer] the electricity consumption fell by 4,000 megawatts," he said, adding that "Management plans will continue for the next summer since this program yielded very good results this summer."

He noted that this winter, the severe cold weather caused the consumption of natural gas to rise sharply and fuel supplies to power plants were limited, but fortunately the problem was resolved.

According to the energy ministry data, Iran’s power generation capacity currently stands at nearly 85,000 MW.

EF/MA