January 22, 2021
The national electric company, Tavanir, warned Iranian families to expect blackouts this winter as power usage topped the availability. Only days later, many parts of Tehran and a number of other cities saw the power go off.
While Iranian cities have often experienced summer blackouts, a winter blackout is a rarity.
This has political significance because revolutionaries blamed the frequent blackouts of 1970s on the ineptitude of the Shah’s regime and pledged to solve the problem for all time.
Summer blackouts, due primarily to the demand for electricity to power air conditioners, have largely been a thing of the past for many years as the regime has invested heavily in building power plants.
The country’s power capacity exceeds 85.5 gigawatts, officials say. But Mostafa Rajabi-Mashhadi, Tavanir’s spokesman, announced January 5 that current generating capacity is just 40 gigawatts and that usage reached 39.5 January 4. If demand topped 40 megawatts, the system would begin shutting down service to some areas in order to stop a collapse.
That happened January 12 and 13.
Tavanir said that in Tehran 11 of the capital’s 22 districts experienced blackouts of at least two hours January 12
The total number of cities impacted by outages was not given. But local news reports from the following cities reported blackouts: Tabriz; Ardabil; Marvdasht; Semnan; Karaj; Qaemshahr; Babol; Mashhad; Hamedan; Nahavand; Gorgan; Gonbad-e Kavous; and Mahabad.
At least 10 provinces were impacted. Such widespread blackouts have been unknown for the last two decades.
Before the blackouts started, Rajabi-Mashhadi blamed the threat on two factors. First, he said many power plants have been shut temporarily for overhauls before the summer crush.
Second, he said, some plants operating on natural gas have not gotten enough supply as the priority for natural gas deliveries is homes during the cold winter. There have been many reports of mazut, a very low grade and heavily polluting fuel, being supplied to power plants to make up for the loss of natural gas. But he said there isn’t enough mazut to keep plants going if demand hits the 40-gigawatt barrier.
He said that in January of last year, daily demand rarely even reached 34 gigawatts. So, the demand of 39.5 gigawatts January 5 sparked an alarm.
After the rash of blackouts started, the explanation for the problem shifted. Suddenly officials and news outlets started blaming the presence of bitcoin mining in the country, many citing chiefly Chinese companies that have set up bitcoin mining operations in Iran to take advantage of the low electricity rates. Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said bitcoin mining was the principal cause of the blackouts. Rajabi-Mashhadi, who a week earlier had not even mentioned bitcoin mining, now said it was the chief reason for the blackouts. He also specifically cited Chinese mining operations.
However, Ardakanian undercut his argument when he said that bitcoin miners, both legal and illegal ones, consumed between 500 and 600 megawatts; at the high end that would only be 1.6 percent of Iran’s current electricity production capacity.
Bitcoins are made by machines that run 24 hours a day. Many people in Iran and from foreign countries have set up bitcoin “mining” operations in Iran. Some are reported to have bribed mosques, which get electricity free, to let them operate on mosque property.
At any rate, the bitcoin miners soon took all the blame for the blackouts, overriding what Rajabi-Mashhadi had said about power plant shutdowns and the shortage of natural gas for power plants.
Tavanir responded by shutting down all the bitcoin operations it was aware of for two weeks to save on power. But there are undoubtedly more illegal bitcoin mines than the 24 licensed ones.
Officials, including Tehran Province Governor Anoushirvan Bandpey, continued for many days to deny relying on mazut to keep many power plants running. The public widely disbelieved the officials, pointing to the huge rise in pollution in many major cities.
Then, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh announced that his ministry was indeed supplying power plants with large amounts of mazut because natural gas was going to homes. “We have no other option than consuming mazut,” he said.
Issa Kalantari, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Iran’s refineries produce up to half a million barrels of mazut daily and said it cannot be exported because of US sanctions, making it the preferred fuel used at power plants.
Zanganeh asked the public to economize on natural gas so mazut usage could be reduced.
Another contributor to the high demand for electric power is thought to be consumers who waste power—especially since electricity was made free for the poor in December.