The Croatian concessionaire of Zagreb’s geothermal field, GPC Instrumentation Process, aims to provide a university student dormitory in Zagreb with 10.7 GWh/y of heating energy, the company told Montel on Friday.

The contract with Zagreb university’s administrative office Studentski Centar for the Stjepan Radic Student Dormitory will soon be signed, after which construction work will commence, said GPC’s manager Vladimir Cazin in an e-mailed statement.

This means that GPC will more than double its output from geothermal sources this year, as Cazin told Montel that the company had produced 9,5 GWh of heating energy in 2021.

GPC holds the concession for the exploitation of geothermal water from the Zagreb geothermal field, which covers a 54 km² area in the city’s southwest and has 13 exploitation or injection wells.

The water temperature in Zagreb’s geothermal field is about 80 degrees Celsius, which is not sufficient to produce electricity.

Cazin said that Studentski Centar had only recently decided to replace the fossil fuel-based heating it received from the state-owned company HEP-Toplinarstvo with a renewable energy source. The price of a megawatt hour of heating energy from geothermal water is HRK 280/MWh (EUR 37.34/MWh) for public institutions and businesses, which is almost 10% cheaper than HEP-Toplinarstvo’s price.

Croatia’s capital Zagreb has a plentiful supply of geothermal energy which could potentially provide 20.41 MW of heating capacity, according to Cazin. However, it is only currently being used for heating by the Mladost swimming pools and a nearby kinesiology faculty, as well as by some businesses in the southern suburbs of Blato and Lucko.

In 2023, GPC Instrumentation Process is planning to provide 2 GWh/y of geothermal energy for the heating of storage areas and working spaces in two locations belonging to the MC Plus Lucko construction company.

It also hopes to develop a major thermal baths project called Terme Zagreb in the Blato suburb which will provide 5 GWh/y of heating energy. In that investment of around EUR 15m, GPC will cooperate with Icelandic company EFLA Consulting Engineers, said Cazin.

(EUR 1= HRK 7.49)