vandium - timely reminder

By Damon van der Linde ? Exclusive to Vanadium Investing News

As demand for renewable energy sources grows, so will the need to store that energy. Because both wind and solar power do not provide a consistent flow of electricity, technology like the vanadium redox battery (VRB) is gaining the attention of commercial operations as well as governments, projecting a push in future demand for the mineral.
?The overall acceptance of energy storage globally is becoming more and more, and that?s going to boost the batteries that can cycle and do things that only we can do,? said Tim Hennessy, President of Prudent Energy, a United States-based company that designs and manufactures vanadium redox battery energy storage systems.
According to the Vanadium International Technical Committee (VANITEC) the vast majority of vanadium is used to strengthen steel. However, the use of vanadium in battery technologies, like the VRB, is growing.
What makes vanadium an ideal mineral for battery technology is that as a transition metal four energy states can be created within the same material. Vanadium is used in the electrolyte state in VRBs, which are a type of flow battery. The electrolyte is the element that stores the energy and that flows through or past an electrode. This movement of electrons or protons across a membrane allows heat to be taken out of the battery and separates the energy storage from the power.
Hennessy explained that one advantage of a flow battery is that it can be scaled up to the desired size without having to increase the power output, as with a lithium battery. Controlled scaling is ideal for large-scale applications like powering grids, as the VRB is limited only by space in its storage capacity.
?Another advantage of the VRB is that unlike most other battery technologies, it can be repeatedly cycled without affecting the lifespan.? said Hennessy.
The downside of this is that the VRB has a lower energy density than other battery formats, meaning that Prudent Energy?s current products are focused more on commercial applications.
?Its applications are limited to places where you have sufficient space, you can?t jam it into your computer or a car, and you can?t jam it into a very small space down in the basement necessarily,? said Hennessy. ?It is primarily focused on places that you have space like wind farms and solar, or companies where they have larger loads.?
Hennessy projects an increase in demand for vanadium in batteries, equaling 10-15 percent of the mineral?s total use in the next three years.
Other developments in the vanadium battery market may come from vanadium-charged lithium batteries for use in high-performance technology like electric vehicles, which Nykoliation says are currently in the process of being developed by laboratories in the United States, Germany and Japan.
?All these world-class labs are fast-tracking the vanadium battery development and that makes me feel good ? there is a huge untapped market,? said Nykoliation. ?There is a technological breakthrough and the tipping point is fast approaching. It?s not if, but when.?