TEHRAN- Iran's Ministry of Energy plans to increase the capacity of domestic power plants by 5,324 megawatts, equaling 7 percent, by the end of the current Iranian calendar year 1395 (March 20, 2017), IRNA reported on Sunday.

The figure will be achieved through building a number of thermal, combined-cycle, renewable energy, hydroelectric, combined heat and power (CHP), and distributed generation (DG) power plants as well as wind farms all over the country by the yearend.

The Islamic Republic ranked 14th across the globe regarding the 74,095-MW capacity of its power plants in the previous Iranian calendar year 1394 (March 2015-March 2016), and is on the track to expand its cooperation with foreign countries in this regard.

Last Tuesday, Deputy Energy Minister Alireza Da’emi announced that Tehran and Rome signed an MOU on construction of 500 MW of renewable energy power plants in Iran.

The planned projects will be completed in the next five years by the Italian investing companies, the official added.

Meanwhile, Bahman Salehi, the CEO of Iran Power and Water Equipment and Services Export Company known as SUNIR, announced last Sunday that his company plans to build a wind power plant as well as two thermal power plants in Kazakhstan in 18 months.

“We penned a contract, at the value of $600 million, with the Kazakh Eurasia Invest Group, in this regard,” Salahi said on the sidelines of Iran-Kazakhstan Business Council meeting in Tehran.

HJ/MA