MGA Thermal announces major industrial thermal storage project

MGA Thermal has announced it has commenced a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study for a 195 MWh electro-thermal energy storage (ETES) project for Tronox, a global chemicals and mining company. The country’s largest industrial-scale thermal storage project is being developed by Australian company Knode and co-funded by a $2.9 million agreement with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

The project will commence construction in 2027 with support GHD. It will reach commercial operation by 2028 where it will deliver approximately 20 tonnes per hour of renewable steam to Tronox’s Kwinana facility under a heat-as-a-service agreement. The project’s initial rollout will allow Tronox to avoid 38,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per annum, with the potential to eliminate fossil fuel usage if deployed at scale.

The FEED study marks a significant milestone for the company’s flagship project, building on the pre-feasibility completed by MGA Thermal and Knode in August last year. The project reinforces MGA Thermal’s industry momentum following its $17 million capital raise finalised in March 2026. This raise, alongside a separate $3.25 million funding grant secured from ARENA for five separate FEED studies, will power the company’s active industrial projects pipeline.

“This project is the first of several we are actively developing, and it demonstrates that MGA Thermal’s technology is ready to scale across industrial and manufacturing sectors,” said Mark Croudace, CEO of MGA Thermal.

MGA Thermal’s ETES technology stores low-cost renewable electricity in proprietary MGA Blocks — modular, energy-dense blocks engineered to store energy as latent heat. The stored energy is recovered to produce process steam on demand, enabling industrial facilities to operate continuously on renewable energy without fossil fuel backup.

“Progressing to the FEED stage is incredibly important, not just for our project with MGA Thermal, but for the fact that it demonstrates a viable way to electrify heavy industry. Keeping industries like mineral processing, refining and materials manufacturing in Western Australia is going to be highly dependent on being able to decarbonise economically,” said Chris Nelson, CEO of Knode.

Image credit: MGA Thermal