Hungary renewable electricity production

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

is a member of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

and thus takes part in the EU strategy to increase its share of

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

. The EU has adopted the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive, which included a 20% renewable energy target by 2020 for the EU.EU Energy Policy to 2050
EWEA March 2011 By 2030 wind should produce in average 26-35% of the EU's electricity and save Europe €56 billion a year in avoided fuel costs. The national authors of Hungary forecast is 14.7% renewables in gross energy consumption by 2020, exceeding their 13% binding target by 1.7 percentage points. Hungary is the EU country with the smallest forecast penetration of renewables of the electricity demand in 2020, namely only 11% (including

biomass Biomass is a term used in several contexts: in the context of ecology it means living organisms, and in the context of bioenergy it means matter from recently living (but now dead) organisms. In the latter context, there are variations in how ...

6% and

wind power Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity ge ...

3%).

Statistics

In 2015, 10.5% of the gross Hungarian electricity production came from renewables, 52% of that amount was from biomass, 22% was from wind, 7% was from hydroenergy and 3% was from solar. Renewable energy in Hungary by type (2016):

Wind power

The national forecast included 400 MW of new

capacity between 2010 and 2020. EWEA's 2009 forecast expected Hungary to reach 1.2 GW of installed wind capacity in this time. In the end of 2010 wind power capacity was 295 MW. However, since 2010, no further wind energy tenders were accepted. In 2016, the Hungarian government banned the installation of new wind energy capacities with administrative measures. The current capacity of wind power in

is 329 MW.

Solar power

The Hungarian solar power generation is rapidly advancing, although from a small basis. By the end of 2015 Hungary had installed more than 110 megawatt (MW) of

photovoltaics Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commerciall ...

. The country's capacity is expected to double in 2016. By the end of 2019 Hungary had installed more than 1277 megawatt (MW) of

. As of the third quarter of 2020, the installed solar power capacity was 1920 MW. This is about the same as the only Paks NPP in Hungary, which generates 2000 MW or 50% of the electricity generated in Hungary. As of October 2021, the installed solar power capacity was 2728 MW. As of 2023, the installed solar power capacity was 5835 MW. As of 2023, solar energy accounted for 18.4% of the country's total electricity production.

Hydro power

Located in the Carpathian basin, Hungary has limited access to hydroelectricity. Since the unfortunate case of the Gabčíkovo–Nagymaros Dams project, the building of hydroelectric dams is extremely unpopular in the Hungarian society. The existing Croatian plans of building new dams on the shared sections of the river

Drava The Drava or Drave (, ; ; ; ; ), historically known as the Dravis or Dravus, is a river in southern Central Europe.

are rejected by the Hungarian government. Hungary's two largest hydroelectric dams (Tiszalök, Kisköre) are built on the river

Tisza The Tisza, Tysa or Tisa (see below) is one of the major rivers of Central and Eastern Europe. It was once called "the most Hungarian river" because it used to flow entirely within the Kingdom of Hungary. Today, it crosses several national bo ...

, with 12,5 MW and 28 MW capacities, respectively. The remaining power stations are usually former mills transformed to small hydroelectric dams.

Geothermal power

Geothermal energy is widely used in Hungary for the heating of homes and industrial areas. The Miskolc Geothermal Project (45 MW) wins GeoPower Market’s international award: “Best Heating Project 2013”. The PannErgy Group and Győr-Szol Zrt., geothermal energy (46 MW) provide approximately 40 percent of the total heat requirement of nearly 24 thousand homes and more than a thousand other customers in the Győr district heating system. In addition, the energy output of the Bőny heat center provides at least 80 percent of the heating energy used by Audi Hungaria Zrt’s factory complex in Győr. The Szentlőrinc Geothermal System consists of a production well and a reinjection well, pipelines connecting the wells with the heat center, as well as the engineering, power, and control engineering facilities in the latter. The system transfers heat from its heating plant to the distribution heating network through 3 heat exchanger units, each with a capacity of 4.6 MW. A power plant using geothermal energy, located in Tura, has electrical production of 2.3 MW gross and 1.3 MW net. Construction on a geothermal project in

Szeged Szeged ( , ; see also #Etymology, other alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat ...

began in 2022, with 27 wells and 16 heating plants. The project is promoted as "Europe's biggest urban heating system overhaul." It will serve 27 000 flats and 400 non-residential consumers.

References

{{Renewable energy by country