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Reference cases

Six cases from Vienna show what a weak, a middling and a strong Business Plan look like. Three describe real anergy networks, three are fictional plans around real buildings.

You find them at the very bottom of the dashboard start screen, under Reference cases from Vienna, collapsed until you open the section. Opening a case creates your own copy with both modules filled in, marked as an example. Each card links to its section on this page.

How to read the cases

  • Facts: what a case says about a real building or project comes from the sources listed under it. Each link was opened and its content checked on 25 October 2026. The cases use official pages and documents, peer-reviewed papers and the developers' or operators' own pages about their own project, but no news articles or blogs.
  • Real cases: the plan restates published facts. Where it adds something that is not published, the text says (proposed), or says that the information is not public.
  • Fictional cases: a real building is the anchor and the plan around it is invented. Invented details are marked (illustrative). Every fictional case says so on its card, in the project it opens and below.
  • Plan quality: each group has one strong, one middling and one weak plan. A strong plan is specific, quantified and backed by sources, names one deal-breaker with a test, checks its costs over the lifetime and ends with a decision gate. A middling plan is specific but leaves the lifetime check, some tests or the decision date open. A weak plan stays short and vague, leaves fields empty and marks the wrong risk as the deal-breaker. Weak plans are weak by what they leave out, never by false statements about a real building.
  • Quick Check: the Quick Check is a first screen. It counts buildings at default floor areas and takes each source at its default capacity, so large projects show a low heating coverage, and all six cases end at Further analysis required. Where a case states its annual demand, it is entered as a known demand. Inputs that are not published are estimates and are named under each case.

Smart Block Geblergasse

Real anergy network, strong plan.

Geblergasse 11 and 13 in Hernals, 1170 Vienna: two Gründerzeit houses with 25 flats share geothermal probes under the courtyard, two hybrid solar roofs of 54 m² each and one heat pump, built from August 2018. It is the first anergy network in a Vienna Gründerzeit block and is laid out with prepared pipe connections so that further houses of the block can join.

The plan is strong because it works with published numbers: design values of 90 + 67 MWh/a of space heat and 30 + 20 MWh/a of hot water, a tender cost of about €320,000 and a 30 % city grant of about €95,000. It sets a price rule, tenant cost at or below district heating, checks the costs over 20 years with the Quick Check defaults, names No drilling space for phase 2 as the deal-breaker and ends with a go or no-go for phase 2 within 12 months under four conditions. The heat-delivery contracting and phase 2 are proposals.

Quick Check inputs: 2 residential buildings from before 1919 on 1,000 m², geothermal and solar thermal medium, ambient air low, PV, and the published heating demand of 207,000 kWh/a. The area and the source potentials are estimates. Result: Further analysis required, because the default capacities of the sources cover less than half of that demand.

Sources:

Kraftwerk Seebogen, Seestadt Aspern

Real anergy network, middling plan.

On plot H6 in Seestadt Aspern, 1220 Vienna, five developers built a mixed block of about 270 flats and about 250 workplaces and largely share one energy system: every building except the district-heated commercial yard of the Vienna Business Agency is on the anergy network. Two probe fields with 92 boreholes of 150 m serve as a seasonal store; outdoor air, waste heat from a supermarket and other spaces and four rooftop PV systems complete it. The loop runs at 4 °C in spring to 16 °C in autumn, covers about 1,600 MWh/a of space heating plus hot water and summer cooling, and saves about 440 t of CO2 a year.

The plan is middling because the public sources leave gaps that it does not close: who owns and runs which part, the prices, the financing, the cost split between the five developers and a decision date. It is specific where facts exist, gives a rough drilling cost from 2020 prices and names a deal-breaker, Five developers disagree, but its tests stay open.

Quick Check inputs: 5 buildings built since 2011 on 1 ha, 80 % residential and 20 % Category A, all three estimates; geothermal high, waste heat and ambient air medium, PV, and the published 1,600,000 kWh/a of space heating. Result: Further analysis required, because the building density is low and the default capacities cover only part of the demand.

Sources:

Village im Dritten

Real anergy network, weak plan.

Village im Dritten is a new quarter in Landstraße, 1030 Vienna, developed by ARE Austrian Real Estate with other developers: about 11.5 ha with 22 building plots, about 250,000 m² of gross floor area and about 1,900 to 2,000 flats. Its energy system uses what the developer calls the largest geothermal probe field in Austria: 500 probes, 150 m deep, feed an anergy network to heat pumps in each building, which heat the flats through floor heating at up to about 37 °C. District heating covers peaks and hot water, the ground cools the flats moderately and the commercial spaces in summer, and PV of about 1 MW makes power. Wien Energie presented the concept in 2023.

The plan is weak although these facts are public: it states needs, costs and the operator only vaguely, leaves the customer relationship, the financing, the feedback, the economic scalability and the pilot empty, tests its one critical assumption later and marks Construction delays as the deal-breaker. Everything it says is true; a stronger plan would use the facts above and test the ground balance of 500 probes.

