Newcastle-founded clean energy scale-up MGA Thermal has raised $8m to expand its manufacturing capacity and export its thermal energy storage systems globally.
As fossil fuels are replaced by renewable energy sources, utilities face the ongoing challenge of storing huge amounts of dispatchable energy to meet demand in off-peak or high-demand scenarios. MGA Thermal’s solution enables conversion of existing infrastructure, including coal-fired power plants, into grid-scale energy storage or creation of new supplementary infrastructure alongside solar and wind farms to provide continuous, dispatchable energy when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.
MGA Thermal is built on breakthrough Miscibility Gaps Alloy (MGA) technology, extraordinary shoebox-sized blocks that are capable of receiving energy generated by renewables, storing it cheaply and safely as thermal energy, then using it to run steam turbines at thermal power stations instead of burning coal.
The blocks, which can be stacked like building blocks or bricks, are able to store millions of kilowatt-hours of energy, in a cheaper, safer, and longer-lasting way compared to other dispatchable solutions. A stack of 1000 blocks — about the size of a small car — is enough energy stored to power 27 homes for 24 hours.
The funding was led by Main Sequence, Australia’s deep tech investment fund founded by CSIRO, with participation from new investors Alberts Impact Capital, New Zealand’s Climate Venture Capital Fund, The Melt, and a select group of leading angel investors including Chris Sang, Emlyn Scott, and Glenn Butcher. Previous round seed investor CP Ventures also added to their existing holding.
MGA Thermal is working with partners such as E2S Power AG and Peregrine Turbine Technologies LLC, to deploy the technology in Australia, Europe, and North America. The company plans to double the team in the next 12 months as they scale towards making hundreds of thousands of MGA blocks per month.
“Our mission is to help accelerate the shift to renewable energy by providing a new way to store energy that’s clean, economical, and scalable,” said Erich Kisi, CEO of MGA Thermal. “We are gratified by our investors’ recognition of our achievements and their confidence in our ability to execute on this exciting new phase of growth.
“We believe that thermal storage will play an important role in the energy transition, and are overwhelmed with international and domestic interest to date. The potential opportunities and use cases for our technology are extensive. Whether it’s retrofitting our thermal power stations, providing power to remote communities, supplying heat to industry, heating houses and commercial spaces, or heating for electric vehicles, this can all be powered using renewable energy stored in our MGA blocks.”
Martin Duursma, Partner at Main Sequence, said bringing together state-of-the-art technology and private investment gives MGA Thermal an opportunity to make an impact on a large scale.
“A core focus of our new fund is uncovering the scientific discoveries and helping to turn them into real, tangible technologies so we can reverse our climate impact,” Duursma said. “Erich Kisi and Alexander Post’s impressive deep research backgrounds, their expert team, and innovative technology are paving the way for grid-scale energy storage and boosting the capability of a renewable energy future globally.”
MGA Thermal’s founders, Kisi and Alex Post, and their team are global experts in MGA materials after nearly a decade of research & development at the University of Newcastle. When the team first looked at the problem of thermal energy storage, they sought materials that could best solve the problem. All of the existing solutions at the time had large drawbacks. So the team set about inventing a suite of new materials with just the right balance of properties. As a result, MGA Thermal was born in April 2019.
The team was recently awarded an Accelerating Commercialisation Grant from the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science. The grant contributed to their pilot manufacturing plant accommodated in Newcastle on a site owned by the sustainability-driven Molycop group.