You’ve heard of hybrid cars. Now meet a hybrid cement plant.

You’ve no doubt heard of hybrid cars, but what about a hybrid cement or glass factory? Probably not, since almost everything today runs on fossil fuels. But that may soon change – a startup has developed a way to integrate electric heat into existing facilities. And like a hybrid car, it allows companies to save money while using less fossil fuel.

“We are hybridizing industrial processes,” said Carlos Ceballos, co-founder and CEO of NOC Energyhe told TechCrunch. “Most companies are willing to electrify, but they don’t want to get off fossil fuels yet. In the energy transition, they want to have the opportunity to choose the lowest cost.”

NOC has developed a form of electric heating that can be bolted onto existing fossil fuel-fired installations. The heat from its system can be channeled into a glass furnace or various parts of the cement production process. If the cost of electricity increases, the operator may turn off the NOC equipment and rely solely on fossil fuels.

Perhaps more importantly, the startup can provide heat at temperatures as high as 1,200˚ C, and Ceballos said the company is working toward 1,500˚ C. These temperatures have been difficult to achieve with anything other than fossil fuels or hydrogen, the latter of which is currently too expensive in its non-polluting form. The field doesn’t have many entrants so far — Startup Battlefield graduate Electrified Thermal Solutions stands out as a potential contender.

NOC recently raised a $2.7 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by 360 Capital with participation from SOSV and Desai VC.

Early NOC customers will likely opt for the hybrid format, though they won’t have to if they don’t want to. The NOC’s system can store heat for hours on end, allowing companies to use more electricity when the price is cheap — like when the wind is howling or the sun is beating down — and draw from the stored heat when the price spikes.

There are a few elements in the NOC system that make both hybridization and electricity price arbitrage possible. The first is the induction heating element, which is similar in concept to the induction stoves installed in kitchens around the world. Induction heaters use metal coils, usually made of copper, to produce magnetic fields when electricity is passed through them. These magnetic fields cause the atoms in some nearby metals, such as steel, to vibrate rapidly, creating heat.

In NOC’s system, the induction coils run on steel spheres that are packed inside large ceramic pots 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) wide. Wrapped around the receptacles are the heat-generating copper coils and the heat-saving insulation. When heat is needed, electricity flows through the copper and heats the steel spheres. Air blown through the spheres extracts the heat and transports it to where it is needed, such as a glass furnace or part of a cement factory.

Now, NOC’s approach isn’t the only way to get heat that hot using electricity. Resistance heaters, similar to those found in toasters, can get the job done. But the higher the heat, the shorter their lifespan. At 1,000˚ C, specialized resistance heaters only last about 12 months, Ceballos said. At 1,200˚ C, that drops to three months, he added.

NOC’s heating elements – the copper coils – bypass this problem entirely because they never come into contact with the heat they generate. That’s the beauty of induction heating — the coils are embedded in half a meter (about 20 inches) of insulation, remaining at room temperature while they fire their electromagnetic waves into the steel spheres.

The insulation is thick enough that NOC’s system can store heat for many hours. The startup can size the system based on how long a customer wants to store heat. For longer duration, the NOC will stack more container units on top of each other and pack them with more steel balls.

The startup has operated a pilot scale system the size of a refrigerator for 15,000 hours so far and has built two much larger demonstration systems, one for a glass manufacturer and another for a cement producer, both in France. These systems should be activated in May.

“Being hybrid allows them to mock the future,” Ceballos said. “Given the geopolitical issues today, it’s very attractive.”