TEHRAN - Iranian Energy Ministry's Spokesman for Electricity Industry Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi said on Wednesday the country has stopped electricity exports to neighboring countries due to the surge in domestic demand and only 50 megawatts (MW) of electricity is exported to Afghanistan at the moment.

According to Rajabi Mashhadi, the imports of electricity, on the other hand, have been raised to 650 MW and the country is currently importing electricity from Turkmenistan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, ISNA reported.

The official had announced on Tuesday that the country’s power plants are currently able to generate only 54,000 MW of electricity which is nearly 12,000 MW less than the domestic power demand.

According to Mashhadi, daily electricity consumption in Iran reached 66,250 megawatts (66.25 gigawatts) on Monday, registering a new record in the history of Iran’s electricity industry as a new heatwave has blanketed the country over the past few days.

The mentioned figure was 8,000 MW more than the consumption in the previous year’s peak period, and 10,000 MW more than the figure in the previous year’s same date, he said.

The official further noted that each degree of temperature rise would boost the country’s electricity consumption by 1,500 MW and the temperature is expected to increase even more in the coming days.

He underlined the increasing use of air conditioning devices in the summer period as one of the major reasons for the increase in the country’s electricity consumption, calling on people to manage their consumption and use the automatically regulated devices to decrease energy waste.

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

This year, 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.

EF/MA