Geovol shows how heat conversion works

12.09.2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews

The Bavarian municipality of Unterföhring is a pioneer in the heat transition. There was already implemented with the help of geothermal energy, what others still have ahead of them in the municipal heat planning.

In the Bavarian municipality of Unterföhring near Munich, the municipal district heating supplier, Geovol Unterföhring GmbH, was able to reach an important milestone this year. The entire municipality is now connected to the district heating network," says a delighted managing director Peter Lohr in an interview with E&M. "We are very pleased with the results. But the boss does not want to be satisfied with that: The existing district heating net is to be compressed in the next years depending upon demand further.

In addition Geovol wants to offer commercial customers apart from geothermal warmth in the future also strengthened cold. The company has already gathered initial experience: Already since 2015, two office buildings of the broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 are reliably cooled with a geothermally driven absorption chiller. The adult education center in Unterföhring and the Geovol headquarters itself have also been air-conditioned for years using a geothermally powered chiller.

For him and the municipality, the law on municipal heat planning is therefore no longer necessary, says Lohr. In Unterföhring, he says, the huge task of implementing a climate-neutral heat supply for the community has been mastered in recent years. On the Geovol boss's wish list for policy are other points that he would like to see changed - not only for himself, but so that other communities will also opt for geothermal energy. At the example of the Geovol it shows however also: Communities need for the conversion of a heat supply a long breath.

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Last year, the added connected load in Unterföhring was 12 MW - higher than any year before. "In view of the rapidly rising prices for fossil energies, the interest in connecting to district heating was extraordinarily high last year, so that the waiting times for new customers were sometimes over half a year," Sohr recounts. The Ukraine war certainly had a big effect, he says, but demand had already been rising beforehand. "Especially in these troubled times, security of supply is a great asset," the managing director emphasizes. "Our heat supply is based on domestic geothermal energy and therefore makes us as good as independent of energy imports."

The company not only benefits from the fact that geothermal energy is mostly viewed positively by the population in Bavaria. "We are a community with dense development. Nothing is far apart. We also have what we consider a good mix of private homes and large commercial enterprises," explains Lohr. That is ideal for a district heating supplier like Geovol.

In total, the connected load in Unterföhring is now currently 75 MW, and the potential is around 110 MW. This wants to have reached the municipality also to 95 per cent until 2030. Compared with the year 2012 that is a tripling: At that time the connecting power had amounted to still approximately 23 MW.

Among the new customers many private households were, tells Lohr. But also some large commercial customers like the alliance, which let connect a further office building to the geothermal district heating net. In order to supply the building with its 2,500 employees with sufficient heat and hot water, a connected load of 4.4 MW was installed there. In total, the 100 percent subsidiary of the municipality of Unterföhring currently supplies more than 70 commercial units and around 3,800 households.

The massive upheavals in the market for fossil energies, however, also had an impact on costs, for example because the district heating supplier operates two combined heat and power plants for generating its own electricity using gas. But material prices also rose noticeably. Therefore, Geovol also had to raise its prices more significantly than in previous years.

For a private household with a maximum connected load of 15 kW and a heat consumption of 25 MWh per year, the gross heat price rose by around 25 percent. "This is very regrettable, but the increase was still at the lower edge of the energy price control. In addition, our heat prices are still significantly lower than those of other district heating providers in the region," says Lohr. "We are still perceived as moderate."

To avoid price increases like this in the future as far as possible, the company is considering replacing the CHP unit with a large-scale heat pump. So that the river needed for it can be likewise produced, Geovol wants to install starting from next year on the operating area Photovoltaikanlagen.

For the mitigation of the price increases the Federal Government passed in the past year an emergency assistance and a price brake law. As "emergency aid" the costs for the down payments of the district heating customers in December were taken over once by the federation. The price brake, in turn, provides for a cap on energy prices with retroactive effect from January 2023. With Geovol the working price lies in the normal tariff however anyway under the national price cap of 9,5 cent per kilowatt-hour, so that the price brake for the customers of the local supplier does not come usually at all to the effect.

Of the policy the Geovol boss would wish itself that already for some time of the geothermal industry criticized points are finally addressed. "One important point would be for the federal government to take away the discovery risk for drilling from the municipalities." That, he says, is one of the biggest hurdles for projects of this kind. Lohr also urges that regulatory approval processes be simplified. This also includes better coordination between authorities. This is not always the case, especially with deep geothermal projects.

And as a third point, he would welcome it if companies like Geovol could offset CO2 savings. "For the natural gas of the combined heat and power plants, we also have to buy expensive certificates. But the fact that we avoid many thousands of tons of CO2 year after year with geothermal energy, we can not counterbalance."

He also sees the obligation for municipal heat planning as important - even if it no longer has any relevance for Unterföhring. "The heat turnaround must, after all, be achieved from within the municipalities," says Lohr. And you need an insanely long breath, especially financially. The plant in Unterföhring has been supplying heat since 2009, but the municipal company has not yet made a profit. The boss expects this to happen in around two to three years. "Then finally also the treasurer of the municipality is pleased."

Geovol Unterföhring

Geovol Unterföhring GmbH was founded in 2007 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the municipality of Unterföhring north of Munich. Until the end of 2015, the company was both the development and operating company for the use of geothermal heat in Unterföhring. Geovol drilled two production wells (2009/2014). Since the completion of the second energy center in 2015, the company has focused on its role as a local heat supplier.

Unterföhring, like Munich, is located in the area of the Northern Alpine Molasse Basin, a region between the Danube and the Alps that is particularly well suited for geothermal energy. With its district heating network, Geovol supplies heating for residential buildings as well as commercial and public facilities. Thermal water temperatures range between 84 and 93 degrees Celsius. Altogether the supplier invested since its establishment approximately 100 million euro.

Author: Heidi Roider

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