TEHRAN – Head of Iran’s Thermal Power Plant Holding (TPPH)’s distribution supervision office announced the start of the Energy Ministry’s extensive program for renovating the country’s electricity grid.

According to Masoud Sadeqi, for the first time in the country, the overhaul of the power network will be carried out simultaneously in all provinces in a two-day maneuver.

Over 1300 kilometers of electricity lines will be repaired and renovated in the first phase of the mentioned program, Sadeqi said.

More than 3,900 specialized personnel in the form of 1,327 operational teams will be participating in this nationwide maneuver to repair worn-out electricity distribution networks, he added.

The official underlined the significance of this program considering the beginning of the cold season in the country and the possibility of natural crises such as rain, snow, and flood, saying: “This can increase the stability of the network through retrofitting, reducing the time to solve problems and re-launching the network in times of crisis.”

He also mentioned the conversion of copper wire networks into self-supporting cable ones, removal of loose connections, improvement of the substations equipment including boards, counters, and metal base valves as other axes of this nationwide maneuver.

Earlier this month, the Deputy Coordinator of Iran's Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir) Gholamali Rakhshani-Mehr had announced the launch of the program for renovating the country’s electricity network.

The official mentioned implementing the policies of the resilient economy, improving and upgrading the network’s performance indicators, increasing network stability and reliability, reducing the number and time of power outages, reducing network losses and balancing network load, improving customer satisfaction, and improving the readiness of operational teams in the face of potential crises as some of the goals of this program.

Having one of the vastest electricity networks in the region, Iran has been emerging as a power hub in West Asia.

All the Iranian urban population is enjoying electricity through the national power grid while nearly 99.7 percent of the country’s rural population is also supplied with electricity, while according to the information provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA), this figure is 86 percent in Central and South America, 85 percent in Asia, 78 percent in West Asia and 36 percent in Africa.

EF/MA