TEHRAN - Mohammad-Hassan Motevalizadeh, the managing director of Iran's Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir), has announced the possibility of imposing electricity supply limitations for industrial subscribers, IRIB reported on Monday.

“If household consumers do not cooperate by managing their consumption we might be forced to impose supply limitations for industrial subscribers in the steel sector,” Motevalizadeh said in a press conference.

Back in May, Motevalizadeh had warned that this year the country will have a difficult peak consumption period.

“This year, we are facing major issues. First, there was a very severe drought during which we saw a reduction in the water supply to the country's hydropower plants to less than half. In this way, we lose the generation of about 4,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from hydropower sources”, the official said on May 19.

On the other hand, due to the intense premature heat, the cooling equipment entered the consumption circuit earlier than usual, he noted, adding: “And a new problem we are facing this year is the power consumption by illegal cryptocurrency mining units.”

Although every year nearly 3,000 MW is added to the country’s power generation capacity, the reduction in the rainfalls and the decline in the water storage behind the dams has reduced the electricity generation offsetting the added capacity.

Daily electricity consumption in Iran reached 66,250 MW (66.25 gigawatts) on July 6, to register a new record in the history of Iran’s electricity industry as a new heatwave has blanketed the country this summer.

According to the Iranian Energy Ministry's Spokesman for Electricity Industry Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, 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.

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 power demand, Rajabi Mashahadi said at the time.

The official 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 future.

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.

He also announced that the Energy Ministry was importing 650 MW more electricity to offset the surge in demand.

In early July, Iranian Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian attended an emergency meeting of the country's electricity management headquarters along with other senior officials from the Energy Ministry to discuss the issue and explore ways for alleviating the situation.

Tavanir had also previously announced that the company was implementing over 40 different programs for managing the situation and to prevent blackouts in the country.

EF/MA