TEHRAN- Electricity consumption in Iran reached an unprecedented record-breaking level of 67,700 megawatts on Tuesday.

The daily consumption was 700 megawatts higher than that of the same day in the past year, and 300 megawatts higher than the previous record.

Over the past decade, constant temperature rising and the significant decrease in rainfalls across Iran have put the country in a hard situation regarding electricity supply during peak consumption periods.

In the past two years, however, new deteriorating factors like severe drought and the decline in the country’s water resources as well as a new wave of illegal cryptocurrency mining across the country have also worsened the situation.

Among such factors, outdated equipment used in industry and agriculture sectors are a major contributor to the high electricity consumption in the country.

These two sectors have become major consumers of electricity in the country due to their outdated equipment.

Many of the country's industrial equipment is not updated and still use old technologies; This has caused this industry to use more electricity to produce products.

Also, many agricultural wells use old pumps and this has fueled the increase in electricity consumption by the agriculture sector.

In addition, the industry and agriculture sectors have always enjoyed very good government support, so that this support has led them to enjoy almost free electricity.

These very good supports have made the industry and agriculture sectors to become the main consumers of electricity in the country.

Now and according to the conditions of electricity supply, electricity tariffs for these two sectors need to be seriously reformed so that they are encouraged to be modified and have equipment that requires less electricity.

The country's large industries are still dependent on cheap electricity from the national grid, and no plan has been defined to cut this dependence.

Now that people are gradually doing their part in using low-consumption equipment such as low-consumption lamps and are making more efforts to observe the consumption pattern well, the industry and agriculture sectors should also pay more attention to observing the consumption pattern and in the meantime tariff reform of these two sectors will help more to comply with the consumption pattern.

The other resolution is the plan based on which the large industries will build power plants to supply their required electricity.

In the current government, there has been a strong determination for industries to build power plants to supply their electricity, and the continuation of this process can lead to a general improvement in the state of electricity supply in the national grid.

In this due, Ministry of Energy signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade in mid-October last year, based on which major industries of the country can build power plants to meet their electricity needs.

According to a part of this agreement, 13 industrial companies will invest for the construction of new thermal and renewable power plants with the capacity of 10,360 megawatts in 10 provinces within a period of three years.

On May 29, the director of the plan to construct theses power plants announced that the executive and operational stage of the construction of new power plants in seven sites with a capacity of 5,302 megawatts has begun.

This is in line with the policies of resistance economy and according to the interest of large industries to invest in order to provide reliable and stable electricity for their production units.