District heating in Magdeburg

The waste that the local authorities or businesses deliver to the MHKW Rothensee every day is thermally processed and converted into electricity and district heat by means of combined heat and power generation. The district heat is a by-product and is actually the so-called “waste heat” from the incineration process. The MHKW Rothensee currently generates 350,000 MWh of district heat for more than 44,000 households and businesses in the city of Magdeburg. The district heat is fed into the network of the public utility company Städtische Werke Magdeburg GmbH & Co. KG, where it travels underground through well-insulated pipes to reach its recipients. The amount of district heat produced by the waste-to-energy plant represents a saving of 20 million cubic metres of natural gas.

What are the advantages of using district heating?

A particularly big advantage is that users of district heating do not need to have their own heating system. Consumers whose homes are connected to the district heating network therefore pay no fuel costs and avoid the maintenance and repair involved in owning a heating system.

What are the challenges of district heating?

Despite its advantages, the district heating network also has its limits, because the further away the source of the heat, the higher the loss of heat and the lower the cost-effectiveness of the heating solution. This is why district heat is only transported and distributed across short distances in a star-shaped network.

We supply

44,000 households

with CO₂-neutral heat every year.