Tehran – Iran’s Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (known as Tavanir) Operator for Rural Electricity Expansion Program Ali Chehel-Amirani says 10,000 nomadic households have been supplied with photovoltaic power stations (known as PV systems), IRIB reported.

“With the indigenization of the knowledge for manufacturing solar panels in the country, so far 10,000 nomadic households have been supplied with solar electricity,” Chehel-Amirani said.

The official noted that rural households currently account for over 31 percent of the country’s total electricity consumers, saying: “The number of rural electricity subscribers has reached more than 21 million; to supply electricity to this number of subscribers, 25,000 kilometers of power distribution network has been constructed.”

According to Chehel-Amirani, before the Islamic Revolution, only 4,367 villages had access to the national electricity network, but with the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the access of rural areas to electricity increased 15 times, and currently, 57,966 villages are connected to the national power grid. The figure is expected to reach 58,000 by the end of the current fiscal year (March 20), the official said.

The official noted that currently, over 99.7 percent of the country’s rural areas have access to the electricity network and the rest will also join the grid over the next four years.

Back in October 2019, the energy ministry had announced the implementation of a program for supplying the country’s nomadic households with mobile small-scale power stations.

Also in November 2020, Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization (PBO) inked a memorandum of understanding with Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation and the Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed for the construction of 20,000 PV systems across the country.

The project was part of a comprehensive program in which at the first phase 20,000 PV systems would be constructed for rural and nomadic households and in the next phases, the number will be raised to 100,000 stations.

Based on the Energy Ministry data, renewables, currently, account for nearly seven percent of the country’s total electricity generation capacity.

Of the country’s total renewable capacity, 44 percent is the share of solar power plants while the share of wind farms stands at 40 percent and small-scalded hydropower plants generate 13 percent of the total renewable capacity.

EF/MA