ᐅ District heating does not meet KfW55 standards?!

Hello everyone,
I have the following situation: After receiving an offer from a developer to build a house with district heating and KfW Standard 55, it now turns out that this standard cannot be achieved with district heating because the local district heating system is reportedly rated poorly.

Here is the issue: The developer was not aware of or did not check this beforehand and now says that we need to include additional measures, such as photovoltaic panels for electricity generation, to meet the standard. This will cause us extra costs. We now have the following questions:

a) Is it possible that the house can no longer meet the KfW 55 standard based solely on the district heating rating? According to the developer, using something like an air-to-water heat pump would make it feasible again, but we are required to use the city’s district heating system (possible exemption to clarify)?

b) Do we have to share the extra costs? It was clearly communicated that we must use district heating. Based on that, we received a construction offer with KfW 55. However, the developer can no longer deliver this.

c) What would be a reasonable addition now? In my opinion, photovoltaic panels for electricity generation are the best option. Using solar thermal for hot water production probably makes little sense with district heating. The developer proposes to install 5sqm (54 sqft) of solar panels to comply with the KfW standard again.

We are somewhat overwhelmed by this topic. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
Thank you

As far as I know, the primary energy factor for district heating is always determined individually for each supplier. However, I don’t believe that it is worse than electric heating (factor 1.8) at all. Even oil and gas have significantly better factors.
Or is it due to the lack of renewable energy share in your district heating? In that case, an alternative to photovoltaic systems could be a controlled mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery.
I would recommend having this explained in detail and requesting the actual calculated values. If the developer is contractually obligated to meet KfW 55 standards, then of course the question of who bears the costs arises...

@Alex85: Yes, I didn’t mention that. Apparently, there is no renewable component in the district heating. It consists 100% of natural gas for us. Alternatively, I will try to follow up with the city to ask whether it is possible to be exempted from the district heating system on the grounds that we have an alternative heating system (e.g., air-to-water heat pump) that performs significantly better here. The higher the factor, the worse it is, right?

BenutzerPC schrieb:
The higher the factor, the worse, right?

Yes

BenutzerPC schrieb:
Apparently there is no renewable share in the district heating. Ours is 100% natural gas.

It’s completely unclear why this is mandatory for new buildings (or even an entire new development). No builder can comply with the energy saving regulations without additional measures. As if district heating wasn’t expensive enough already.

You can create a renewable share, for example, through
- Controlled residential ventilation with heat recovery
- Heat pump for domestic hot water (nonsense if an efficient heat generator is already in place)
- Solar thermal (expensive and not cost-effective)
- Photovoltaics (to my knowledge, must be directly connected to the heating system to count as renewable share—no idea how that would work with district heating)

I would lean towards controlled residential ventilation. It’s probably the most expensive investment, but you gain comfort benefits. Or you could do a superficial solution with decentralized controlled ventilation with heat recovery (lower investment) and then never use it because it’s annoying. Many large home builders apparently do exactly that.

Alex85 schrieb:
Completely unclear why this is mandatory for new buildings (or even an entire new development?). No builder can comply with the energy saving regulations without additional measures. As if district heating wasn’t already expensive enough.

-> We think the same. That’s why I’m trying to argue for an exemption.

Alex85 schrieb:
Controlled residential ventilation with heat recovery

-> Sorry, do you mean a centralized ventilation system here? Currently we have a decentralized system planned without heat recovery.
Our developer alternatively suggested installing a 5m² (54 ft²) photovoltaic system for electricity generation. What is your opinion on this? By the way: When talking about photovoltaic systems, how do you distinguish the terminology when they are used for domestic hot water production versus electricity generation?

That is solar thermal energy