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September 25, 2009
Hungary's new geothermal home heating utility reached an important milestone - drilling was completed for the first geothermal well in the town of Szentlörinc, Southwest Hungary. When completed, this project will support home heating for a total of 30 municipalities in Hungary.
Budapest, Hungary (PRWEB) September 22, 2009 - - Last week, an important milestone for Hungary's new geothermal home heating utility was reached - drilling was completed for the first geothermal well. The first well, in the town of Szentlörinc, Southwest Hungary, will be part of a series that will provide hot water and heating for the surrounding area. Additional wells will be drilled in other areas, supporting home heating for a total of 30 municipalities in Hungary.
The developer of the project is the privately owned Pannergy of Hungary, with Mannvit Engineering of Iceland supplying the engineering consulting. When complete, the project will provide heating for at least 70,000 homes and a new source of electricity - at a cost of between €350-500 million.
Initial tests and capacity measurements of the 1820 meter well at Szentlörinc are positive and indicate that the production of the well will be as planned. Without mechanical assistance, the well produces 5-10 liters/second of water in excess of 80ºC. With pumping, production increases to more than 20 liters/second. Further tests are ongoing, including laboratory testing of the mineral composition of the water, which will be used to heat homes is Szentlörinc. In total, 50 - 70 wells are planned in Hungary.
Sigurður Lárus Hólm, project manager at Mannvit kft., Mannvit's Hungarian office, said of the milestone: "This is the first time in Hungary that a well has been drilled through a sedimentary layer to a reservoir in a fault zone at a depth of almost 2 km, where the purpose is to get hot water for space heating."
The key to the selection of the well location is understanding both the results of pre-existing data from prior mining efforts in the area and Mannvit's own testing. When the combined data was interpreted, the results indicated the presence of a fault zone at the Szentlörinc location - ideal conditions for a geothermal well. Drilling into a fault zone is a technology that has been developed in Iceland for decades, this project brings the experience and technology to Hungary.
This project builds on a long tradition of geothermal heat utilisation in Hungary, particularly in connection with health spas. Hungarians have extensive experience in drilling of wells both for water and oil and gas exploration. This presents an ideal scenario for grafting Mannvit's experience in geothermal development in Iceland onto the existing knowledge of the field in Hungary so as to build up a base for the company's operations in Europe. Projects handled by Mannvit kft, are mostly connected with the harnessing of geothermal energy, but the company has also undertaken work in other technical fields.
In the beginning of the project, Mannvit completed geological and geophysical testing over all of Hungary, followed by more detailed testing at specific locations to determine actual well locations. Site-specific work included well design and drilling supervision as well as design of utility integration. The local drilling contractor is Aquaplus.
In 2008, Mannvit opened the Mannvit kft, office in Budapest and now employs eleven Hungarian engineers and specialists. In addition to handling work in Hungary, Mannvit kft, is actively working on projects in Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovia, Romania, Greece and Turkey.
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