Australian clean energy company MGA Thermal has secured $8.25 million in funding as the company moves to scale its long-duration energy storage (LDES) solution.
MGA Thermal stated that the new funding injection lays the groundwork for the company’s next phase of growth, allowing for the commissioning of an automated production line being built at the company’s commercial manufacturing facility in Tomago, New South Wales, and accelerating operations well into 2024.
The latest round of investment, according to MGA Chief Executive Officer Erich Kisi, will allow the company to strategically expand its commercial division and invest in engineering and implementation.
Kisi also said that the new production line, which will be able to produce more than 1 MWh Miscibility Gaps Alloy (MGA) blocks every day, is close to completion.
“With the imminent completion of our production line, we’re on track to produce 1,000 blocks per day which can then be assembled into 24/7 renewable energy storage,” the MGA Thermal official stated.
With the most recent round of funding, MGA Thermal is also preparing for commercial scale as it nears completion of commissioning its Demonstration Unit – the first of its kind in the world.
The unit will give prospective clients and partners a practical demonstration of the TES system in operation and support the scalability of the solution.
MGA said the demonstration unit will include modular blocks stacked into large assemblies within MGA-designed thermal energy storage (TES) systems.
In comparison to alternative dispatchable options, these TES systems are able to store millions of kilowatt hours of energy at a lower cost, in a safer environment, and for a longer period of time.
In its demonstration unit, MGA Thermal said that a stack of 3,700 blocks – roughly the size of a shipping container – stores enough energy to run more than 135 houses for a whole day.
Meanwhile, MGA deputy CEO and chief commercial officer Mark Croudace stated that the company’s technology is in high demand.
“MGA Technology is perfectly aligned to generate 24/7 clean steam for harder-to-abate industrial sectors, a rapidly growing very large market domestically and globally. There’s no shortage of demand and we’re on track to abate 30 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030 — the equivalent of more than 23 years of commercial flights from Sydney to LA,” explained Croudace.
The company’s custom-designed MGA Blocks capture and store thermal energy provided by renewable power, grid excess, or behind-the-meter solar farms.
This enables long-term energy storage across solar and wind, creating clean steam 24 hours a day, seven days a week for hard-to-abate businesses and retrofitting power stations.
Existing investors such as Main Sequence, Varley Holdings, Melt Ventures, and New Zealand’s Climate Venture Capital Fund contributed to the newest investment round, while Understorey Ventures and Australian consultancy business Pollination Group joined as new investors.
