Utilization of shallow geothermal energy in Kosovo focusing on ground source heat pump domestic installation

Abstract

The territory of Kosovo has a low potential of geothermal energy resource, including high enthalpy and intermediate enthalpy, but some areas as the Municipality of Peja have a low potential enthalpy of geothermal resource with temperature range of 50-100C. There are many places in Kosovo which are easy to found with the temperature range of 20- 70C, but up to now the geothermal energy has been used only for recreation and healing purposes (Report on The State of Water, 2015). During the last 5 years, Kosovos government has made small investment for prefeasibility and feasibility studies about some regions related to opportunities of using geothermal energy with low enthalpy, but until today there has not been any published results. This kind of investigations are made in order to find the possibility of building district heating for small municipalities or areas, but in order to build the district heating, some barriers are encountered because Kosovo has laws on Public Private Partnership (PPP) but unfortunately are not very functional. High potential of development for using low enthalpy geothermal energy comes from private sector by using ground/water or water/water systems in their own homes or companies but actually there is not any support scheme from government for private sector investments. The heat pump market is growing very fast, not only in Kosovo or region but all over EU countries. The efficency of heat pump is much higher compared to previous years because of inverter technology and also the price of heat pumps has dropped compared to 10 years ago. Additionally, the market is growing for air/water heat pump but the same does not apply for ground/water or water/water. In the center region of Kosovo, there are lots of possibilities to use water/water system with a low investment because the ground water is only 1.5 m under the Earths surface. The implementation of project with renewable energy depends on the heat loss of building; the buildings must have a good insulation and windows with doors must have the lowest coefficient of transmission. If the heat loss of buildings is more than 80 W/m2, the investment is not profitable. The heat pump used as a source ground, water and air. The first highest efficiency heat pump is the type of water/water system because the source has constant and high temperature. The second is ground/water system where the temperature is constant but is lower. The third is air/water system where the temperature variation is between -25C to 40C and the source is variable. Based on the respond test, it has been concluded that in location of Prishtina/Hajvali, in the depth of 130 m with borehole heat exchanger with type double U - the average value of heat flux is around 45 W/m. For more information, in Kosovo there are more than 300 units of heat pumps with range from 8 kW up to 3 MW. In contrast, more than 1000 pcs with unit of heat pump by using air as a source have been installed. Heat pump that uses water as a source has very low number of installations because of low water quanitity. Taking into consideration that Kosovo is not able to have network access for natural gas, there is small possibility to use other sources. An important fact is that society in Kosovo has various information and is familiar with heat pumps as a part of renewable energy. They are highly interested to save money in their investment thereby choosing to invest in renewable energy for their homes or companies. However, there are many barriers for making big investments in renewable energy since Kosovos government is working so slow in the field of using it. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that there are some grants from EBARDEuropean Bank which reduces 15% from the total value of investment, if investor takes a loan in bank for installation of renewable energy for its home or business.