excellent ann, page-5

The key to it is the report of the website by a consultant from the US Dept of Energy's research lab.

He says categorically that there is no comparable product in the world.

My own research confirms this. The UK competitor seems to be stalled (that needs checking) and ZBB doesn't seem to have any volume orders. It may not even be operating anymore. The often mentioned vanadium battery is also not happening. Uni of NSW was trying to raise funds for a second generation design, but this has collapsed. There are first generation vanadium batteries in China, but so far I haven't been able to trace developments. Vanadium is also fairly expensive and the foot print is a lot larger than the Redflex equivalent.

The other aspect is the support from Ergon. The order for 10,000 units depended on Redflex delivering at a price below $8500 a unit, but they were prepared to buy at cost in the early stages at four time that price to get the business off the ground.

Management made it clear in the pre-float period that they were going to focus on large scale production via a limited product range so that they could meet high volume orders. They seem to have done this without a hitch.

The point to underline is how many units a day 10,0000 requires. This is from one small power distributor.

It will take some time to build up to 160 a day, but that seems to be manageable - a matter of upscaling the current production flow. Somewhere along this time line they will licence production, but probably not until they have hit the 160 a day target which sounds demanding in terms of inventory and sheer space.

First licensing deals likely to be in the US where the infrastructure is in many places in a poor state do ideal for a battery that can a) serve as a grid storage device or b) limit the extension of the grid.

California for example has the same wild fire issues as we do. The fewer power lines spreading across fire prone areas the better. Large decrease in maintenance and insurance costs etc.

Then there are the tens of thousands of potential solar synergy applications in the third world, islands etc where diesel, solar and battery storage can be combined to provide always-on power at the small town/ village level.

But the largest market for the next decade is likely to simply be for grid load levelling or load shifting.


This seems to be a case of a technology providing its own market. Before a reliable, relatively cheap battery like this electricity storage was seen as the exceptional case. Battery back-up was for emergency power failures, but too expensive and toxic (in the case of lead acid) to be regarded as an integral part of the grid.

Once that shift takes place as it seems to be doing with all the talk in the US about smart grids and the equivalent here as shown by the Ausgrid order, Redflow has a good chance of pushing ahead to scale and niche dominance.