Surveying Iran’s 2021 Widespread Electricity Blackouts
In a new IOD survey, a third of Iranian participants have stated that they had experienced power outages in the fall of 2021 when Iran faced sweeping blackouts. The average blackout for the respondents was three hours a day; the data also suggests that 96% of the participants had access to the urban or rural power networks.
Iran has long experienced power outages dating back to the 1970s when the country went under rapid socio-economic development. In the summer of 1977, for example, major Iranian newspapers ran headlines about imminent blackouts. The widespread power outage was indeed a major reason behind the removal of Iran’s then prime minister, Amir-Abbas Hoveyda.
Widespread blackouts continued during the 1978-79 revolution due to strikes of employees in the energy sectors, which eventually led to Khomeini's reign. Blackouts also became a part of life during the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88), although it later diminished when the war ended eight years later.
However, in recent years, widespread and sometimes prolonged blackouts have returned due to the country’s aging infrastructure, sparking protests across the country in 2021. In addition to disrupting people’s daily lives and business activities, the power outages in May 2021 even led to the loss of Iranian chess players in the Asian championship games.
Iran Open Data polled the social media users in Iran asking them about their blackout experience.
This poll was conducted between October 1, 2021, and January 4, 2022, and 784 social media users responded to the questions. Ninety-one percent of participants lived in urban areas and 9% in rural areas. Participants in 31 provinces answered the poll’s questions, but most of them lived in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Semnan, North Khorasan, and “Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad” provinces had the lowest participation. The questions were about their household, and not individual, experiences.
The below report and graphs show the results of this poll.
Access to Electrical Power
Ninety-six percent of participants stated that they have access to power networks and the rest state that they obtain energy from other sources.
Ninety-eight percent of urbanites and 76% of villagers had access to electrical power.
Those who do not have access to power networks use backup generators or use petroleum-based devices as alternatives.
Usage Cost
Participants stated that they pay an average of about 260,000 tomans (around $62 USD) each billing cycle.
The cost of electrical power varies widely. One percent of the participants stated that they pay about one thousand tomans (around $0.25 USD). One percent pays about two million tomans (around $475 USD) for each billing cycle.
Half of the participants pay less than 75 thousand tomans (around $18 USD) and the other half is more than this amount.
Blackouts
A third of participants stated that they had a power outage in the previous week.
Villagers are more affected by blackouts than urbanites. Thirty-three percent of urbanites, and 37% of villagers, experienced blackouts.
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Blackout Durations
Participants who had blackouts the previous week had it for an average of 3 hours a day.
Although villagers suffered from blackouts more than urbanites, their average blackout duration was shorter.
Twenty-four percent of villagers had higher average outages than the national average; this number was 28% for urbanites.
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This article was originally published in Persian (available here).
