Can the Reykjavík District Heating System (DHS) Be Used as a Model for a Rotorua Dhs? a Comparative Study

Abstract

The Rotorua geothermal field is managed by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council under the Resource Management Act and provisions of the Bay of Plenty Regional Policy Statement and the Rotorua Geothermal Regional Plan. The latter is currently being reviewed as is required every ten years by the Resource Management Act 1991. Feedback during initial community engagement stages of the review included questions around the potential for a district heating system (DHS) in Rotorua based on the experience of the Reykjavík DHS. This paper presents a high-level desktop study comparing the Rotorua and Reykjavík geothermal fields. Aspects such as historic background, current development model for the fields, statistics of use, funding, costs, government input and administration of the field are discussed. The Reykjavík DHS was a pioneer engineering work which changed the way Icelanders lived. It evolved over decades of trial and error and significant governmental support. The Icelandic DHS suited perfectly a country with heat demand year-round and abundant geothermal resources, but a limited variety of other indigenous heating and energy options. Incommensurable differences between Reykjavík and Rotorua cities and access to the geothermal resource make the Icelandic DHS unsuitable for Rotorua. Some obstacles are technical, and while these could be overcome, solutions would be complex and costly, possibly making the system economically infeasible. Several other issues for a Rotorua DHS were greatly simplified with the Reykjavík municipality offering the utility service. The geothermal resource in Rotorua could be more efficiently and equitably utilised for residential space heating. However it is expected that better results would be achieved by fine-tuning the Rotorua Geothermal Regional Plan according to the local settings than replicating the Reykjavík DHS in Rotorua.