Planning the Development of Thermal Power Plants in the Seventh Development Plan, based on Gas Fuel Restrictions in Iran

The development of thermal power plants for the continuous supply of electrical energy requires an average of at least 3 years, hence the necessity to plan for proper infrastructure and requirements. Governments strongly need the participation of the private sector for economic growth and increasing efficiency in the construction of power plants. The present research attempts to plan the development of thermal power plants to maximize the share of the development of private power plants considering the limitation of gas fuel in Iran in the 7th development plan. Therefore, to predict the peak load of the power grid during the study period, two methods of the Arima time series and Narx neural network are used. Also, the effect of two exogenous and emerging variables, including the growth of consumption resulting from the mining of crypto-currencies and the growth of industrial consumption on the peak load rate, is investigated. To achieve higher accuracy, the research method is formulated by combining mathematical modeling and considering general and experimental factors and limitations affecting the problem. Then, the capacity of private power plant development to provide the expected load increase in the study period is determined according to the fuel limit stated in the upstream documents. The results demonstrate that during the years of the 7th plan, due to the maximum fuel limit, it is possible to plan to increase the thermal power capacity by 5157 megawatts.