CSIRO-backed venture firm Main Sequence Ventures has led an $8 million funding round for a Newcastle, NSW, start-up developing modular shoebox-sized thermal energy storge blocks.
MGA Thermal says its technology will have applications in developing new distributed energy networks as well as in helping energy utilities transform from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The technology can be used to store energy from wind or solar generation as heat. The heat can be released to generate electricity when conditions are not suitable for generating power directly from wind or solar sources.
The funding round was supported by Alberts Impact Capital, the New Zealand Climate Venture Capital Fund, The Melt, and existing investor CP Ventures plus individual investors including Chris Sang, Emlyn Scott and Glenn Butcher.
Main Sequence Ventures is investing from its $250 million second fund which closed earlier this year (APE&VCJ, May 2021).
MGA Thermal says the modular design of the blocks enables them to be used at different scales. Providing power for one home for 24 hours would require just 37 blocks but large stacks could be used to store power for entire remote communities. A stack of 1,000 blocks takes up a space about the size of a small car.
MGA Thermal was established in 2019, spun out of research at the University of Newcastle. Co-founders Professor Erich Kisi and Dr Alexander Post spent nearly ten years at the university researching uses for metal alloys. The blocks they have developed contain metal particles embedded in an inert matrix material. Input energy melts the metal particles and mostly remains stored as heat which can later be released in a controlled flow and used to generate electricity.
With the new funding, MGA Thermal plans to set up a manufacturing plant and expects eventually to be able to produce hundreds of thousands of energy storage blocks a month. The company is working with commercial partners to deploy the technology in Australia, Europe and North America.
“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,” chief executive Kisi said. “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 storage in our MGA blocks.”
MGA Thermal also recently entered into a partnership with Maine, US, company Peregrine Turbine Technologies (PTT). The two companies are to carry out a commercial scale long duration test combining their technologies. PTT has developed advanced turbine technology which can use a variety of heat sources to generate electricity highly efficiently.
The collaboration targets the development of a distributed energy storage and electricity generation system capable of storing energy from renewable sources and redistributing it as electricity on demand.
Image: MGA Thermal chief technology officer Dr Alexander Post and chief executive Professor Erich Kisi with the company’s heat storage blocks.