Raba Peci never wanted air conditioning – the cold made people sick, he thought. Then this year a series of heat waves that hit the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica changed his mind.
“This year's summer is very hot and unbearable, that's why we decided to buy one (air conditioner) now.” he said while preparing special Turkish coffee for two workers who were installing a new AC unit in his house. The next door neighbor has already installed two units.
Many people in the Balkan region of Central Europe have long been distrustful of artificial cooling methods. In some areas, far from tourist attractions, people even avoid cold drinks and ice cream for fear of catching a cold.
But scorching summer temperatures such as those seen in recent weeks are changing that attitude, analysts said, as the available data also shows. That's good news for air conditioning suppliers.
But the increase in AC purchases has raised concerns about the impact of increased consumption on the region's fragile electricity grid.
“Air conditioning is a challenge for us because we always have high consumption during the winter and now we have a similar situation during the summer,” said Margarita Rashiti, a spokeswoman for Kosovo's energy supplier, Kesco.
On July 16, the company issued a warning to customers to limit electricity consumption due to the need to import one million euros worth of electricity per day from its neighboring country.
A month earlier, a surge in consumption during a heat wave likely triggered a massive power outage in Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and much of coastal Croatia, severely disrupting business activity and knocking out a series of traffic lights.
“The stress on the electricity grid due to the prolonged heat wave in the region contributed to this damage,” said Manos Manousakis, head of Greece's transmission operator IPTO, at the time.
Keep cool
According to experts, in the long term the countries in the Balkan region need to strengthen their electricity grids and increase domestic renewable energy production.
Bosnia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia rely on coal for electricity production, while Albania uses hydropower but relies on imports when rainfall decreases in the summer.
“This is a new situation, the network load becomes heavier in the summer months. The transport network in the region is old, the capacity is old,” said Mirza Kusljugic of the Regional Center for Sustainable Transitions.
Kosovo has seen a 400% increase in imports of air conditioning units in the past five years, according to customs data. Once used only by banks and businesses, the air conditioners are now operating in apartment buildings across the capital, Pristina.
“We're getting a lot of requests. We've even had requests to install up to four units in one house,” said Rinor Gashi, a manager at the local Interplast Group, which doubled its crew this year to meet increased demand.
For years Markovic Koviljka, an 86-year-old retiree in Belgrade, Serbia, avoided installing air conditioning in his apartment on the 16th floor of one of the city's famous skyscrapers.
But this summer, as heat waves continued to roll in and last July was the hottest in 70 years, she asked her daughter to buy her an air conditioner.
“I don't like air conditioning, because it uses too much electricity,” he said. “But I don't remember (when) the temperature was that high, even though I can remember a lot of things.” (rz/rs)
