Drilling for geothermal heating to commence soon in Prenzlau, Germany
Prenzlau, Brandenburg, Germany (source: A.Savin, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons)
Carlo Cariaga
16 Oct 2025
Prenzlau in Brandenburg, Germany aims to shift to 60% geothermal district heating with the drilling of a 1000-meter well set to begin in a few days.
Drilling for geothermal energy is about to begin in the town of Prenzlau in Brandenburg, Germany. The project by local utility Stadtwerke Prenzlau GmbH aims to supply up to 60% of the district heating needs with geothermal energy.
The well will be drilled to a target depth of 1000 meters, where thermal waters at 44 °C and salinity of 90 g/L are expected. Drilling is expected to last for about a month. Thermal waters from the well at Thomas-Müntzer-Platz is planned to be fed to the district heating network by the end of 2027.
If geothermal drilling is successful, the plan is to expand the district heating network of Prenzlau by about a third. This will correspond to about 5,500 households. The current district heating network serves 3,735 households from a combined heat and power (CHP) plant supplied by gas, biogas, and waste heat recovery.
There is already a good amount of information available on the subsurface of Prenzlau because of a prior geothermal well drilled in the 1989, at the end of the GDR era. The well was drilled to a depth of 2786 meters, measuring a downhole temperature of 108 °C. This was used for a time to supply heat to a neighboring retirement home, the operation had to be discontinued because the pipe materials were not appropriate for the high salt content of the thermal waters.
There are only a few regions in the east of Germany that have tapped into geothermal resources for heating. These include Neuruppin, Schwerin, Neubrandenburg, Waren, and Potsdam. “But the map clearly shows that many cities in the deep have this option,” commented Stadtwerke Prenzlau Managing Director Harald Jahnke.
“We hope that thanks to geothermal energy, we can keep the heat price stable for our customers. This means reliable supply at a good price,” the Managing Director further added.
Source: Nordkurier and Tiefe Geothermie
