Malta Inc. Collaborates with German Partners to Accelerate Energy Transition and Decarbonization

Malta Inc. Collaborates with German Partners to Accelerate Energy Transition and Decarbonization

(IN BRIEF) Malta Inc., a leader in long-duration energy storage (LDES), has announced a grant awarded to its German subsidiary for a €9-million project aimed at expediting Germany’s energy transition efforts. The project, supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, involves collaboration with Malta Hochtemperatur Wärmepumpen Stromspeicher GmbH, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Alfa Laval, and Siemens Energy. It aims to analyze Malta’s LDES technology’s potential to decarbonize both electricity and heat generation in Germany, along with expanding DLR’s thermal energy storage test facility. This initiative aligns with Germany’s climate targets and the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2045. Malta’s innovative pumped-thermal energy storage (PTES) plant replaces fossil-fueled power plants, generating clean power and heat while offering grid resilience and reliability services. The collaboration seeks to contribute to a just transition, create jobs, and support decarbonization goals.

(PRESS RELEASE) LUND, 16-Nov-2023 — /EuropaWire/ — Malta Inc., a world leader in long duration energy storage (LDES), announced that its German subsidiary was awarded a grant to support a €9-million effort to accelerate the German energy transition.  Malta Hochtemperatur Wärmepumpen Stromspeicher GmbH, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Alfa Laval, and Siemens Energy were awarded funding by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) to support Germany’s efforts to achieve Paris Agreement climate targets and to be climate-neutral by 2045.

Germany needs to electrify its heating sector and to ensure that expanded renewable power generation is available on-demand and around-the-clock. The grant will fund a technoeconomic analysis of the potential for Malta’s LDES technology to help decarbonize both electricity and heat generation in Germany. It will also support the expansion of DLR’s world-leading test facility for thermal energy storage in molten salts (TESIS) to validate an innovative, Alfa Laval-built heat exchanger.

“We are honored to partner with the German government and its leading national laboratory, the DLR, to explore how Malta’s technology can accelerate the transition off natural gas,” said Ramya Swaminathan, CEO of Malta. “This important work will identify how best to meet Germany’s decarbonization goals, create jobs in German turbomachinery manufacturing, and deliver a just transition by creating clean energy construction and operations jobs for the nation’s current energy workforce.”

Sigmund Brielmaier, Head of LDES at Siemens Energy, states: “Besides being the turbomachinery supplier for Malta’s technology, we are keen to contribute with our expertise to this project that enables the energy transition. LDES is a key to decarbonize the energy system and this project offers a great opportunity to explore new ways of decarbonized combined heat and power applications.”

Prof. Dr. André Thess, Director of the Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics at DLR, said: “As a globally leading research institution in the field of molten salt technology the DLR-Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics will be happy to contribute to the successful development of this important large-scale long-duration storage technology”.

Alasdair Maciver, Head of Energy Storage Solutions at Alfa Laval comments: “Energy storage is pivotal when driving the shift towards renewable energy sources. We are very pleased that our pioneering and highly efficient heat exchanger technology, tailored for Malta’s energy storage process, will be running in actual operational settings. It is a milestone in the pathway towards competitive, long-term energy storage and the transformation of the European energy market into a more sustainable future.”

Malta’s innovative pumped-thermal energy storage (PTES) plant is a like-for-like replacement for fossil-fueled power plants. It generates 100-MW of clean power and 70-MW of clean heat, but it uses an industrial grade heat pump to replace the carbon emissions and volatile price of fossil fuels with zero-emissions, lowest-cost-available renewable energy. The heat pump converts the electricity to thermal energy, which can be stored for hours to days. When needed, a heat engine reconverts the thermal energy into clean power and heat, returning more than 90% of the original energy to the grid with little-to-no degradation over its 30+ year lifespan.

As an LDES asset, Malta’s technology allows utilities to reliably deploy vastly more wind and solar power without the risks of unavailability or wasting surplus generation. As a clean power plant, it delivers the same grid resilience and reliability services that fossil-fueled plants do but wind and solar do not. With among the best-available round-trip efficiencies, lowest system degradation, and longest plant life, Malta’s clean power and heat plant allows customers to make up lost ground on decarbonization goals.

In close collaboration with DLR’s Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics, led by Prof. Dr. André Thess, the partners will collaborate on analyses of:

• Use cases for long-duration energy storage in the electricity grid, including grid services, and heat grids;
• Suitable market mechanisms for long duration storage systems;
• Identification of sites for potential deployment; and
• Validation of an innovative Alfa Laval heat exchanger at DLR’s TESIS, the world-leading facility for high-temperature, molten-salt, thermal storage technology.

Editor’s notes

This is Alfa Laval
Alfa Laval is a world leader in heat transfer, centrifugal separation and fluid handling, and is active in the areas of Energy, Marine, and Food & Water, offering its expertise, products, and service to a wide range of industries in some 100 countries. The company is committed to optimizing processes, creating responsible growth, and driving progress to support customers in achieving their business goals and sustainability targets.

Alfa Laval’s innovative technologies are dedicated to purifying, refining, and reusing materials, promoting more responsible use of natural resources. They contribute to improved energy efficiency and heat recovery, better water treatment, and reduced emissions. Thereby, Alfa Laval is not only accelerating success for its customers, but also for people and the planet. Making the world better, every day.

Alfa Laval has 20,300 employees. Annual sales in 2022 were SEK 52.1 billion (approx. EUR 4.9 billion). The company is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.

www.alfalaval.com

Media Contact:

Tomas Bäckefjord
Vice President Marketing & Communications, Energy Division
Mobile: +46725554458
tomas.backefjord@alfalaval.com

SOURCE: Alfa Laval