Iran direly needs investments in power sector
Iran suffered severely from the lack of investments and foreign technology during the sanctions era, which pushed the country’s net electricity export from above eight billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2013 to around zero in the first half of current Iranian fiscal year (started on March 21). During the sanctions era, the efficiency of Iran’s power plants remained unchanged at 37 percent in average, while the power lost during transmission and distribution process remained high at 14 percent. As for power output, Iran experienced less than 1 percent growth last fiscal year (ended on March 21) due to low investments in the past years. Iran was planning to increase the output by 5 percent. The combined-cycle power plants still share 25 percent of Iran’s total power generation, despite a plan to increase this figure by converting old gas thermal power plants into combined-cycle ones. Meanwhile, Iran and Turkey have a $4.2-billion memorandum of understanding (MOU) to construct power