Wildcatter Podcast: What are flow batteries? And why are they vital to the renewable energy ecosyste, page-14

For the sort of profit-making activities that make Honsdale such a good investment, Lithium still has technical advantages over a ZBM2. The higher power, faster response and higher round trip efficiency make lithium better for buying low/selling high and frequency modulation. The cost of recycling is hard to predict in 10 years, but I’m prepared to bet that as more is required, we’ll get better and cheaper at recycling batteries, so I’m yet to be convinced it’s a major drawback. Furthermore, although the warranty is 10 years, I’ll also bet that the vast majority of lithium batteries will still be kept in operation for considerably longer. So RFX are right to focus on off-grid backup applications and Telco tower supply for now where they have a real technical advantage over lithium.
In the future, long term power storage for backup of the grid itself will create profitable grid applications for Redflow’s technology, but I don’t think those are here now.