TEHRAN – Iran’s thermal power plants’ electricity generation capacity has exceeded 75,000 megawatts (MW), an official with the country’s Thermal Power Plants Holding Company (TPPH) announced.

Hadi Modaghegh, the head of the company’s Macro Planning Department, said there are currently 624 thermal units active in 142 power plants across the country, Tasnim News Agency reported.

Mentioning the inauguration of a thermal power plant unit in Khorasan Razavi Province, Modaghegh said with the inauguration of the mentioned unit, the country’s private sector is now accounting for 68 percent of the total power generation by thermal power plants.

Increasing the country’s power generation capacity and preventing blackouts during peak consumption periods have been among the Energy Ministry’s top priorities since the current government administration took office in August 2021.

Earlier this year, Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian announced that his ministry was planning to boost the country’s power generation capacity by 35,000 MW over the next four years.

The mentioned figure would be achieved through the construction of thermal power plants with 15,000 MW of capacity, renewable power plants with a capacity of 10,000 MW by the public and private sectors, and the construction of new power plants with 10,000 megawatts capacity by large industries, according to the minister.

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

In this regard, the Energy Ministry has been following new programs to meet the country’s power demand during peak periods and to prevent outages.

Constructing new units in the country’s power plants and also building new power plants for major industries are among the mentioned programs that are being pursued seriously by the ministry in collaboration with other related government entities.

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