October 30, 2020
The government has decided to urge homeowners who use a lot of electricity to install solar panels on their roofs to reduce demand on the national electrical grid.
The Energy Ministry has long been concerned that when electricity consumption surges in the summer months the national grid struggles to meet the demand.
The construction of new power plants is a very costly and time-consuming process, so the main alternative is to encourage people to shift their use of power from summer afternoons to summer evenings—such as doing ironing at night. The Energy Ministry has started several programs encouraging households and businesses to do just that.
However, despite all the incentive packages, there are still consumers who gobble up power. For these consumers, the Energy Ministry has come up with a new scheme called “Each Rooftop a Power Plant.” It encourages high-consuming households or industries to install rooftop solar panels to generate their own electricity.
They will have to pay the costs of the panels, but the Energy Ministry will pay the interest on the loans taken out to pay for the panels and their installation.
The Energy Ministry’s spokesman, Mostafa Rajabi-Mashhadi, told the state news agency the panels will occupy very little space. He said each kilowatt of solar energy will require four to five square meters of space.
“Some households need only 400 to 500 watts of solar power capacity, which can even be installed on their rooftop water air coolers and used as a canopy for the air cooler, which will also increase the efficiency of the cooler,” Rajabi-Mashhadi said.
“The investment in this program is made by the subscriber himself, but the interest on the loan or the subsidy of the facility interests will be paid by the Renewable Energy and Electricity Efficiency Organization of Iran (SATBA). This will help to provide an interest-free loan to the subscriber, which will be repaid in installments.”