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Administrative building of Fronius

The rapid growth of the company meant that the administrative building of the company Fronius in Sattledt, Austria, had to be expanded – as part of this expansion, the decision was made to use geothermal energy exclusively for heating.

Regenerative energy provides heat to administrative building thanks to Geopress

Energy for 100,000 years on the basis of current consumption. Delivered directly from the region. That sounds almost too good to be true. Yet this potential is hidden in the top three kilometres of the Earth's crust as geothermal heat. Of course this is a theoretical and not a technically feasible value. However, precisely this resource is being used by the company Fronius for the extension of its administrative building in the Upper Austrian municipality of Sattledt.

Geothermal energy is harvested from the fine sandy earth with a high water content via 25 double-U earth probes at depths of up to 150 metres. This covers all the heating requirements of the new part of the building. 

Installation regardless of weather conditions

The economic drilling of the earth probes resulted from the soil conditions and drilling depth. This efficiency continued with the connections using the Geopress piping system: On the one hand, due to the pressing technology the Geopress system can be employed regardless of the weather conditions. On the other hand, special connectors are available – here Y-couplings made of gunmetal – which means welding is no longer necessary for installation and, instead, the connection can be created by pressing which is significantly quicker.

As is generally known, with PE welding the construction trench and installation materials have to be as dry as possible. Drying, however, can take a lot of time. With the Geopress connectors neither this nor transportation of the welding equipment is necessary. Pressing with the handy rechargeable press tools is also far more quickly and the connections can be subjected to loading immediately. This is a major advantage with so many pipe connections as on this geothermal field.

Through the use of Y-pieces the number of connecting lines could be halved. The gunmetal connector from the Geopress range is used directly at the junction between the probe pipe and the horizontal connecting lines. It thus brings the flow and return lines from the probe to a single connection pipeline. This results in major cost savings when it comes to civil engineering works and pipe material between the probe and the collector. 

Object Administrative building of Fronius
Location Sattledt, Austria
Year 2011
Object Type New building
Area of use Commercial
Installation Baugrund Süd Gesellschaft für Geothermie mbH, Bad Wurzach (D)
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