District heating: Term of heat supply contract 10 or 20 years?

What would happen if the contract is not concluded and one goes straight from the heat pump? Or has one already committed to this in the purchase contract?

What would happen if you don't sign the contract and go straight for the heat pump? Or have you already committed to it in the purchase contract?

Unfortunately, we have already had to commit to it. More precisely, even for 20 years, but there has now been an adjustment to § 32 para. 1 AVBFernwärmeV which caps the contract term at 10 years. Now there is a discussion about whether one could already terminate the 20-year contract after 10 years, their lawyers say that is possible ... Yeah. :D

Unfortunately, we have already had to commit to it. More precisely, even for 20 years, but now there has been an adjustment to § 32 para. 1 AVBFernwärmeV that caps the contract term at 10 years.

Exactly! That would be a nice loophole with the cancellation.

It would probably be more worthwhile for 20 years if the working price is reasonable. With 20 years, you pay only about €1,500 more in total, but you get 10 more years of service. The 10 years are mandatory, if I read that correctly. For the saved €1,500, you don’t get a heat pump installed. In the end, everything depends a lot on the working price. With a heat pump with a COP of 5 (which will certainly be achievable in 10 years) and an electricity price of 30 cents, it is just under 6 cents. Whether electricity will become cheaper in the future with renewables can only be predicted by a crystal ball. But if district heating is also around 6–8 cents, it is probably cheaper in the long run.

Edit: Additionally, the lifetime of a heat pump is given as around 20 years. If you pay about €10,000 for it, 10 years of heating cost €5,000 fixed costs in that case. Even if it lasts 30 years, that is just under €3,000. Purely economically, €1,500 for 10 years is therefore a good deal.

A small addition and two questions that should be clarified regarding my calculation:

[*]Are the costs fixed for the 20 years or can they be increased? If fixed, you save a considerable amount of money over 20 years just through normal, healthy inflation.
[*]In case of an increase, there should be a special right of termination anyway, and you can then terminate at the end of the next month, or how is it structured on your end?

The basic fee is fixed, the usage price is variable and is based on the index.

What occurred to me earlier (understood more in the house construction forum:
I am 40, when in 20 years I have to decide what to do regarding heating technology, I will probably think that a major renovation is not worthwhile because the children will soon move out and the house will become too big for us and we will sell it anyway. If we still live there for another 10-20 years, we will live with some kind of savings/compromise solution.
If we install a heat pump in 10 years, it will run until I am 70 and even if not, the necessary renovation will already have been done and it will be replaced.