Increasing OR in power plants saves Iran over $3.5b

Head of Iran’s Thermal Power Plant Holding (TPPH) said that a 10-percent increase in the Operational Readiness (OR) of the country’s thermal power plants over the past decade has saved the country more than $3.5 billion.

According to Mohsen Tarztalab, the OR of the mentioned power plants stood at 83.4 percent nearly 10 years ago and the figure has currently exceeded 93 percent, the Energy Ministry portal (Paven) reported.

Referring to the measures taken by the TPPH for the development of the electricity industry during the last decade, Tarztalab said: "In the early days of [the Iranian calendar year] 1390 (started in March 2011), the nominal capacity of the country’s thermal power plants was about 54,000 megawatts (MW), which has now increased by 25 percent to exceed 68,000 MW."

The electricity generated by thermal power plants in the first half of the mentioned year was about 121 trillion kilowatt-hours (KWh) while in the first six months of the last year (ended on March 19) the figure reached 152 trillion KWh and it has exceeded 167 trillion KWh in the current year.

According to the official, 10 years ago the annual fuel consumption of the country's power plants was about 57 billion cubic meters, which reached 74 billion cubic meters last year.

“In those years, 62 percent of the power plants' fuel was supplied by natural gas and 38 percent by liquefied fuel; this caused increase in the emergency shut-off rate of the units, the difficulty of operating the power plants, and the damage to the boilers,” Tarztalab said.

Emphasizing that in the first half of the current year, about 90 percent of the power plants' fuel was supplied through natural gas, he added: “Measures taken over the past few years have resulted in such a great achievement.”

The efficiency of power plants which was about 36.9 percent in the Iranian calendar year 1390 is now increased to 38.7 percent with measures such as converting gas power plants to combined cycle ones, Tarztalab stressed, adding “it will reach about 39 percent by the end of the year, according to the Ministry’s plans.”

source: TehranTimes