| Abstract |
The municipality of Benedikt and the town with the same name, are situated in north-eastern Slovenia, at the south-western margins of the Pannonian basin (the Mura Basin), not far from the Austrian-Slovenian frontier. The municipality encompasses an area of 24 km2 and has 2.147 inhabitants. Annual energy consumption amounts to 15 GWh (4 GWh of electricity and 11 GWh of heat from other energy sources, mainly biomass (7 GWh). Half of the municipality's inhabitants live in the town of Benedikt. The town's annual heat consumption amounts to 4 GWh, and is assured from diverse energy sources. Today, the biomass share is 42 %, and it is used mainly in individual boilers. The remaining 58 % are classic energy sources, and the aim of the planned project is to replace them with a sustainable geothermal energy source. The final goal of the project is to attain "zero emission" in the town area in "green electricity" for the whole municipality. In the year 2004, the first of three planned geothermal wells was constructed and it proved the existence of an aquifer at a depth of 1800-1900 m. The whole project consists of two geothermal power plants having a total power of 5 MWe, and two heating stations having a capacity of 12.5 MWth. Planned annual electricity production amounts to 35000 MWhe at the price of 59 Ä/MWh, The heat would be further used for district heating, and in the last cascade before reinjection, for heating of greenhouses. Final planned capacity of the district heating station is 2.5 MWth of installed power with annual production of 4100 MWhth of heat at the price of 34.7 Ä/MWh, and for greenhouse heating station 10 MW of installed power with annual production of 18000 MWh of heat at the price of 15 Ä/MWh. Simple pay back time is calculated to be 5-6 years. |