The Prague water management company will start preparing the construction of the so-called energy center. In the future, this is supposed to use the heat obtained from waste water for heating for approximately 200 thousand people. The project is intended to reduce the city’s dependence on heat, which until now has been obtained by burning fossil fuels.
“The big benefit is that we have a giant energy source of heat here, which, if we are able to extend it to Prague, we are really able to cover the consumption of up to 83,000 households, more than 200,000 people, and that too in an environmentally friendly way,” he said. councilor of the capital city, Michal Hroza (TOP 09).
The Energocentrum is supposed to be able, with the help of exchangers, to obtain excess heat from the wastewater processed at the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant on Císařská ostrov. Prague would thus reduce its dependence on gas and on the Mělník lignite power plant, which currently heats a large part of Prague’s households.
“The outlook is that it should start operating by 2030, at the same time with the energy center as part of the process that awaits us now, so of course there is a possibility of its gradual launch,” added Hroza.
,,We have to connect it all the way to Holešovice to the heating plant and from there also make the jumper across the Hlávkův bridge, so that it can be taken, because if I produce heat, I also have to get the heat to the customers, that’s why the collectors play a vital role there and will exceed thanks to that and with the channels we will still need for this, it will exceed a billion crowns,” added Zdeněk Kovářík (ODS), the capital’s councilor for finance.
Building our own heat sources is part of the climate strategy that the city approved in 2021.
“It is the way in which we would like to take advantage of the temperature difference at the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant, when the wastewater is over 15 degrees all year round, and thanks to a system of powerful heat pumps with an output of up to twice ninety megawatts, we are able to increase that temperature to 110 degrees and thereby supplying it to the central heat supply system,” explained councilor Hroza.
The metropolis is largely dependent on the heat from Mělník, which is generated by the unecological burning of coal. About 230,000 Prague households are currently heated by district heating, another 90,000 use electricity, 210,000 use local gas boilers, and another 40,000 use block gas boilers.
