The day of the first drilling west of the A99 was September 12, 2008. Since then, each of the three municipalities has contributed 20 million euros to the project. © Bb
15 years ago, a trio of municipalities in the east of the district drilled for the first time for the hot water from the depths. Today, an expansion of geothermal energy is being discussed, but it will be expensive.
Kirchheim – The Ukraine war has made fossil fuels enormously more expensive. Since then, PV systems have been booming, and plans for wind turbines are progressing throughout Bavaria. In addition, there is a great demand for geothermal energy. In 2001, the first people in the district to use hot water as an energy supply were the people of Unterschleissheim. In Aschheim, AFK Geothermie GmbH began drilling in 2008. That was almost 15 years ago; now new, expensive boreholes are to follow quickly.
The first city in Bavaria to use geothermal energy for heat supply was Erding in 1983. Actually, they drilled for oil and found 2350 degrees hot water at a depth of 65 meters. A good 15 percent of Erding's heat demand is covered by it, and more than a million tourists are attracted to the spa and some of them to the city every year. In the district of Munich, the Unterschleissheim team was the pioneer in 2002, at a depth of 2000 meters they encountered water at 80 degrees at just under 100 liters of bulk per second. Aschheim, Feldkirchen and Kirchheim merged in 2007 to form AFK-Geothermie GmbH, driven by Aschheim's former mayor Helmut Englmann (CSU), while colleagues Heinz Hilger (VFW) from Kirchheim and Leonhard Baumann (CSU) from Feldkirchen took part.
Drilling committee: the three mayors, the priests and the technical managers for the first drilling. © Bb
However, citizen surveys in all three municipalities showed a great deal of interest in clean energy from the depths, despite the costs of around 80 million euros over the next 20 years, which were already forecast at the time. "But it didn't go completely smoothly," recalls Alois Spies, a former Kirchheim community archivist. A number of citizen information events and municipal council meetings were necessary to convince the numerous skeptics. "The experts told us that the water was not hot enough, that it had too little pressure and that nature would be destroyed in the process. Fortunately, things turned out differently," says Spies. However, many Kirchheimers are annoyed, including him, who was promised a geothermal connection and who still do not have one.
On 12 September 2008, the first borehole was drilled west of the A99 motorway in Aschheim. In November, the drilling company reached the depth of 2630 meters, the water had a temperature of 85.7 degrees Celsius and flows upwards at 75 liters per second. Not quite to the surface, but at least up to about 200 meters below the earth's crust, from where pumps push it upwards.
Today, the local heating network is 90 kilometres long and 1500 consumers are connected. © Bb
Since October 2009, the AFK energy centre has been supplying the towns of Aschheim, Dornach, Feldkirchen, Heimstetten, Kirchheim and Hausen with district heating. Today, the district heating network is a good 90 kilometres long and supplies around 1500 households, commercial enterprises and municipal buildings. So far, each municipality has paid 20 million euros into the company – but now the capacity limit has been reached. Above all, the new development areas in Kirchheim have a lot of thirst for hot water. Two new wells are needed, and the cost of this, without grid expansion, would be at least 25 million euros. But even then, the three municipalities can only cover a third of their heating needs with district heating.
You can find more news from the district of Munich here.