Iran has imported equipment enough to develop solar farms with a combined daily capacity of about 7,000 megawatts (MW) of green electricity, an official in charge of renewable energy planning at the Plan and Budget Organization (PBO) said on Tuesday.
Hadi Sa’adatmandi said the hardware, mostly panels, was purchased from China at affordable prices to advance the government’s program to construct 30,000 MW of renewable power.
The initiative aims to address the country’s power shortages and fulfill President Masoud Pezeshkian’s commitment to boost clean energy.
Pezeshkian’s government has set a goal of installing 30,000 MW of renewables within the next three years to help ease daily power shortall that reached around 12,000 MW last summer.
According to the latest data from Iran’s Renewable Energy and Electricity Efficiency Organization (SATBA), the country’s renewable power plants now have a daily generation capacity of over 2,700 MW, accounting for only 2.8% of Iran’s total daily electricity generation capacity of about 95,000 MW.
Sa’adatmandi said the government’s decision for the project was being implemented with three tenders waived under special authorization for the power industry, allowing faster procurement and execution.
He noted that several of the PBO’s measures in the power sector were being pursued through multi-year programs, highlighting the “rationalization of government subsidies to the power industry” as one of the key steps.
“The most significant subsidy paid by the government to the power sector is the fuel subsidy for power plants,” he said, adding that this effort “will not only increase production efficiency but also ensure that more efficient plants benefit from fuel savings.”