A team of Australian engineers will work with a Swiss energy industry company to advance the rollout of a world-first thermal storage technology that will allow coal-fired power stations in Germany to run on steam turbines.
The technology uses a system of stackable Lego-like blocks to store energy generated by renewables but at a fraction of the cost involved in battery storage. These Miscibility Gaps Alloy (MGA) blocks can be retrofitted to coal-fired power plants to transform them into fossil-fuel free power generators. The system is cost efficient, reduces industrial waste and is quick to install.
It’s a remarkable technology and engineers at the University of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley coal mining region of New South Wales have spent eight years designing and testing it. The team is led by Newcastle materials science professor Erich Kisi, who has set up a spin out company, MGA Thermal, to commercialise the energy storage system.
The Swiss partnership with E2S Power will help MGA Thermal build a demonstration plant which will show how the system can be integrated into coal-fired power stations. Germany has pledged to close its 30 coal-fired power stations by 2038 under a $47 billion clean energy transition plan. And, it’s possible the MGA Thermal system will play a major role in achieving this goal for Germany. If it’s successful – and that seems highly likely – there are more than 6,000 coal-fired power stations across the world that could use this Australian technology.
But as Australia’s major political parties – the Liberal Nationals and the Australian Labor Party – dither and squabble over weak, incremental climate policies there’s a chance that this radical technology will be yet another renewable energy innovation (like so many solar & lithium battery inventions) to leave our shores.
So far, MGA Thermal has received a $495,000 federal government Accelerating Commercialisation grant and $500,000 in seed finding from CP Ventures – a venture capital investment company that works in partnership with federal agencies. So, just under $1 million to support energy innovation that could save hundreds of jobs across regional mining regions and create more jobs in manufacturing and installation.
“We’re aiming to bridge the gap between cheap and abundant renewable energy, which is generated in peaks, and the ability to store and dispatch energy at any time of day or night, to meet consumer needs,” professor Kisi says in a university statement.
“Unlike coal-fired power, which is regulated and controlled, renewable energy is a challenge because it is less predictable and inconsistent. The grid, which includes the poles and wires you see on streets connecting to houses and buildings, was not designed to receive large spikes associated with renewable energy.
“Redesigning the whole grid is simply too expensive so we’ve created MGA as an energy storage solution to marry with existing infrastructure. We’ve made renewable energy compatible at grid-scale.”
How does the MGA system work?
The stackable blocks are made from non-toxic, recyclable materials that have high thermal conductivity.
“The MGA blocks are made of two components. One component melts when heated to store huge amounts of energy, and the other acts as a matrix, keeping the block in solid form and embedding the melting particles,” Kisi says.
“We’ve sourced abundant and readily available starting ingredients for our block so that it can be produced at a very low cost to accommodate for the scale of energy storage that’s required – they are 10 per cent of the cost of a lithium battery of the same size, yet produce the same amount of energy.”
Kisi says the MGA blocks can help coal-fired power plants transition “to deliver clean baseload power, while also helping to prevent job loss from power plant closures”.
In a recent intreview, MGA Thermal business development manager Arden Jarrett said the project to retrofit power stations in Germany could dbe “a proving ground” for the energy storage technology.
“We need to look at repurposing what we already have available,”she says.
“In this case, that means all of the infrastructure of thermal power stations, which are already connected to the grid, and in many cases are being closed before end of life due to shifting policy away from fossil fuel use. This means that there are trillions of dollars in functioning infrastructure sitting on the grid or costing vast amounts of money to decommission.
“These resources that we already have available can be repurposed into clean energy storage centres, to provide an immediate large-scale solution and create even more value. Why not take the grid connection, infrastructure, and workforce and create our clean energy future with it?”
Kisi says the cost of decommissiong a power plant is “incredibly high, so their life-cycle management is a huge challenge”.
“MGA blocks are an opportunity to re-deploy retired or stranded plants, turning a liability into a high value asset.”
In a recent federal shadow cabinet reshuffle, Chris Bowen was moved from the opposition health portfolio to climate change, ahead of a possible early federal election in 2021 – possibly in August or September, instead of May 2022. He was quick out of the blocks to pledge a policy mix of jobs and emissions reduction policies.
“I see my key role as winning the debate that good policy on climate change is good jobs policy and good economics policy, which then gives you the ability to prosecute the case for a good, sensible climate change policy,” he said.
But the problem of coal-fired power as a divisive and contentious issue within the ALP will remain a challenge for Bowen. Australia has been a long-term leader in renewables innovation – from electric vehicle technology and lithium batteries to micro-turbines and hydrogen fuel cells – but lack of support from both major parties at the federal level has led to these technologies being picked up – and picked off – by the United States (pre-Trump), Japan, China,Germany and other countries. The drain of scientific talent has been phenomenal.
It will be a tough call for Bowen to tackle this, especially given the party and policy influence of climate conservative Joel Fitzgibbon – the Labor MP for the Hunter Valley, who has been very vocal in his support for coal-fired power. However, there was a swing of 9.5 per cent against Fitzgibbon in the 2019 federal election, which suggests an independent could take the seat if they ran a strong and articulate campaign on local issues such as renewable energy transition and manufacturing.
A renewable energy engineer would be perfect and highly credible candidate.
the hound 