Quick Check inputs: 22 buildings built since 2011 on 11.5 ha, geothermal high, PV. One building per plot is an estimate, and the housing share of the floor area, 76 %, is used as the share of residential buildings, the rest as Category A. Result: Further analysis required, because the heating coverage and the building density are low.

Sources:

Klinik Donaustadt: fictional groundwater loop

Fictional plan around a real building, strong plan.

Fictional business plan around a real building: neither the owner nor the operator has planned or endorsed it.

The real anchor is Klinik Donaustadt, Langobardenstraße 122, 1220 Vienna: a municipal hospital of the City of Vienna, run by the Wiener Gesundheitsverbund, with 963 systemised beds (hospital statute, 2022), built low with at most five floors on a total of 170,000 m². No energy project of the hospital appears in the sources checked, and they do not state its heat supply. Donaustadt has about 12,010 buildings on gas and about 1,500 on district heating, and a study by TU Wien and e-think for the city (Kranzl et al., 2026) names Donaustadt as an area where groundwater use is realistic.

The illustrative plan is a 2.5 km groundwater anergy loop for the hospital, six housing blocks with 600 flats and a school. It estimates the hospital's heat at 27.9 GWh/a from the German average of 29 MWh per bed and year, takes 25 % of it plus the hospital's cooling and reaches about 12.2 GWh/a, or 4.9 MWh per metre of trench. An investment of €12.9 m, a lifetime check with a margin of about €0.45 m a year, sensitivities for missing housing, well costs and electricity, the deal-breaker Groundwater yield or permit fails with a test well before any design money, and decision gates in months 6 and 12 make it strong. Klinik Floridsdorf, where heat pumps lift a data centre's waste heat from 26 °C to 82 °C for 50 to 70 % of the hospital's heat, shows that hospital heat pumps work at this scale.

Quick Check inputs: 8 buildings (the hospital in Category C, 6 residential blocks, 1 school in Category A) on 25 ha, a network of 2,500 m, groundwater high and waste heat medium, PV, and the plan's demand of 12.2 GWh/a of heat and 2.0 GWh/a of cooling. Everything but the hospital is illustrative. Result: Further analysis required: the heat density is high, but the default capacities of the sources cover only a small part of the demand and the building density is low.

Sources:

Ottakringer Bad: fictional summer heat loop

Fictional plan around a real building, middling plan.

Fictional business plan around a real building: neither the owner nor the operator has planned or endorsed it.

The real anchor is the Ottakringer Bad, Johann-Staud-Straße 11, 1160 Vienna: a combined pool of the City of Vienna with an indoor pool, a sauna and an outdoor pool open from 2 May to mid-September. The city built it in 1926 as Vienna's first outdoor pool that could warm its water, rebuilt it from 1966 to 1972 and added an indoor pool from 1971. The sources checked do not say how it is heated. Ottakring has about 3,380 buildings on gas and about 180 on district heating.

The illustrative plan is a 700 m loop that takes summer waste heat from a supermarket's refrigeration into the outdoor pool and serves three housing blocks with probes in winter. Outdoor pools need 0.3 to 0.7 MWh per m² of water area and year, indoor pools 3 to 7; the most efficient pools recover heat from outgoing water and air, and the renovated Hallenbad Floridsdorf cut its district-heat use by 95 %. The plan is middling: it quantifies the demand and part of the cost, names Council does not approve the pool investment as the deal-breaker and has three tests, but it has no lifetime check, leaves one test and the decision date open and leaves out the indoor pool.

Quick Check inputs: 5 buildings (the pool in Category C, a supermarket in Category A, 3 residential blocks from 1919 to 1960) on 4 ha, a network of 700 m, waste heat and geothermal medium, no PV. Everything but the pool is illustrative. Result: Further analysis required, because the heating coverage and the building density are low.

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Großmarkt Wien: fictional waste-heat plan

Fictional plan around a real building, weak plan.

Fictional business plan around a real building: neither the owner nor the operator has planned or endorsed it.

The real anchor is Großmarkt Wien, Laxenburger Straße 365-367, 1230 Vienna, which its operator calls Austria's most important trading hub for fruit, vegetables, food and flowers: about 30 ha with about 220 tenants and about 1,400 employees. It opened in October 1972, was modernised in 1987 and 2001 with more cold and storage rooms, and since January 2019 the Wien Holding group has run it through GMW Großmarkt Wien Betrieb GmbH. Its 2022 brochure lists about 300,000 m² in total, about 76,000 m² of it buildings and halls. Liesing has about 7,570 buildings on gas and about 680 on district heating.

The illustrative plan wants to sell waste heat from the cold stores to neighbours. It is weak on purpose: it does not measure the waste heat, names no customers, leaves costs, financing and the decision empty, marks Pipe construction in streets as the deal-breaker instead of the unknown amount of heat, and assumes without checking that the cooling heat is unused today. A stronger plan would first quantify the heat and its value, as a techno-economic analysis of heat recovery from supermarket refrigeration does.

Quick Check inputs: 12 buildings, a guess, on 30 ha, all entered as Category A from 1961 to 1990, and waste heat with an unknown potential, no PV. Result: Further analysis required, set by the rule for an unknown source.

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