Energy transition – All of Unterhaching should be able to use district heating – Munich district

On September 11, 2001, the Unterhaching municipal council made an epoch-making decision when it decided to start using geothermal energy. The decision made by the committee on Wednesday is no less sensational: by 2027, the district heating network of the municipality, which is fed with geothermal energy, is to be completely expanded and every interested party is to be guaranteed a connection to deep heat.

It is an extremely ambitious project that Mayor Wolfgang Panzer (SPD) and the managing director of the municipal geothermal company (GTU), Wolfgang Geisinger, presented in a press conference on Thursday. Not only in terms of the costs, which are expected to amount to a total of 70 million, of which the GTU will have to raise around 30 million euros through loans, for which the municipality will vouch.

Above all, it is also a technical challenge that the people from Unterhaching are facing. If the district heating network is to be fully expanded in five years and the municipality is to be climate-neutral by 2030, then GTU will have to quadruple the number of new connections from the previous 75 per year. But Wolfgang Geisinger believes he has found a clever solution that could possibly serve as a blueprint for other geothermal communities: a concept for short distances with connections for almost half of the 950 terraced houses in Unterhaching.

The geothermal company has a new concept to make the connection quicker and cheaper

Only the first apartment of the terraced houses will then be accessible from the street, the following in the row will be supplied with geothermal heat via a so-called subnetwork from cellar to cellar. This would not only make everything go faster, but would also reduce the costs by two thirds compared to a single connection to 3,500 euros per connection, of which the municipality would pay 1,000. “And roads would not have to be constantly torn up,” says Geisinger, who sees the GTU in a pioneering role here.

The fact that the community decided on Wednesday to do this tour de force is largely due to the much better framework conditions for geothermal energy in Germany. For example, due to the significantly higher state support as part of the federal funding program for efficient buildings (BEG) and for efficient heating networks (BEW), the latter of which is still in preparation. Wolfgang Geisinger therefore attaches importance to the statement that the decision to fully expand the district heating networks in Unterhaching is still subject to the proviso that the BEW is passed in Berlin.

But the war in Ukraine and its effects on the global energy market also play a role. The confidence of Panzer and Geisinger is therefore also based on a significantly increased interest in the population in a connection to geothermal energy. “Customers have been kicking our doors in for two months,” reports Geisinger, more inquiries have been received in the eight weeks than in a whole year.

In addition to the 55 kilometers of district heating network, a further 16.5 kilometers of pipes have to be laid

But anyone who thinks that they will soon have a geothermal connection to their house will have to be disappointed. In some cases, customers would have to wait until 2027 before it was their turn, explains the GTU boss. The geothermal company has drawn up a fixed schedule for the new development of routes, so that everyone can see when they can expect a connection. A further 16.5 kilometers will be added to the existing 55 kilometers of heating line between 2024 and 2027.

Although the expansion of the district heating network will not burden the municipal budget, it is based on outside capital and federal funding measures; However, the status of the expansion is presented to the municipal council every six months, “with maximum transparency,” as Geisinger says.

A first version erroneously spoke of 16,500 kilometers of pipeline network, but in fact it is 16,500 meters, i.e. 16.5 kilometers.

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