July the 29th, 2023 – Varazdin County geothermal potential is encouraging. The area has been being tested for a while now as one of the Republic of Croatia’s largest geothermal sources. Those tests are now nearing completion.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, HRT reports that the results of the aforementioned research into Varazdin County geothermal potential are surprising – lying two and a half kilometres below the surface of Earth, the water temperature is 142 degrees, which is ideal for the production of electricity and the heating of buildings, greenhouses and more.
Cleaner, safer, cheaper and renewable
Geothermal energy is one of the cheaper, cleaner and safer ways of using renewable resources. In neighbouring Hungary, greenhouses have been heated with hot water from the underground for years now. Numerous geothermal power plants are being built all over Western Europe that produce electricity, and homes and swimming pools are now being heated with the excess water. Here in Croatia, research on the largest such source near Mali Bukovec is now near its end.
“This geothermal well has a depth of 2345 metres, it will serve as a well for us to obtain thermal water for the production of electricity as a production well. Not far from here, more precisely six kilometres away in the village of Lunjkovec, there is another well that will be our injection well,” said Alen Požgaj, a geologist and director of the Bukotermal.
Looking into Varazdin County geothermal potential is nothing new. For twenty-five years now, there have been plans to use what exists in Mali Bukovec – because there is no underground treasure like this anywhere else in Central Europe.
100 kilometres
“The total area of the geothermal field is 100 square kilometres. We measured the temperature at the bottom of the deposit, at some 2,200 metres, and it was 141 and 142 degrees. We can count on this temperature in the production of electricity,” said Darko Marković, the mayor of the Municipality of Mali Bukovec. This field alone will produce electricity that can power a town the size of Koprivnica.
“Two megawatts of electricity or eight megawatts of thermal energy could be produced from the two wells we mentioned, and the entire potential of this location is from 12 to 15 megawatts of electricity,” Požgaj pointed out.
Croatia’s Kuwait?
In addition to the electricity obtained there, houses, as well as greenhouses, would be heated with the excess hot water – because half of Croatia’s floriculture is also in this area. In the year 2025, the construction of the largest geothermal power plant in Croatia, worth about 50 million euros, should begin.
“We intend to develop this area as Croatian Kuwait, that already speaks volumes about the potential we have, the county has invested 18 million kuna together with the municipality so far, and we’ve come a long way. This is important because green energy is what is being produced,” said Anđelko Stričak, Varaždin County’s prefect.
The potential is huge – in Croatia’s Pannonian basin alone, 500 megawatts of electricity could end up being produced using just geothermal water.
