TEHRAN – The Iranian government is going to award the projects for constructing renewable power plants with the capacity of 4,000 megawatts (MW) to capable companies through a tender which will be held early next Iranian calendar year (begins on March 21), IRIB reported.

According to Head of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization (SATBA) Mahmoud Kamani, the mentioned tender is going to be held in line with the government’s planning for the construction of renewable power plants with the capacity of 10,000 MW across the country.

Kamani said the necessary provisions for the funding of the mentioned projects have been made in the next year’s national budget bill and the tender will be held early next year after the bill is approved by the Guardian Council.

The official mentioned the Energy Ministry’s recent public call for the contribution of private companies in a project for developing renewable power plants in the country, and said: “After the public call for the construction of renewable power plants, we received requests from private companies for establishing power plants with the capacity of more than 95,000 MW, and we have signed memorandums of understanding with many of those companies.”

According to Kamani, the primary studies have also been conducted for the construction of wind farms with a capacity of 3,000 MW, using the above-mentioned model.

The official noted that renewable power plants with the capacity of 2,000 MW will also be constructed by major industrial and mining companies, their generated electricity which will be provided to the Energy Ministry and the ministry will supply the mentioned companies with an equal amount of electricity from the national grid.

Production units based in industrial parks are also going to fund the construction of such power plants with the capacity of 1,000 MW, in order to use the generated electricity in peak consumption hours.

The SATBA head said the plan is to construct renewable power plants with the capacity of 10,000 MW over the next four years, of which 500 MW will come on stream by the next Iranian calendar year’s summer peak consumption period (summer begins on June 22).

Back in January, the Energy Ministry and some of the country’s private contractors signed memorandums of understanding (MOU) for cooperation in the construction of renewable power plants to generate 10,000 megawatts (10 gigawatts) of electricity across the country.

Speaking in the signing ceremony, Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian said the government has allocated over 30 trillion rials (about $115.3 million) for the development of renewables in the budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year, saying that it is an unprecedented budget in this area.

EF/MA