Investigation and Zoning of Power Consumption Levels in Cities of North Khorasan Province

The production and consumption of electricity in Iran is one of the most important issues in policy making and macroplanning of the country’s development. Not only is this issue considered one of the most important production factors, unchecked consumption of electricity leads to environmental pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases, which is warming the earth. Understanding the dispersion of consumption levels of electricity can pave the way for accurate environmental planning and policy making. The current study aims to identify the location changes of energy consumption. First, a database for energy consumption network data for North Khorasan Province was created. Then, the statistical period of 2015-2016 for eight city districts of this province was selected and data on the consumption level of electricity subscribers (urban, rural, public, agricultural, industrial, commercial, and road lights) were gathered, effectively creating a 15 km by 15 km layer was considered over the selected area for the study. In order to identify the annual changes of energy consumption, the earth statistic method in GIS programming environment was utilized and IDW was used for interpolation. The results obtained from the current study show that the highest level of electricity consumption in urban, household, commercial, public, and road light sections can be seen in Bojnourd City District, the highest level of energy consumption for rural and agricultural sections can be seen in Esfarayen City District as well as the industrial sector of Jajarm City District. The total electricity consumption for the timeframe selected for the study in urban, rural, household, commercial, agricultural, industrial, and road light sections in Bojnourd City District was 332976 MWh and for Shirvan City District, it was 61006 MWh, which were the highest consumption rates among the cities of this province, while the lowest level of consumption was 23001 MWh seen in Raz and Jargalan City District. Considering the total electricity consumption of various sections, the highest consumption level was seen in the capital of the province (Bojnourd City District) with 29% of the total electricity consumption and 124708 subscribers, followed by Esfarayen City District with 16% of total consumption and 52075 subscribers. The lowest level of electricity consumption was seen in the industrial sector of Raz and Jargalan City District with 2% of the total consumption and 10269 subscribers.