Saeed Mirsharifi said on Sunday that power grid losses in Iran had been at 21.5% in 2007, but they were cut to 10% in 2018.
Mirsharifi said the average electrical grid loss in the world is nearly 8%, adding that developed countries have reduced the figure to 5-7%.
He said that the Iranian Energy Ministry has made significant investments in recent years to renovate its power plants and to increase efficiency in the sector.
The expert said that the average efficiency at thermal power plants in Iran has reached 44% from 37% in the past decades, which he said was a result of repair and renovation work on key installations like boilers and cooling towers.
Mirsharifi said another factor contributing to lower electricity losses in Iran was the country’s efforts to upgrade traditional gas-fired power plants to turn them into combined-cycle systems where the steam is raised using the exhaust heat from combustion turbines.
By expanding its small-scale power plants, Iran has cut the length of its transmission lines, further reducing losses in the grid, he said.
The remarks come as Iran continues to invest in its massive electricity sector to be able to respond to a growing demand for power inside the country.
Electricity demand reached a peak of nearly 85 gigawatts (GW) last summer, with authorities saying the figure was equal to consumption in industrial countries like Germany.
Iran is the 16th largest electricity producer in the world, considering its installed power generation capacity of 94.5 GW.
Government figures released earlier this month showed that Iran’s thermal power plants had produced some 351 million megawatt hours of electricity in the year to March 20.
The figures showed that thermal power plants are responsible for 84% of the electricity generation capacity in Iran and some 94% of the country’s total electricity production.
PRESS TV