TEHRAN- Iran has been facing some serious challenges regarding electricity supply over the past decade mainly due to the temperature rising and decrease of rainfalls.

Some other factors, such as high illegal cryptocurrency mining, have even worsened the situation in the country this year, as the citizens suffered a lot from the constant power outages, while it also caused serious damages to the activities of industries.

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.

Back in May, warning about a difficult peak consumption period in this year, Mohammad-Hassan Motevalizadeh, the managing director of Iran's Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir), had mentioned three major factors creating some severe condition in terms of power supply in this year, and explained, “This year, we are facing three issues. First, there was a very severe drought during which we saw a reduction in the water supply of 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.”

On the other hand, due to the intense premature heat, the cooling equipment entered the consumption circuit earlier than usual, he mentioned.

“And a new problem we are facing this year is the power consumption of illegal cryptocurrency mining units”, Motevalizadeh added.

Such condition made electricity supply one of the major concerns of the government, so the Energy Ministry and related organizations took various measures to tackle the problem.

Consumption management was one of those measures, as the ministry offered incentives to the low-electricity consumers, while it set some penalties for the high-electricity consumers.

The other measure was to renovate the electricity network and equipment, as it is necessary to prevent power loss by replacing high-efficiency equipment with low-efficiency ones and renovating worn-out electricity distribution networks.

This is true for all electrical equipment, which consumes a lot of energy when worn out, therefore it should be definitely renovated.

For example, renovation of electrical panel can lead to economizing on power consumption by 40 to 50 percent.

To renovate the electrical equipment, some budget has been allocated.

On Tuesday, Energy Ministry's Spokesman for Electricity Industry Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi said that the use of worn-out electrical equipment is one of the important factors in increasing electricity consumption, so it is planned to renovate such equipment with the help of government resources and resources obtained from the government's subsidy reform plan”.

“One of the most effective ways to reduce power consumption is to replace electrical equipment that is not efficient due to wear and tear”, he noted, adding, “Replacing this type of equipment and replacing it with up-to-date equipment has a great effect on reducing energy consumption”.

At the end, the official announced that it’s being tried to replace such equipment with some new ones based on a plan.