The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
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China’s plan to cut coal and boost green growth
https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-020-02464-5/d41586-020-02464-5.pdf
Power storage in action
The city of Dalian in Liaoning province, north east China, has a population of around seven million people, and is a test site for Xianfeng Li’s work. Winter temperatures there can drop to -20 °C, putting the city’s electricity grid under pressure to provide sudden intense bursts when residents turn up their heating, he says.
To help address this need, Rongke Power, a company that was spun off from the DICP, plans to open a 400-megawatt-hour (MWh) energy-storage facility in Dalian this year. It is the first stage in a project to provide an 800 MWh facility by 2023, and will use vanadium flow batteries — huge rechargeable devices that store liquid electrolyte in massive tanks. The final capacity should meet about 0.5% of the total power demand of Liaoning, where Dalian is the second-largest city.
Xianfeng Li says that the project will be able to contribute an uninterruptible power supply to the city, while storing and regulating the supply of energy to the grid for the entire province, which receives 16.2% of its power from renewable energy sources. Provinces vary widely in how much of their energy comes from renewables: for instance, it is 2.7% for the southern Chinese province of Jiangsu, but 30.1% for sunny, sparsely populated Inner Mongolia. Among Liaoning’s neighbours, Jilin receives 8% of its power from non-fossil fuels, and Hebei 9.1%.
Vanadium flow batteries of the kind Xianfeng Li is testing in Dalian have some advantages over standard lithium-ion batteries for large-scale applications such as grid power: because the vanadium electrolyte is stored in a tank, it can be scaled up much more cheaply than can discrete lithium-ion batteries. Vanadium batteries are also less likely to catch fire, and have around ten times the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries.
Xianfeng Li says that in recent years, he’s seen funding for his work on vanadium flow batteries increase sharply, along with interest from companies in partnering with his team. He says that the DICP is currently working with around 30 companies that have been spun off from the institute.
“Businesses are now interested in developing this technology, because they know the government is focused on it and so feel confident to invest,” he says.
Yu says local governments are now keen to support companies to build battery-storage facilities. “At a time when policymakers are looking for new ways to stimulate growth in their regions, the battery-manufacturing industry looks very promising, so governments are motivated to encourage this type of investment.”
I’m with you MIKINAMAN, he is totally inept & belongs very firmly in everyone’s green box.
Luckily (excuse the slight pun !) all I can see is a green box - he/she reminds me of an angry wasp that just won't go away !!!!!
GLA
Thanks Alfa, This explains the rush to expand! Vanchem purchase and recent finance to increase capacity.
There is a lot of demand coming on mogwhys lists, Saudi seem keen as well, and even with Vanchem / Mokopane we cannot supply all of V required if one GW takes more than our full output presently pa, so I still hope other V projects do come on stream so as not to stifle the emerging VRFB industry with limitations on supply.I recall the webinar talking about data centres wanting GW’s ... So I actually welcome FAR if it ever gets off the ground, and others. But I want us to start first and reap some rewards.....!
Luciano, Fortune himself has recently said China is a net importer of Vanadium. It appears obvious to me you're a troll who hasn't bothered doing the most basic research into the company so I don't plan on providing links of any kind as you're obviously not interested in knowing the facts anyway. Now if everyone could just stop replying to weak bait posts also that'd be great.
Lucky, even I know the Eskom BESs project is being funded by the world bank, so your concern is not an issue. Mantashe may be a coal guy but all the right moves have been made and even last week the red tape is being removed to allow local generation, so neither point is really an issue.
There is a lot to the Eskom Bess project and BMN in general and it is very easy to get confused unless you dedicate a huge part of your life to understanding BMN...
mogwhy
Great point finally someone that has a balance view and the courage to speak what he see.
I tried before to start a conversation on China and geopolitics....but was rudely welcomed.
You point on China wanting to develop its natural resources is very much valid, I don't buy Alfacomp statement that China is a net importer, please Alfacomp can you provide any link/detailed info?
