A glance at Iran's gas-to-power sector

Iran boosted the share of natural gas in power plants to above 80%, delivering 46.847 bn m³ in nine months: this is a 16.8% growth year-on-year. Iran's fiscal year starts on March 21. That figure is 42% of Iran's total produced sweet gas during spring, summer and fall (110bn m³).

During this period (March 21 to Dec 31), the power sector’s diesel demand fell 38.4% and its heavy fuel oil demand by 31.5%.

Energy ministry statistics indicate that the weekly gas delivery of gas to power plants fell from 1.4bn m³ in spring and summer to about 0.8bn m³ in the autumn, while the figure plunged to around 0.5bn m³ in winter. Power demand soars in the summer while in the winter, heating demand goes up four times compared with summer. Iranian households are now using above 500mn m³/d of gas, compared with 120mn m³/d in summer.

From March 21 to December 31, Iran produced a little more than 230 billion kWh of electricity, of which 8 billion kWh were exported, while the country imported 3.275 billion kWh of electricity energy during that period.

The statistics indicate that despite falling power consumption, Iran has imported more power this winter. The reason may be that with high gas demand in the housing sector, it has preferred to import electricity than to consume liquid fuels.

As of January 11, Iran has added 592 MW to its power production capacity this fiscal year, with another 2.3 GW planned. The country's power generation capacity stands at 73.744 GW. Thermal power plants account for 82%, hydropower has 15.2%, renewables 0.31% and nuclear about 1.38%.

The combined-cycle power plants, which have 25% of the total fleet, are only about 42% efficient but other thermal power plants are even lower, at 35%. The average efficiency is about 37%.

Iran added 360 MW of hydropower to its generation capacity during the current fiscal year. 

Dalga Khatinoglu is a Natural Gas Europe expert on Iran's energy sector and head of Trend Agency's Iran news service