The costs for a common residential house have been evaluated with a geothermal system using double-U probes as heat exchangers. Also the installation in different types of underground (hard rock, sedimentary rocks and unconsolidated material) was taken into account. The results show that the drilling costs of this installation are 40 – 50 % of the total costs of a plant.

The evaluation is based on a common, comparable installation of a GSHE for a residential building. All required materials are chosen using an EED simulation (Earth Energy Designer software) done by REHAU in June 2015. FAU created boundary conditions to receive representative data within each partner country. “MIN” and “MAX” values were provided by the partners to cover the existing price range within the local geothermal market for heat pump,  GSHE and grouting costs. To integrate the variability of different geological conditions the partners were asked to define the geology in which their virtual building is placed and the corresponding drilling technique used to get information about the drilling costs. The total costs (excl. VAT) for this GSHE installation vary between 18,184.00 € in Belgium and 30,787.04 € in Switzerland. The EU-Average (Figure 1) is 22,757.17 €.

Average European cost distribution of the virtual GSHE installation of questionnaire #1“