TEHRAN – Some 500,000 smart electricity meters have been installed for large-scale consumers across the country, IRNA reported quoting an official with Iran's Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir).

Speaking on the sidelines of the inauguration ceremony of the Tavanir Monitoring Center (TMC) on Tuesday, Gholamali Rakhshani-Mehr put the number of the country’s industrial electricity consumers with over 30-kilowatt transmission lines at 400,000 and the number of agricultural wells equipped with electrical motors at 110,000.

TMC, an electricity industry monitoring center, was inaugurated in the presence of Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian in the framework of a weekly project called A-B-Iran.

According to Rakhashani-Mehr, launching TMC is aimed at monitoring the strategic characteristics of the energy industry’s subsidiaries as well as monitoring electricity consumption in the country.

He described the monitoring center as one of the main pillars of smartening the electricity sector and said: "Tavanir's smartening roadmap includes three main players, namely smart consumers, smart power companies and smart governance."

Back in June 2019, Head of Tehran Power Distribution Company Reza Teimouri had said that 18,650 smart electricity meters were installed for consumers across Tehran.

According to Teimouri, of the mentioned number, 3,242 meters were installed for the agricultural sector.

In May 2019, Mohammad-Ali Validad, the deputy director of the Energy Ministry’s national smart metering program (known as FAHAM), announced that 56,000 agricultural wells were equipped with smart electricity meters.

Faham is aiming to monitor the electricity consumption across the country, especially among the large-scale subscribers.

In March 2009 implementation of FAHAM was placed on the agenda of Iranian government and Energy Ministry.

The target was decreasing electricity loss at least one percent per year and 14 percent decrease in overall network loss by 2015.

FAHAM project is funded by Energy Ministry of Iran and is being executed under the supervision of TAVANIR.

Iran is facing a rising demand for electricity and the Energy Ministry has been following new policies in recent years to manage the consumption and lessen the electricity losses in the national grid.

EF/MA