1414 Degrees will start the first commercial pilot of its energy storage technology in March
Close to a decade after a group of Adelaide investors backed an ambitious plan to solve the world’s energy storage problem, a pivotal milestone is in sight for their innovative technology.
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Close to a decade after a group of Adelaide investors backed an ambitious plan to solve the world’s energy storage problem, a pivotal milestone is in sight for their innovative technology.
Engineers have put the finishing touches to the first commercial prototype of a thermal energy storage system (TESS) developed by local company 1414 Degrees.
The 10MWh GAS-TESS is being transported from 1414 Degrees’ warehouse in Lonsdale to SA Water’s wastewater treatment plant at Glenelg, where it will be tested for the first time in a commercial environment. With commissioning expected early in the new year, 1414 Degrees’ executive chairman, Kevin Moriarty, says the $4 million pilot is an important moment for the company.
“This trial we’re doing is potentially going to open up a very large market very quickly,” he said.
“The numbers of units that could be sold, for example into the wastewater industry, is potentially extremely large. And then the same with all these other industries like packaging, manufacturers and so on.
“The next 12 months are going to be extremely pivotal for the company and for the shareholders – I don’t think people have grasped the scale of the potential market.”
The GAS-TESS system is a modified version of the company’s patented TESS technology, designed to store biogas energy at the Glenelg plant before delivering heat and electricity across SA Water’s facility when needed.
In other industrial settings, solar or wind power can be used to melt silicon – at 1414 degrees Celsius – to store and discharge the energy at an optimal time for each customer. As well as producing electricity, excess heat can also be used in industrial processes.
The idea was born in 2009, when Adelaide businessmen Harold Tomblin, John Moss and Robert Shepherd engaged an ex-CSIRO scientist to develop a device to harness the potential of silicon as an energy storage material.
They pumped more than $2 million in R&D during the early years, recruiting mechanical engineer Matthew Johnson to develop the technology into a viable product.
Dr Moriarty – a veteran businessman in the state’s mining industry – was brought in three years ago to help with commercialisation. After securing more than $12 million from seed investors, the company raised an additional $16.3 million in September, when it listed on the ASX.
With funding in place, the company is planning demonstration projects with poultry processor Pepe’s Ducks in NSW and in Victoria with corrugated packaging maker ABBE Corrugated.
Dr Moriarty said the debate over how best to stabilise intermittent electricity generated from renewables had focused on large-scale batteries, but he believes there may be a better solution.
“The issue with having batteries like the big battery (at Jamestown) has been that there’s no economic case for it at the moment,” he said.
“We think it’s probably better done by positioning lots of smaller storage solutions, particularly our system because its highest efficiency is delivering electricity and heat for process industries, which are the biggest users of energy in society.
“We think that a lot of small storage installations are going to be a lot more future-proof and, secondly, we think there has to be a much cheaper solution than batteries – the amount of waste inherent in batteries is astronomical.”
1414 Degrees is planning to scale up its technology into a 200MWh module that can support major solar and wind-generation projects.
Dr Moriarty believes the TESS can become an alternative to lithium ion batteries, which only last for a certain number of charging cycles.
“The reality is that there needs to be a big storage solution for big renewable generation,” he said.
“We can do the big solutions and we can do them much cheaper than pumped hydro and certainly than batteries. We’re aiming to build it for about $70,000 per MWh of storage – that puts us in a very low-cost regime.
“We‘ve been approached by utilities and companies from Australia and overseas, and we’ve given ourselves a six-month window to find the right site for it.”
And it is overseas where Dr Moriarty sees the big opportunity for 1414 Degrees’ technology, in cooler climate countries where its heating can be used more widely.
“The heat output of our technology is ideally suited to applications such as district heating, wastewater treatment, desalination, greenhouses and industries that use large quantities of high temperature heat,” Dr Moriarty said.
“Certainly, South Australia is a wonderful laboratory for seeing the effects of too much renewables too quickly - it’s certainly driven the development of the technology.
“But while South Australia is good from a renewables point of view, the applications extend globally and particularly into cold countries where there are much larger year-around heat needs, and any country that has a lot of processing industries.”
Dr Moriarty says the company will bolster its management team in the new year, starting with new chief operating officer Dr Jordan Parham.
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