Dear Reader,
I’ve been bullish on lithium for months now, ever since prices dropped more than 75% from late 2022 highs.
If you read Energy and Capital with any regularity, I probably don’t need to tell you that since I talk myself blue on the topic every single week. Thankfully, today I’m not going to talk about lithium, instead I’m going to talk about another metal — one which may actually succeed in eclipsing lithium in one specific but important segment of the rechargeable battery sector. That metal is Vanadium — a seldom understood and often overlooked “transition” metal whose primary usage is as an additive in the steel refining process.
Now, you can make batteries using Vanadium, but there’s a catch.
Battery grade Vanadium is extremely expensive — more than 3x the price of silver, in fact.
The result: Vanadium batteries cost around 2x what lithium-based batteries cost, per kWh.
Vanadium Batteries: The Economy of Time
Vanadium is also less energy dense, which means batteries of similar performance must be substantially larger and heavier. But here’s where it gets interesting… Lithium-ion batteries, and even the next-generation solid state lithium batteries which we’ve been hearing so much about in the news, only last somewhere between 500-1500charge/discharge cycles before the onset of a sudden and dramatic drop-off in charge capacity, as well as an increased risk of catastrophic failure. Vanadium batteries, on the other hand, can go for up to 25,000 cycles without noticeable loss in performance. That’s up to 30 years of reliable, peak-level operation. This kind of longevity is fairly useless in things like smart phones, tablets and other wireless devices, as we tend to replace those every few years regardless, and the energy density deficiency makes vanadium batteries too big and bulky to be practical in EVs. But there’s one application where vanadium shines: Commercial and industrial scale power storage. For every solar or wind farm, a large battery array must be built nearby to store and discharge power not immediately consumed — a universal constant in the world of renewables.
Can Vanadium Batteries Save Our Power Grid?
Right now, Lithium dominates this space as it dominates all others, but using lithium for long-term industrial work is like using a backup generator to run your house fulltime.
Over a 25-30 year lifespan, Vanadium batteries deliver substantially more power before performance decay begins.
With the added feature of reliability and safety (Vanadium batteries are all but fireproof), and the task of patching and supporting our aging powergrid looming over us, lithium’s hold over distributed energy storage is sure to start changing in short order.
Now, it’s true, you don’t often hear about this segment of the battery market, and there’s a reason for that.
Building-sized batteries sitting behind chain link fences just aren’t as sexy as the latest iPhone, or the new Tesla Roadster that’s supposed to debut next year, but collectively, distributed power storage is the third biggest segment of the battery market.
The Dumb Money Won’t Hear Anything About Vanadium Until It’s Too Late
Retail investors, as always, are too busy running after the headline-grabbing trends to care, but as of today, April 13, 2024, I will go on the record as saying that I firmly believe that Vanadium will rule this multi-billion industry in the coming years.
I recently introduced my readers to one of the only pure vanadium battery play that’s trading in North America today.
It’s small, underbought, mostly ignored by the investment community. But it’s already producing large-scale batteries and is building its client list.
The company recently got a major order to power a US Department of Energy-funded project. So this company and its technology is anything but unknown to those whose opinions matter the most.
My readers first heard of this company a few weeks ago, but right now, I’m making this informational video available to all of our free readers as well.
It’s everything you need to know about vanadium, the batteries it powers, and the future of the distributed energy storage industry. Check it out, right here, no charge, no registration.
Believe me when I say that you’ll never see lithium in the same light again.
Fortune favors the bold…
Oh yeah? Bring it on ..
cheers
AVL Price at posting:
1.6¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
