ABSTRACT
At the BAP III-Seminar 1998 the author delivered the Keynote lecture “Energy piles and diaphragm walls for heat transfer from and into the ground”. During the past 10 years since then this technology has developed extremely well spreading to many countries Austria has still a pioneering role as indicated in Fig. 1, showing the increase of energy piles between
1984 and 2004. Since the year 2005 more than 6000 energy piles have been installed per year resulting in a total number of presently more than 50 000 energy piles. Moreover, “Energy diaphragm walls” (slurry trench walls) have become a frequently used alternative to energy piles in Austria. Numerous buildings with deep basements and metro lines, e.g. all new stations of the Vienna Metro have “Energy diaphragm walls”. They dominate especially in areas with a
high groundwater level, whereby concepts combined with energy piles have proved suitable in many cases (Fig. 2).
