Geothermal Energy Use, Country Update for Serbia

Abstract

The territory of Serbia has favourable geothermal characteristics. Excluding Pannonian basin, there are 159 natural springs of thermal water with temperature above 15 oC, with total flow 4000 l/s. In Pannonian basin there are 81 hydrogeothermal drill holes with total average flow of about 700 l/s, and water temperature that ranges from 21 to 82 oC . According to the recent data in Serbia in 2015 515.94 GWth was produced from geothermal sources with total capacity 123.89 MWth, where 487.75 GWth was in geothermal direct use with thermal capacity 111.07 MWth, and 28.19 GWth from shallow geothermal systems using heat pumps of total capacity 12.82 MWth. There is a growing interest in using the geothermal energy from shallow systems using heat pumps since these systems are less expensive and more secure comparing to deep hydrogeothermal systems. Republic of Serbia has as well obliged to apply EU Directives about renewable energy sources and set the scope to increase total share of all renewable energy sources in gross final energy consumption to 27%, by the end of 2020