EtaPRO Deploys Digital Twin for MGA Thermal's 5MWh Facility in Australia
en.Wedoany.com Reported - EtaPRO LLC has deployed its monitoring, digital twin, and predictive analytics technology at MGA Thermal's 5MWh thermal energy storage demonstration facility in Tomago, New South Wales, Australia, with the systems delivered by EtaPRO in collaboration with its parent company, Toshiba International Corporation.
MGA Thermal is an Australian developer of long-duration thermal energy storage technology targeting the industrial process heat market. This sector relies on continuous high-temperature energy and is one of the hardest industries to decarbonize. The company's technology is based on patented MGA Blocks, which store renewable energy as latent heat through the solid-liquid phase change of an alloy, and can dispatch output on demand in the form of high-grade process heat or steam.
EtaPRO, part of the Toshiba Group, specializes in performance monitoring, diagnostics, and digital twin software, with products originally developed for conventional power generation assets. Under the collaboration agreement, EtaPRO is applying three components of its platform at the Tomago facility: the Archive historian database for integrating and visualizing operational data, the VirtualPlant tool for building a thermodynamic digital twin of the demonstration plant, and the APR advanced pattern recognition system for flagging operational behavior that falls outside expected parameter ranges.
Akira Sasaki, Assistant CEO of EtaPRO, stated that as long-duration energy storage moves toward broader commercial deployment, digital intelligence will play a role in accelerating the adoption of new energy technologies. Sasaki said: "As the energy industry continues to evolve, digital intelligence will play a key role in accelerating the adoption of new technologies. We are proud to collaborate with MGA Thermal and our colleagues at Toshiba to bring proven monitoring, diagnostics, and digital twin capabilities to this pioneering energy storage project. Together, we are turning operational data into actionable insights, providing the performance, reliability, and confidence to support the broader commercial deployment of long-duration energy storage."
The demonstration history at the Tomago facility predates this collaboration. In April 2025, MGA Thermal completed what it claims to be the world's first industrial steam thermal energy storage demonstration at the site, storing 5MWh of energy using approximately 3,700 MGA Blocks and delivering superheated steam continuously for 24 hours. The demonstration followed a thermal event at the same location in 2023, when dangerous heat buildup was detected in the early morning and emergency services were called. The company said at the time that the incident served as a reminder of the inherent risks of developing large-scale, first-of-a-kind energy storage technologies.
Since then, MGA Thermal has shifted toward commercial deployment. The company raised A$8.5 million (US$5.47 million) in an earlier funding round, with investors including Shell Ventures and Belgian venture capital firm Finindus; in February 2026, it secured an additional A$3.25 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to fund up to five front-end engineering design (FEED) studies for industrial customers under ARENA's "Powering the Regions" program. One of these studies, conducted in partnership with Australian industrial solutions company Knode, is evaluating a 195MWh electric thermal energy storage system for chemicals company Tronox's plant in Kwinana, Western Australia, with construction planned to begin in 2027 and commercial operation the following year.
According to EtaPRO, the Tomago demonstration facility has now reached Technology Readiness Level 8, and the digital twin deployment is designed to support this progression, enabling MGA Thermal to simulate operating scenarios before full-scale construction and validate performance under customer-specific conditions.
MGA Thermal's demonstration facility is located in Tomago, in the Hunter Region suburb shared with the Tomago aluminium smelter. The Australian and New South Wales governments jointly committed A$2.5 billion last week to secure renewable energy supply for the nearby Tomago aluminium smelter. The smelter is Australia's largest single consumer of electricity, and the agreement highlights the scale of industrial support required for the Hunter region's transition to renewable energy and storage technologies. Industrial process heat accounts for a significant portion of global energy demand and is difficult to electrify directly, making long-duration thermal energy storage technologies—along with alternatives such as molten salt systems and sand batteries—a growing investment area for manufacturers seeking to decarbonize continuous high-temperature operations.
