A trench about 2.60 m wide and 1.60 m deep, a pipe of roughly 40 cm diameter, and a road closed until 18 December: that is how the Bavarian town of Burghausen started building its geothermal heat supply. Energieversorgung Burghausen (EBG) began laying its first district heating pipe on Marktler Straße on 9 November, the town announced on 6 November.
The first section covers about 480 route metres, of which about 160 m are to be laid this year. The civil works are carried out by a construction firm under contract to EBG, and the municipal Stadtwerke renews a water main in the same stretch. Work is to continue from mid-January 2027, weather permitting, towards Badhöringer Straße and Robert-Koch-Straße. The town brought the start forward to fit in with construction around the Salzachzentrum and the new Campus quarter, so that the same road is not dug up twice.
Where the heat is to come from
The pipe is the town end of a larger plan. EBG, owned jointly by the town and Energie Südbayern, approved an investment of €27 million on 6 August, Energynews reported at the time, partly on the strength of early connection commitments from future customers. Banks were still to be approached and a federal subsidy application was to follow.
The heat source is the geothermal site at Halsbach, run by Naturwärme Kirchweidach-Halsbach. According to the town's project page, which reflects planning as of July 2024, a transmission pipeline of about 10 km is to bring the heat to a transfer point in the Bergham district, and two existing EBG heat networks are to be connected. The same page planned first customers for 2026/2027; the current releases speak of building in stages without a new date.
Ten kilometres before the first customer
Geothermal schemes like this one are decided by pipe, not by the well. The source already exists; what costs time is the transmission line, the agreements with landowners and getting enough buildings signed up to justify each new street.
At the customer end, every connection is an indirect substation with a heat exchanger that separates the network water from the building's own circuit, much as in Kutno, where the geothermal brine is kept apart at the plant. In a network that grows street by street, it pays to standardise those substations early, so that a gasketed plate heat exchanger in the first building takes the same plates and gaskets as the one in the fiftieth.
Sources: Stadt Burghausen, Stadt Burghausen (works notice), Energynews, Stadt Burghausen (project page)