Many people write many things and everyone has his/her point of view,
but in the end you got to look at vanadium prices, because if you believe in a free market that is the only indicator to look at, not rumours and noise.
It bodes well if vanadium start to be embraced by the green revolution for many reasons and not just economical, but all this enthusiasm without looking at numbers and indicators (or al least without even wanting to talk about ) is dangerous for your wallet.
For example I read that Eskom is bankrupt and that the SA energy minister is a Coal fanatic. How is going to happen that he will embrace a green energy project which is more expensive than coal, if Eskom can't repay its massive debt? More over and more importantly coal in South Africa employ hundreds of thousand of people, do you understand the political consequences ?
Not deramping just to say that Eskom contract is not a sure thing at all.
But back to vanadium price (is strange that in this board so few people talk about this, if any at all)
China is a net importer everyone want vanadium and prices are at historical low, please explain ......
Do you think they have updated that table figures or just the paragraphs above from back in the day?
ZAR long term exchange rate is 12's when currently it is in the 16's and was a lot worse.
@SetCentric - that is an interesting update. Quite conservative figures and returns really.
Personally the only thing I am wary of is plant cost (somewhere between $300-400M). China has refinement capacity so if the main goal becomes supply to China, then seems to make more sense to invest a smaller capital sum and ship concentrate as unless China was willing to bankroll a plant (and at what terms), then a significant liability taking several years to make a return. Whilst SA is more or less Junk Status, raising finance would always be expensive.
No bassguy there are not the deposits in China. This was precisely the question I had in the back of my mind when I spent 2 days of my time visiting the Vanitec meeting in July 2017. I went there to ask the assembled world experts what the impact of Fangchenggang might be.
This is the answer that I obtained in relation to Fangchenggang:-
"They tried to put up an industrial park in Dalian but the regional government wouldn’t give them the money or land. So they went to Fangcheng where apparently they are desperate for some economic activity.
Anyway they have no resources only developing technology for processing the VTM ore at this time. They will be more than 1,000 Km through the mountains to the nearest VTM deposit."
If they had good VTM deposits in China they would already be utilising them, not struggling on with much lower quality, high cost Black Shale/ Stone Coal deposits like they had to in 2018. I might remind everyone that China is now a nett importer of Vanadium.
Are you getting mixed up with BEE and local communities Bassguy?
The ownership structure of all things Bushveld is bloody complicated..
Why is it 5% to local communities at Mokopane but 26% at Vametco?
:)
Faramog - I was thinking exactly that. When you see the latest webpage for Mokopane :
https://www.bushveldminerals.com/mokopane-vanadium-project-2/
Which has been updated recently- it is very much the case that Mokopane will happen. For me it’s a question of how it will be financed and the Chinese demand for vanadium means that an off take/financing arrangement is starring us in the face?
My slight worry about Chinas vrfb growth is that they decide something and then do it. They appear to have decided on Vrfb, great, will they decide to throw loads of money into mining to source V locally rather than rely on the rest of world?. There must be deposits in China as we all know how quickly they can do things if they decide and they have the cash to throw at something and the manpower to build quickly. Either way it will be good for vrfb uptake but looking at mogwhys list there will be a lot of V needed in big chunks and will China be happy being reliant...
Of course there could be a Mokopane off-take or JV to build the mine quickly. But I suspect we would not hear about that or that it would be allowed before Eskom and the SA govt got their order in first
Gla
Sorry rushing around this morning. Busy day ahead. Just copied and shared VSUN's post. Good news regardless.
Withe the China net importation requirement set to grow rapidly, I wonder if next year a raw ore offtake agreement from Mokopane would be a first step to its development.... Would make sense to build a crusher/ concentrator.... the capacity for vanadium production rather suggests Mokopane would be a nice low risk/low capital earner
Updated list of major electrolyte production facilities planned or complete.
