MGA Thermal is pleased to announce we have become a member of the Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council), a global executive-led organisation focused on replacing the use of fossil fuels to meet energy demand with zero-carbon long duration energy storage. MGA Thermal is joining the LDES Council alongside five other new members, which represent a mix of LDES technologies targeting decarbonization of both power and heat, continue to build momentum for the LDES Council in developing a membership with diverse perspectives and a broad range of expertise. The LDES Council now has over 50 diverse companies in regions across the world representing the full energy value chain – including technology innovators, equipment providers, renewable energy companies, utilities, investors and end-users. The Executive Director of the LDES Council, Julia Souder said, “Our growing membership is an indication that the Council’s work is moving forward and more important than ever to our goal of a decarbonised world with long duration energy storage at the epicentre. As we look at a system wide approach where LDES provides both heat and power flexibility, the broad perspective of our global experts support the acceleration and rapid deployment of long duration energy storage.” MGA Thermal’s CTO, Founder and LDES Council representative, Alexander Post says “Thermal energy storage is emerging as a key technology in the mix required to achieve stable and reliable power supply from intermittent renewable sources, particularly in applications where storage is required over medium to long durations (days to weeks rather than minutes to hours). The Long Duration Energy Storage Council serves the vital role of benchmarking the various technologies on offer and informing the public. MGA Thermal is thrilled to join the council and look forward to helping support the ecosystem.” Read the LDES Council’s release in full.About the LDES Council The LDES Council is a global, executive-led non-profit membership organisation, comprising technology providers, equipment providers, renewable energy companies, utilities, grid operators, investors and end-consumers. It strives to accelerate decarbonisation of the energy system at lowest cost to society by driving innovation, commercialisation and deployment of long duration energy storage. The LDES Council provides fact-based guidance and information to governments, industry and broader society, drawing from the experience of its members which include leading energy companies, technology providers, investors and end-users. The Council recently launched two research reports. One on 24/7 Clean Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) and one on regulatory and policy options. To learn more: www.ldescouncil.com.

MGA Thermal is pleased to announce our collaboration with United States based Peregrine Turbine Technologies (PTT). Last week, PTT provided a ‘breakthrough energy and storage update’ where they announced the collaboration with MGA Thermal to field a commercial-grade, long duration, thermal energy storage (TES) pilot plant. Peregrine Turbine Technologies (PTT) was founded in 2012 and is based in Maine, USA. Much like MGA Thermal, PTT has researched and developed their own ground-breaking technology. PTT has developed the world’s first High-Performance sCO2 Turbine Engine. The advanced turbine is a heat engine that can operate from high-quality heat sources or air-combustible fuel, including NG, biomass, small modular nuclear and concentrated solar. The collaboration between MGA Thermal and PTT targets the development of a distributed energy storage & electricity generation system capable of accepting renewably generated electricity and re-dispatching it on demand.Erich Kisi, MGA Thermal CEO said, “We are very excited to be working with PTT on this initiative. The system will be a game-changer for solar and wind energy generators wanting to control their power dispatch”As individual leaders in our field, we are excited to continue our collaboration with Peregrine Turbine Technologies, advancing the capabilities of distributed grids, storage and generation systems globally. Read Peregrine Turbine Technologies News Release on the collaboration here.

MGA Thermal is extremely pleased to announce that we have raised AUD$8 million (USD$5.8 million) to expand our manufacturing capacity and export MGA thermal energy storage globally.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.The new capital allows us to rapidly scale our team and manufacturing capacity to meet international demand for thermal energy storage technology. We are working with partners to deploy the technology in Australia, Europe and North America and plan to double the team in the next 12 months to 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. 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,” said Erich Kisi, CEO of MGA Thermal.“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.”We look forward to continuing to revolutionise the world’s renewable energy storage systems with the support of our new investors.

MGA Thermal is proud to share that we have been selected to participate in the EnergyLab 2020 Scaleup Program cohort.The EnergyLab Scaleup Program has been created specifically to help accelerate high-impact clean energy startups in Australia and overseas. The program has already begun facilitating collaboration between fast-growing cleantech companies, energy utilities and other partner organisations. Key energy stakeholders which back the program include the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), APA, Westpac, Powerlink, CS Energy, FRV, Counties Power, Nectr, Yurika and the International Microgrid Association.The program officially launched last Friday, when each of the thirteen participating companies began a curated five-month journey to accelerate their growth through mentoring, access to advisors and facilitated collaboration and investment opportunities. EnergyLab identifies boosting each of the companies’ commercialisation capacity as a key focus; the strategic expertise and network connections of EnergyLab will be leveraged to make an impactful commercialisation pathway. EnergyLab CEO James Tilbury said in a statement, “We’re optimistic about the potential impact our Scaleup Program will have. All the participants are high-quality companies positioned for growth, with strong strategic alignment with our partners. This, combined with our partners’ genuine commitment to innovate and collaborate, creates the perfect framework for rolling out new energy technologies.” MGA Thermal is very excited to participate in the EnergyLab 2020 Scaleup Program with our twelve Scale-up peers: Aurtra Transformer Condition, Evergen, Everty, Gridcognition, Hiringa Energy, Infravision, Powerpal, Renewable Energy Hub, UPowr, Utility API, Zenogen. More information about each member of the 2020 EnergyLab Scaleup Program cohort is available at the EnergyLab website: https://energylab.org.au/startups, and recordings from Fridays EnergyLab Scaleup Program 2020 launch event will be available to view from Tuesday 8 September on YouTube.

Despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on early stage investment in startups MGA Thermal are pleased to announce that we have secured seed investment of $500,000 funded by venture capital firm CP Ventures.This investment will enable the completion of our pilot manufacturing plant, paving the way for grid-scale storage demonstration projects of MGA’s technology that will boost the capability of a renewable energy future globally. MGA Thermal incorporated in early 2019 after participating in the CSIRO’s national science and deep technology accelerator, ON Accelerate, which proved our technology has problem-solution fit. Our technology has quickly generated collaborator and investor interest which led to a seed round that recently closed.CP Ventures is a boutique venture capital fund led by experienced investors Emlyn Scott and Chris Sang, that focuses on pre-seed and seed stage companies. Their Fund 1 is acknowledged as one of the best performing funds in the world. MGA Thermal is now one of CP Venture’s first investments in Fund 2, an internationally focused technology weighted fund.CP Ventures announced "The MGA technology is unique in its key capabilities and scalability in large scale energy storage. What’s really exciting is that as a viable energy storage solution it represents the missing component to renewable energy. We believe it has the potential to change the world and that the expertise of the founding team will drive MGA Thermal to success.” The support of our investors reinforces the potential of our technology to drive uptake in a renewable energy future by providing the technology that can support our main grids and make renewables more reliable. CP Ventures’ capital, networks and knowledge of tech-enabled companies will allow us to complete our pilot project that will demonstrate our technology’s capacity for commercialisation.Leveraging the reputation of Newcastle’s energy and manufacturing expertise, we will remain local throughout the initial manufacturing phase, opening up a new industry in advanced energy storage manufacturing in the Hunter region, before expanding demonstration projects across Australia and Europe.We are excited to get to work with the support of CP Ventures.Read more about our technology here.

MGA Thermal is excited to announce we have successfully secured an Accelerating Commercialisation Grant from the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. The $495,600 in grant funding will contribute to a state-of-the-art pilot manufacturing plant which will showcase the manufacture of modular thermal storage blocks at a commercial scale.The Accelerating Commercialisation Grant provides matched funding to our seed investment round secured earlier this year with CP Ventures.The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, announced the 21 projects and companies which have been selected to share over $10 million in funding on Monday 13 July 2020. Minister Andrews said the projects are perfect examples of the dynamic business thinking we need to drive Australia’s COVID-19 economic recovery. In MGA’s case, the operation of our pilot facility will immediately create several full-time jobs, as well as the potential for a whole new local industry manufacturing high value thermal storage material for renewable energy projects. This is ideal to the Newcastle and Hunter region’s background as a centre for industry and wide access to raw materials.The Accelerating Commercialisation grant provides small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs and researchers with access to funding and expert advice to help get a novel product, process or service to market. “This is Aussie ingenuity at its best - solving real world problems, while driving economic growth and creating jobs,” Minister Andrews said.The program has stringent merit criteria and is highly competitive; the aim is to support innovation with the ability to positively impact key sectors that are important to Australia’s economy. CEO of MGA Thermal, Professor Erich Kisi, commented “We’re delighted to have support from the Department of Industry, Science and Technology through the Entrepreneur’s Programme. Securing funding is highly competitive, especially the Accelerating Commercialisation grant. We’re thrilled that MGA Thermal has been recognised for its ability to make a positive impact on a national and global scale.”Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are intermittent and currently Australia doesn’t have the resources to support the volume of energy storage required to meet demand and run entirely on renewables.Prof. Kisi explained how the novel material’s ability to store energy as heat could be the missing link to make the renewables switch. He said, “Most energy generation and utilisation involves heat. Therefore, storing and managing heat imparts great versatility. Our MGA storage technology can capture energy from diverse sources such as electrically from renewables, the heat of concentrated sunlight in concentrated solar power (CSP), and even waste heat from industrial manufacturing. The stored energy can be used directly as heat or converted into electricity using conventional infrastructure. This allows repurposing of power station infrastructure to become grid scale energy storage. We know our technology can help make meaningful change and a sustainable future; we look forward to making this happen.”