​A United States Department of Energy laboratory will conduct a study this year that will show how we can use geothermal resources in the basement of Bucharest to heat the city. After receiving this information, Electrocentrale București (Elcen) will request European funds for the implementation of the project.

Elcen CEO Claudio Kretsu was part of an official delegation led by the Minister of Energy that went to Washington last week to expand partnerships in the sector.

One of the signed agreements concerns the implementation of a study that shows how geothermal resources in the basement of Bucharest can be used for hot water and heating.

“Considering that there has been no drilling in Bucharest for 20-30 years, and we have no experience in this, we wanted to use the help of other states that have experience and technology. We signed a research agreement to show the geothermal potential and the best way we can use this potential for Bucharest,” Kretsu told HotNews.ro.

Based on the data provided by Elcen, the research will be conducted by a laboratory at the United States Department of Energy, the equivalent of the Department of Energy.

“We know that there is potential, there are Terme, there are resources in the north of Bucharest, but we want to see exactly how we can use them. Research should be conducted during this year. The intention is that at the end of the year we will have this information, we will have a feasibility study, on the basis of which we will be able to apply for European funding through the Modernization Fund,” said the representative of Elcen.

Elcen currently operates four gas-fired CETs (electrical heating units).

The intention is that in the first phase it will use both technologies, geothermal and gas, and then gas will be phased out. The technology used may also come from the United States.

“We are definitely in the trend of the European Commission, which wants to transition from gas to renewable energy. Geothermal energy means energy security for Bucharest and Romania. It is a resource that we have and we can use it. And we will reduce dependence on gas.

This is exactly what the European Commission and the United States of America want. This is part of the renewable energy trend, which is financed by the European Commission,” Kretsu added.

With the technical and economic feasibility study, which the Americans did, it is much easier for us to get European funds, he believes.

Gigacalories could be cheaper

“This does not mean that we dream that after a year Bucharest will be heated by geothermal energy, especially since the temperature under Bucharest is not very high, we are not talking about 100 degrees, but about 40-50-60 degrees. But geothermal energy can be a very good contribution, especially in the summer when losses are high,” Elsen’s head told Hotnews.ro in November.

Advantages? Less gas consumption, decarbonization, green energy, lower price per gigacalorie for Bucharest residents.

He clarified that although the northern region of the capital seems richer, geothermal water resources will be in the entire basement of the capital, and new power plants can be built right on the site of the current CHPs.

In addition, the northern part of the capital is more deficient in terms of central heating, since all CHPs are located south of the city.

“There are large European cities that today use thermal energy from waste, from biomass, from heat pumps that store energy. We do not invent hot water. What we can do is to adapt existing, certified solutions to avoid these “green horses on the walls”. There are no green horses on the walls, there are solutions that work today in Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin or Munich,” Kretsu said.

In Romania, the city of Beyush is heated by geothermal energy, and its residents pay the cheapest gigacalories in the country. And in Oradea, part of the city uses land resources.

What resources are there in the north of the capital and who benefited from them

Ilfov County has an important resource that can be used for the development of innovative heat energy distribution systems. It concerns geothermal resources in the Otopeni reservoir, with an area of ​​more than 300 square kilometers, the largest such deposit in Romania, as shown in the document “County Development Strategy – Horizon 2030”.

These resources were also used until 1990 to power the centralized system in the town of Otopeni, and there was a thermal beach behind the Press House.

The system could be restarted with modern technologies, which could overcome some of the barriers encountered in the past (heaviness of wells, salt deposits on steel pipes, difficulties in operating thermal points or thermal discomfort for consumers, given the fact , that geothermal water can provide heating for buildings only at an outside temperature above -5 °C), the mentioned document further states.

Currently, only two major projects have been implemented in this area since the revolution.

It is about the transition of the heating system of the Emergency Clinical Hospital of the Agrippa Ionescu Research Institute in the municipality of Baloteşti from gas to a system based on geothermal energy, which costs 9.8 million lei, a project financed mainly from European funds.

Also in the area, the Austrian company A-Heat has built Therme, one of the largest wellness spa complexes in Europe, and plans to invest tens of millions more euros to significantly expand the complex in the coming years.

Read also Who laid eyes on geothermal resources in the north of the capital