Iran says renewable power capacity will top 4,000 MW in mid-2021
Iran energy officials say the capacity for electricity production from renewable sources would increase by five times to reach a target of 4,000 megawatts (MW) in the summer of 2021 when the current administrative government leaves office.
“The Ministry of Energy is determined to bring the output capacity of renewable energy to 4,000 MW at the end of the 12th administration,” said Homayoun Haeri, a deputy energy minister in the government of President Hassan Rouhani, on Monday.
The target would mean nearly a five-fold increase from Iran’s current output from renewables, which is 841 MW, or 7.3 terawatt hours (TWh) in energy consumption terms.
Haeri said Iran managed to use 500 MW of electricity generated from renewable sources over the peak months of summer when energy consumptions substantially increases across the country, especially in the arid regions in south and east.
The official, who was speaking to a renewable energy conference in Tehran, said production would top 1,000 MW in March 2020 when the current Iranian calendar year ends.
Other officials attending the conference said Iran’s renewables industry was experiencing a historic boom.
Seyyed Mohmmad Sadeqzadeh, who heads Iran’s main renewable energy department, said the total jobs created in the industry would reach 100,000 in March 2021, a whopping growth compared to only several years ago, when only 2,000 people used to work at an industry with a capacity of 130 MW.
Haeri, the Iranian deputy energy minister, said that the amount of solar energy hitting Iran is estimated at 1.3 petawatts (PW), equal to some 150,000 MW of generation capacity and nearly double the current capacity of output from all sources.
He said Iran has already introduced overpricing for reneawbles to encourage home and industry producers to feed more power to the grid.
The semi-official Mehr news agency also reported on Monday that Iran would finalize a major contract for production of solar panels with a foreign company later in the day and during the energy conference in Tehran.
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