Electrolyte production (4.5 tonnes of V per MWh)
2mt electrolyte- China - Fangchenggang (250,000 tonnes per year)
--------?------------ China - Ningde, Fujian (30,000 tonnes per year)
3,000 MWh pa -- Saudi Arabia, Dammam (13,500 tonnes per year)
1,000 MWh pa --China, Chaohu - Shanghai Electric (4,500 tonnes pa)
---200 MWh pa - South Africa - Bushveld Energy Phase 1 (900 tonnes pa)
---200 MWh pa - USA - New York (Margaret Lake) ph 1 (900 tonnes pa)
Total of 299,800 tonnes of vanadium per annum
China will make sure that they don't get screwed by Glencore speculators again.
This time they will get offtakes in place first.
Where have our sales recently increased by 600% ?
Thanks Mogwhy ,considering China is a net importer, that is currently more than BMN mine. There are other large projects in China coming close to going online in the next year or two (in the link below) and together I meant it will be obscene amounts of V required. Considering the spike in 2018 just for steel demand, I just don't know how the market will react when VRFB's start turning the screw.
Sanchez and Mogwhy - thanks for spotting this as I believe that it is yet another part of the VRFB jigsaw that is slotting into place. Let me explain.
As the names suggest the Dalian 800MWh battery is located not far from the Dalian Rongke Power (founded by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Technology) manufacturing facility - as the crow flies they are only about 40km apart.
Over the last year the question naturally arose in my mind as to who is manufacturing the two 200MW/1GWh batteries that are slated for Jiangsu province, just north of Shanghai. As a recap these were mentioned in my report from the 2019 International Flow Battery Forum held in Lyon. These were quoted as one VRFB for 200MW/1 GWh for Offshore wind power integration and a second 200MW/1GWh for coupling to the TianWan nuclear power station - so quite different and both very interesting applications - one a renewables integration project, the other a nuke flexibility system.
Now this is where the new information starts to get interesting - you see Chaohu is in Hefei province, which is right next door to Jiangsu province and as the crow flies the production facility may be no more than 200km from the first potential VRFB battery site that I have identified near Rudong.
It looks likely to me that the Chinese government are clearly using their VRFB megaprojects to help kickstart multiple different VRFB manufacturing plants and companies across the country, thereby diversifying their production base. This does not look a foolhardy plan, this looks like a massively clear vote of confidence in VRFB technology because you do not build 3x 1GWh factories if you just want to use each factory once. You do it because you want to have an annual VRFB production capacity of upwards 3GWh.
The era of VRFB gigafactories is upon us.
HaleSpur - a 1GWh vrfb would need 4,500 tonnes of vanadium.
A 1GWh production facility would need the same amount every year.
Regardless of function, if they are producing that amount of batteries per annum, the amount of Vanadium required will be obscene. The turning point in the industry is coming, with China and SA starting proceedings.
http://en.cnesa.org/latest-news/2019/11/1/a-look-at-chinas-energy-storage-industrial-parks
Sanchez599 - this appears to be a flow battery production facility rather than one large VRFB.
"Zeng Lecai, chairman of Shanghai Electric Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd., said that Shanghai Electric Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd. was established to better promote the industrial development of flow batteries. The mission of the energy storage company is to manufacture first-class flow battery energy storage for customers. Products, and provide customers with efficient and customizable overall energy storage solutions. The newly commissioned liquid flow storage battery project adopts an advanced automated production line with a designed capacity of 200MW/1GWH and an output value of 2.5 billion yuan, which injects new impetus into the development of the energy storage industry."
http://hch.ahwang.cn/chnews/20201023/2171996.html
Also I would suggest avoiding getting involved in comparisons between FAR and BMN. It's like comparing a car boot sale with Selfridges. Pointless.
Thanks AVL/VSun - Big news from China, with Shanghai Electric’s 200MW/1GWh vanadium redox flow battery officially in operation.
https://vanadiumprice.com/shanghai-electrics-200mw-1gwh-liquid-flow-energy-storage-battery-project-officially-put-into-operation/
Ignore the desperate derampers. Our time is coming and fast. Great companies attract trolls. Every derampung visitor is an endorsement of our strength.
Good weekend all.