PRISTINA/BELGRADE - Raba Peci never wanted air conditioning - the cold air made people sick, she thought. Then this year a string of heatwaves in her town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo finally changed her mind.

"This summer is very hot and unbearable and that's why we decided to buy one now," she said as she prepared Turkish coffee for two workers who were installing a new unit in her home. Her next door neighbour already had two put in.

Many in the Balkans region of central Europe have long mistrusted artificial cooling methods. In some areas, away from the tourist hot spots, people even avoid chilled drinks and ice cream for fear of catching a cold.

Blistering summer temperatures like the ones seen this week are altering those attitudes, analysts say and data show. That is good news for air conditioning suppliers.

But it is raising concerns about the impact of growing consumption on a fragile power grid.

"Air conditioning is a challenge for us because we always had high consumption during winter and now we have a similar situation during summer," Margarita Rashiti, a spokesperson for Kosovo energy supplier Kesco, said.

On July 16 the company issued a warning to customers to limit power consumption because it was having to import one million euros' worth of power per day from its neighbours.

One month earlier, a spike in consumption during a heatwave likely helped trigger a major power outage across Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and most of Croatia's coast, disrupting businesses and shutting down traffic lights.

"The stress that the power grids had already received due to the prolonged heatwave in the region contributed to the occurrence of this damage," the head of the Greek transmission operator IPTO, Manos Manousakis, said at the time.

KEEPING COOL

Long term, countries will need to strengthen their grids and increase domestic renewables output, experts say.

Bosnia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia rely on coal for electricity production. Albania uses hydropower but relies on imports when rainfall dips in summer.

"This is a new situation, heavy network load in summer months. The transport network is old, the capacities are old," Mirza Kusljugic of the Regional Center for Sustainable Transition said.

Kosovo has seen a 400% increase in air conditioning unit imports in the past five years, customs data show. Once the preserve of banks and businesses, they now hum from apartment buildings across the capital Pristina.

"We are having enormous number of requests. We are even having requests to install up to four units in one house," said Rinor Gashi, a manager at local Interplast Group who this year doubled the number of crews to meet soaring demand.

For years Markovic Koviljka, an 86-year old pensioner in Belgrade, avoided air conditioning in her apartment on the 16th floor in one of the city's landmark skyscrapers.

But this summer, as the heatwaves kept coming and July was the hottest in 70 years, she asked her daughter to buy her a unit.

"I do not like air conditioning, it consumes too much electricity," she said. "However, I cannot remember such high temperatures, and I remember a lot."

  - Reuters