Reverion power plant achieves world record efficiency
A spin-off from the Technical University of Munich has achieved a technological breakthrough that redefines the limits of what is possible.
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The company Reverion, based in Eresing, near Munich, has achieved a global record in power plant technology. With an electrical efficiency of 74.2%, Reverion has significantly surpassed the previous world record for thermal power plants – a technological breakthrough that redefines the limits of what is feasible and paves the way for 100% renewable energy.
The Bavarian company Reverion sets a new world record of 74.2% for the electrical efficiency of thermal power plants, ushering in a new era of sustainable energy supply.
Reverion
Power plants have come a long way though. In 1882, the Pearl Street Station in New York was the first commercial thermal power plant to go into operation, converting coal into electrical energy with an efficiency of around 2.5%. More than 140 years later, there are a variety of technologies for generating electricity from fuels such as coal, oil or gas, which are now not only significantly more powerful but also more efficient. “Nowadays, electrical efficiencies of just over 60% are achieved in some cases. However, an electrical efficiency of around 65% is still considered the upper limit for thermal power plants,” says Prof. Hartmut Spliethoff, Head of theChair of Energy Systems at the Technical University of Munich. Before Reverion’s achievement, the Keadby Unit 2 combined-cycle gas turbine power plant in the UK held the official efficiency world record of 64.18%, proven on May 21, 2024 with an output of around 850 megawatts.
This makes even more impressive what the Reverion team led by founders Stephan Herrmann, Felix Fischer, Jeremias Weinrich, Maximilian Hauck and Luis Poblotzki has now achieved. With its container-based fuel cell power plant, a groundbreaking efficiency of 74.2% was reached. Carbon capture is already taken into account, which would lead to additional efficiency losses of several percentage points if integrated into conventional thermal power plants.
“This level of efficiency is impressive and significantly exceeds what was previously thought possible,” says Spliethoff.
The world record was achieved by the Reverion team using a power plant from preseries production, operated at a biogas plant in Mühlacker, Baden-Württemberg.
Reverion thus opens new perspectives for a more sustainable, lower-emission energy supply and plays a decisive role in the energy transition. In contrast to conventional power plants, Reverion systems not only generate electricity, but also methane or hydrogen in reversible operation. They therefore offer a solution to use renewable energies efficiently, independent of sun and wind. “Our mission is to rethink efficiency – not just as a technical or economic parameter, but as an essential part of the energy transition,” says Stephan Herrmann, Chief Executive Officer of Reverion. “With this success, we are demonstrating that technological excellence and responsibility for future generations can go hand in hand.”
Reverion is already working on the next generation of power plants and wants to continue setting standards in the industry in the future.
“The record we have set makes us very proud - and yet it only represents an intermediate step,” says Chief Operating Officer Felix Fischer. “We are now more convinced than ever that we can achieve even higher levels of efficiency with the next development steps in our technology. Our goal remains an electrical efficiency of 80%.”
Meanwhile, the scale-up of Reverion’s production capacities is already underway, funded by the European Union in the Innovation Fund Project RESILIENCE, which is coordinated by Reverion. Reverion shows that the transition to a sustainable energy system is possible – technologically leading, ecologically sensible and decentralized economical.
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