In Finland’s capital Helsinki, a huge heat pump from MAN will supply 30,000 households with district heating – at temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. This is expected to save 26,000 tons of CO2.

The Augsburg-based mechanical engineering company MAN Energy Solutions supplies the World’s largest air-water heat pump for district heating supply to Helsinki. The Finnish energy company Helen Oy wants to use it as part of the Patola heating plant complex in Helsinki to supply around 30,000 households with district heating – and thus save 26,000 tons of CO2 annually.

Overall, the new heating plant, which includes the large heat pump and two 50-megawatt electric boilers, is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 56,000 tonnes.

Up to 33 megawatts of power

Air-water heat pumps use heat energy from the outside air and convert it into heat using electricity. According to MAN, the new plant in Finland can Use ambient air as an energy source at temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsiusto heat water for the district heating network.

Depending on the air temperature, it has a capacity of 20 to 33 megawatts and is expected to deliver around 200 gigawatt hours (GWh) of heat per year. For comparison: an average wind turbine usually has an output of around six megawatts and delivers roughly 10 GWh of electricity per year.

“Such urban district heating projects, which use climate-neutral technologies, are crucial to advancing global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions,” says Uwe Lauber, CEO of MAN Energy Solutions.

Juhani Aaltonen, VP, Green Investments at Finnish energy company Helen, explains: “Helsinki has set itself the ambitious goal of becoming climate neutral by 2030. The transformation of our heat supply system is crucial to achieving this goal.”

In Germany, around two-thirds of the energy for district heating networks currently comes from fossil fuels. However, according to experts, large heat pumps will also become increasingly important here in the future.

MAN heat pump to go into operation in 2026

The contract value is in the double-digit million euro range. The Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs is subsidising the project. The core machine with the associated steel structure weighs 50 tons.

The compressor, the heart of the heat pump, is manufactured in Zurich, where MAN Energy Solutions employs 800 people.

The plant is scheduled to go into operation in autumn 2026. It will be transported by heavy goods vehicle from Zurich to the port in Basel and then via the Rhine, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to Finland.

Sources: dpa-d. MAN Energy Solutions