Geothermal District Heating in Reykjavík, Iceland

Abstract

Geothermal district heating started on a small scale in Reykjavík in 1930. Today it serves more than half of the nation's population with hot water for heating. Orkuveita Reykjavíkur operates the largest municipal district heating service in the world. The harnessed power of the geothermal areas is about 700 MW thermal. Annually, about 60 million cubic meters of hot water flow through the Utility's distribution system. From 1998 electricity has been co-generated from geothermal steam along with hot water for heating. About 70% of the energy used for district heating comes from lowtemperature geothermal fields the other from high temperature geothermal resources.