Arena triples bet on “clean steam” storage hopeful, in bid to green up Australian industry

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has tipped a further $2.48 million into New South Wales energy storage hopeful MGA Thermal, tripling its bet that the company’s steam-dispatch thermal energy storage technology can help decarbonise hard-to-abate industries.

By storing and dispatching heat energy in the form of clean steam, MGA Thermal aims to green up fossil-fuel dependent industrial processes whose energy needs remain outside the bounds of standard solar and battery storage systems.

The company’s technology uses miscibility gap alloys (MGA), a material invented and perfected by cofounders Erich Kisi and Alexander Post over a decade at the University of Newcastle. 

A miscibility gap is an area in a mixture or alloy where the different components don’t mix well and instead separate into two or more regions with different compositions. The technology works by stacking the blocks of MGA into insulated tanks to store huge amounts of energy.

In April, a fundraising round secured $5.7 million from Main Sequence, Melt Ventures and new investor Jekara, adding to the $8.25 million raised in August and a grant from Shell in April 2023.

MGA Thermal says the latest funding support from Arena, adding to the agency’s prior investment of $1.27 million, will help the company resume commissioning of its demonstration unit.

The $3 million, 5 megawatt hour (MWh) pilot plant in Tomago hit a bump in the road in October last year when a “dangerous heat build-up” during commissioning had to be brought under control with the help of emergency services. 

The pilot – intended to charge and discharge in the form of steam at up to 500kW for 10 hours and operate at temperatures of 400°C to 700°C – was suspended to investigate the cause of the incident.

But MGA Thermal CEO Mark Croudace said earlier this year that the company was ready to restart commissioning of the plant, following the “valuable learning opportunity.”

In comments this week, Croudace said the latest funding from Arena was a “strong vote of confidence” in the viability of MGA Thermal’s technology and its promise for hard-to-abate sectors.

“The world’s industrials are at a critical juncture in their renewable energy, decarbonisation journey, and we believe MGA Thermal will play a key role in enabling renewable generation to meet their needs,” Croudace said on Tuesday.

“A behind-the-meter energy storage solution that helps balance utility-scale renewables with distributed energy storage is vital for Australia to effectively manage the evolving supply-demand dynamics of a clean energy future.”

Darren Miller, the CEO of Arena says the agency is prioritising projects with “enduring impact” and the potential to help large industrial players quit fossil fuels.

“We are proud to continue supporting MGA Thermal’s technology development which we believe could have a significant impact on Australia’s renewable energy transition,” Miller said this week.

MGL Thermal says it has a number of potential customers, from manufacturing through to mining, lining up to try the 24/7 steam generation capacity.

“We have continued working with numerous industrial partners and clients over the last six months which cannot solely rely on solar, wind and renewable energy sources to meet their decarbonisation goals,” Croudace said in April. 

Once the pilot is back on track and has been proved, the next phase will be providing on-site MGA systems to partners for steam and energy storage capabilities, he says.