Linz AG project

Mountain becomes a test zone for hot water storage tanks

Linz AG also produces district heating with the help of a biomass and waste power plant.(Bild: LINZ AG/TEAM FOTOKERSCHI)

It almost sounds like the name of a wrestling fighter, but it's actually a Linz AG project: under the title "Heatrock", the company is working with five partners on an innovation for the district heating network. Hot water is to be stored inside a mountain. A mountain near Linz becomes a test area.

Is it possible to store hot water inside a mountain and use it for the district heating network in winter? This question is on the minds of the experts involved in the Linz AG research project called "Heatrock".

The University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, the Energy Institute of the Johannes Kepler University, the Austrian Institute of Technology, the Montan University Leoben and the Construction Geology and Tunneling team of the engineering firm Laabmayr & Partner are all on board - they are working together on the energy storage innovation. They are researching, testing and investigating the possibility of large-scale heat water storage in shaft-like cavities, so-called caverns, in a rock.

The project partners at the official start of research on the "Heatrock".(Bild: LINZ AG/FOTOKERSCHI)

All the threads come together at Melanie Hörtler from Linz AG: She is the head of the "Heatrock" project. For the research phase, landowner Niklas Salm-Reifferscheidt gave the green light for rock samples to be taken from the Pfenningberg site. The granite-gneiss properties make Linz's local mountain the ideal testing ground. The conditions here are similar to those found in areas where the mountain storage facility could be implemented.

Linz AG, managed by Erich Haider, currently supplies almost 90,000 households with district heating.