Iran allocates $3.5bn to convert gas plants to combined cycle facilities

In its current fiscal year's national budget, Iran has allocated 100 trillion rials (about $3.5 billion) to go into turning gas power plants into combined cycle plants, said Alireza Daemi, deputy minister of energy in planning and economic affairs. The current gas power plants suffer very low performance and by converting them into combined cycle facilities the performance will be improved, he said.

Further, 11 trillion rials ($380 million) has been given to the energy sector for the current Iranian fiscal year (started March 21), to go into 37 water/electricity projects and 12 power plants, which is an increase of 18 percent compared to that of the previous year.

Iran has increased 2.871 GW power generation capacity, including about 1.6-GW gas power plants, a 0.64-GW combined cycle power plant as well as a 0.52-GW hydroelectric power plant. However the actual power generation level increased by only 1.98 GW. The country has aimed to change all of gas thermal power plants into combined power plants, which shares about 25.28 percent of its total power generation capacity. The efficiency of thermal power plants (excluding CCPP) is about 31 percent while CCPPs' is 45 percent.