No Change in Power Tariffs Despite Scrapping Paper Billing

There has been no rise in electricity tariffs despite the elimination of paper billing, the Energy Minister said in Tehran on Tuesday.

“Digital billing has not increased electricity tariffs, but has created a good opportunity for subscribers to observe the performance of their electricity meters over the past months at any given time, a service that was not available before,” Reza Ardakanian was quoted as saying by IRNA.

Iran's Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company (Tavanir) has announced that scrapping paper billing will annually save up to $13 million. Instead of paper bills, text messages are sent to consumers.

The project to scrap electricity paper bills and switch to an electronic system started in June and now most consumers receive their bills via text messages.

In addition to curbing overhead, a major advantage of switching to electronic billing is the environmental benefit of reducing paper use.

In the presence of the minister, a project was launched to increase capacity of the Shush 230 kilovolt substation in south Tehran.

Costing $2.2 million, the plan will modulate the load of transformers and stabilize the network.

One transformer has been added to the previous two in the Shush substation, in a bid to help improve grid stability in the crowded region.