The Marshall Liberal Government welcomes today’s announcement that Adelaide based company 1414 Degrees is advancing the commissioning of its gas Thermal Energy Storage System (GAS-TESS) at SA Water’s Glenelg Wastewater Treatment Plant.

In a significant step the 10MWh GAS-TESS has begun taking on biogas from the wastewater treatment plant and will soon start to return electricity and heat on demand to SA Water.

Minister for Energy and Mining Dan van Holst Pellekaan congratulated 1414 Degrees on its first installation at a commercial site, working with SA Water at the forefront of its innovation.

“Today’s announcement is globally significant for the state’s grid scale energy storage industry,” said Minister for Energy and Mining Dan van Holst Pellekaan.

“Delivering reliable, affordable and dispatchable power from renewable energy is one of the great technological and environmental challenges of our age.

“Technologies like 1414 Degrees’ GAS-TESS are able to simultaneously stabilise the grid and electrify industry by reducing its dependency on gas and diesel.”

Using the company’s patented Thermal Energy Storage System – which can take gas or electricity from any source and store it as latent heat in silicon – the GAS-TESS is being trialled by SA Water to burn biogas from the treatment plant and store the thermal energy until needed.

The energy from the latent heat can then be reclaimed and distributed as heat and electricity when required, helping SA Water achieve its target of zero net energy cost from 2020.

1414 Degrees CEO Kevin Moriarty said, “the company’s current technology differs from its earlier patented designs and lithium-ion or thermal batteries in its ability to scale to very large capacity at relatively low cost.”

“These factors mean it is an attractive solution for big industry needing large storage capacity in order to switch from gas to renewable heat for processing,” Mr Moriarty said.

1414 Degrees is commercialising after 10 years of research and development with the assistance of AusIndustry and a $1.6 million state government grant through the Renewable Technology Fund (RTF).

The company currently employs 24 people and has used over 100 local companies in the development of this project.

Dr Moriarty said many of the engineers delivering the project came directly out of Adelaide University, some originally worked on the technology in their final year project.

“We are now focused on demonstrating the efficacy of this technology in the National Energy Market to be ready for demand from utilities and industries to scale up to the gigawatt hour size.”