Schöneweide combined heat and power (CHP) plant, Berlin

District heating provider BTB has built a new machine house on the site of the Schöneweide CHP plant, located directly on the River Spree in the south-east of Berlin. The building is a key component in the company’s decarbonisation strategy for its district heating network, because it houses the system technology and transformer station for two state-of-the-art, large-scale river water heat pumps. The Stump-Franki branch in Berlin implemented all the foundation work using its extremely economical and rapid pile foundation method with Stump high-performance displacement piles. This method fully satisfied the customer's need for reliable deadlines, cost-effectiveness and safe execution.

The Stump high-performance pile system is ideal for loose sand

A total of 62 high-performance displacement piles with a diameter of 170mm and lengths of up to 10m were produced. These pre-fabricated piles made of ductile cast iron pipes are connected up to the desired length using cast iron sockets, then driven into the ground by a light hydraulic excavator and filled with cement mortar.

The subsoil in Schöneweide consisted of loose, partially contaminated sand. The high-performance displacement piles had two further advantages. First, the subsoil was improved by full soil displacement. Second, there was no need to excavate potentially polluting soil material, thereby reducing disposal and transport costs and significantly reducing the project’s carbon footprint.

Creating a green district heating network

In the coming years, BTB GmbH Berlin, a combined heat and power plant operator, will invest several hundred million euros in a bigger and greener district heating network. The innovative water pump system in Schöneweide will be one of the largest systems in Germany, capable of providing a flow temperature of 90 °C. With an estimated thermal output of around 7 MW in conjunction with four state-of-the-art CHP gas engines and a power-to-heat system, it will expand the existing BTB installations and help supply district heating to around 100,000 Berlin households in south-east Berlin. The plant’s peak use time will be between spring and autumn, when the temperature of the Spree is sufficiently high.