TEHRAN – Iran’s hydroelectric power plants are expected to produce 10,500 megawatts (10.5 gigawatts) of electricity in the current Iranian calendar year (March 2019-March 2020), IRIB reported, quoting the director of Iran’s Hydroelectric Power Plants Management Center.

According to Farbod Estiri, since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20), over 10.8 billion kilowatt hour (KWh) of electricity has been produced by the country’s hydroelectric plants.

The figure was reported to be 1.8 billion KWh in the last year’s same time span.

In late April, Deputy Distribution Coordinator of Iran’s Power Generation and Distribution Company (known as TAVANIR), Mahmoud Reza Haqifam, announced that recent heavy rainfalls in Iran has increased the electricity output of the country’s hydropower plants by up to 5,000 megawatts.

According to Haqifam, in the peak consumption hours of the day, between 9,500 MW and 10,000 MW of electricity is charged to the network by hydropower plants.

Iran’s current power generation capacity stands at about 81 GW of which the share of hydroelectric power stands at 19.87 percent.

In May, the Energy Ministry announced that it plans to inaugurate 22 new units with a total capacity of 3,933 MW in the current [Iranian calendar] year along with upgrading and increasing the efficiency of existing power plants to add another 461 MW of new capacity.

EF/MA