GEOTHERMAL DEVELOPMENT IN ICELAND 1995-1999

Geothermal energy plays an important role in the energy supply of Iceland. It provides about 50% of the total primary energy supply while the share of hydropower is 18%, oil 30% and coal 2%. The principle use of geothermal energy in Iceland is for space heating; about 86% of all energy used for house heating comes from geothermal resources. The share of geothermal heating is still slowly growing. A recent development is a 7 MWt district heating scheme for the village Stykkisholmur which started operation in 1999. An expansion in the energy intensive industry in Iceland the last years has increased the electricity demand considerably. This has been met partly by increased geothermally produced electricity. A second turbine unit, 30MWe, was installed at Krafla power plant in 1997, bringing the capacity of the plant up to 60 MWe. At Nesjavellir high temperature field, Reykjavik District Heating (now Reykjavik Energy) has been operating a plant producing hot water since 1990. In 1998 the plant was expanded by installation of two turbine units for electricity generation with a total capacity of 60 MWe. The Svartsengi co-generation power plant has been expanded and partly reconstructed. After the installation of a new 30 MWe unit for electricity generation in late 1999 the installed capacity of the plant is 200 MWt for hot water production and 45 MWe for electricity generation. Thus the total capacity of geothermal power plants in the country has increased from 50 MWe to 170 MWe in about two years time. In 1999 15.8% of the total electricity generation in the country was based on geothermal energy. The paper gives a summary of the main utilization sectors for geothermal energy which besides space heating and electricity generation are: swimming pools, snow melting, industrial uses, greenhouses and fish farming. Figure 1 showes how the uses are devided on the different utilization sectors.