I think predicting Vanadium demand for batteries is extremely...

I think predicting Vanadium demand for batteries is extremely challenging at this very early stage, if not outright impossible. The reality is there are multiple levels of early and highly unpredictable scenarios that could lead to very large swings in potential demand both ways.

First of all obviously there is the global economical background.. I don't want to go to deep into this but people often assume we can reasonably predict this, but recent examples of the pandemic and the invasion in Ukraine which both have a huge impact in the global economy should make any investors somewhat skeptical even on mid-term predictions.

More specific is the need for solutions to the renewables (mainly solar and wind) intermittency problem. The scale of these solutions will very much depend on how much more renewables we implement, particularly in countries and regions that already have a significant portion of renewables in the mix. This is because its only becomes an issue past a certain percentage of the mix...say around 15%. This is already much harder to predict. There are multiple ways for countries to completely avoid this issue (which would mean no solution (including batteries) will be required)...These range from simply continuing to rely on fossil fuels (Yes countries like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea are unlikely to take any responsibility for our environment...And there is likely a range of countries that simply won't have the financial means to invest heavily in renewables, let alone expensive solutions for when they implement more then 15%) or they can go nuclear (as is happening rapidly in quite a few countries currently) or even getting hydro power (only suitable for a limited number of countries). So the actual amount of energy produced by renewables that will require some sort of a solution is hard to predict although it does seem likely to grow over the next decade...

The next level of that you would need to predict is how much of this solution will be batteries. Batteries are almost certainly going to be part of the solution but they are also very expensive and might be hard to build at massive scale due to a lack of materials. They face some very stiff competition from a range of alternatives. The current alternative is natural gas turbines. Gas is plentiful and (used to be) cheap. These turbines can be started and turned off quickly and are therefore perfect to use next to renewables...That is apart from the fact that they obviously do produce CO2. Another option is SMR's or Small Modular Reactors (Nuclear) which unlike the current full scale reactors can be build and implemented much quicker and can also increase and reduce power output rapidly...These are however still in the development stage, but this is now going rapidly with several governments and huge companies backing this. A third solution is the production of hydrogen that can burned when little power is produced. This is also reasonably early stage and might not be overly efficient but there are still a number of projects in this space. A fourth solution could be smart grids that use car batteries, or house scale batteries to supply energy at certain times. There are other options but I think this covers the big ones (if I missed any feel free to contribute)...Either way its hard to predict what percentage grid scale batteries will be over the coming years.

And then there is obviously competing battery technologies. Now it looks to me Vanadium batteries are one of the best if not the best solution for grid scale batteries...But there are next the obvious Lithium Ion batteries other battery designs that might be competition. It is at this stage really hard to predict if Vanadium batteries might be over 50% of installed grid scale batteries in 2030 or maybe not even 10%.

So I think when it comes to Vanadium demand predictions, it's really very hard. I would say it's a pretty safe bet that Vanadium demand in steel and other metals is likely to grow and these predictions are probably reasonably in the ballpark. I am also convinced Vanadium demand for batteries will increase over the coming years...But by how much and how quickly it's probably not predictable. Anyone attempting to do so is likely going to be off by a wide margin.

The good news is that in the most bearish scenario will see higher Vanadium demand due to steel and metal use with some growth in battery demand, whereas in the more positive or bullish scenarios the real demand could blow any predictions out of the water by a huge margin.

Vanadium price are almost certainly going to do OK...But they could do fantastic with a Lithium style moment in the next couple of years. The building of and planning to build multiple large scale Vanadium battery factories across several continents certainly gives me hope we might lean to a more bullish scenario.

Now all we need is finance and we can build one of the biggest Vanadium mines in the world.