Israeli Startup Providing Energy Storage To European Pet Food Giant

An Israeli company that stores renewable energy by heating crushed rocks has entered a 12-year Heat as a Service (HaaS) agreement with Partner in Pet Food Hungaria KFT (PPF), one of Europe’s leading private label pet food producers.

Brenmiller Energy creates electricity during the day through rooftop solar panels, which it uses to boil water to make steam. That steam in turn heats crushed rocks to extremely high temperatures that can hold the heat for several days.

When there’s demand for electricity but the sun isn’t shining, the heat can be used again to boil water. Steam from that water produces clean electricity through the use of a generator.

Under the terms of the agreement with PPF, Brenmiller will design, build, own and operate a 30 MWh bGen ZERO system next to PPF’s pet food manufacturing plant in Dombovar, Hungary. 

The system will take priority over PPF’s existing fossil fuel boilers, significantly reducing the pet food manufacturer’s energy costs and carbon footprint, and PPF will purchase steam from Brenmiller at a fixed rate.

“Our Heat as a Service solution is a win-win for Partner in Pet Food. By providing access to heat, while maintaining our ownership of the system, we’re helping our customer achieve both its sustainability and profitability goals and will be able to deliver critical flexibility to Hungary’s electricity grid to support the deployment of more renewables” said Brenmiller Chairman and CEO Avi Brenmiller. 

“Our company is committed to sustainability, and Brenmiller’s turnkey bGen technology is an ideal way for us to prepare our manufacturing operations for the future,” said PPF CEO Gerald Kuehr. 

“As a European leading company in private-label pet food, producing over 700,000 tons of pet food annually, we have an obligation to lead by example and drive the sustainability agenda in our industry forward. We are pleased to work with Brenmiller to achieve our greenhouse gasses reduction goals.”