Malta Inc, partners secure EUR-9m grant for LDES study in Germany

The German government has awarded a grant of EUR 9 million (USD 9.7m) to a group of companies which will help Malta Inc analyse the potential for its long-duration energy storage (LDES) technology to help decarbonise both electricity and heat generation in Germany.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) will provide the funding to a local subsidiary of Malta Inc, as well as to German Aerospace Center (DLR), Alfa Laval and Siemens Energy, so that they can explore how this technology can accelerate the transition off natural gas.

The partners will collaborate with DLR’s Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics on analysing use cases for LDES in both the electricity and heat grids along with suitable market mechanisms, as well as on identifying sites for potential deployment. The grant will also support the expansion of DLR’s test facility for thermal energy storage in molten salts (TESIS) to validate an Alfa Laval-built heat exchanger.

Malta claims that its pumped-thermal energy storage (PTES) plant is a like-for-like replacement for fossil-fueled power plants, generating 100 MW of clean power and 70 MW of clean heat. It relies on a heat pump to convert electricity to thermal energy, which can be stored for hours to days and be reconverted to clean power and heat when needed.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company was spun out of Google’s Moonshot Factory, X, in 2018. Its existing investors also include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Chevron’s emerging technologies investment arm.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.074)

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