Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
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SCoutS calm down. You are ranting. If you are in the sun get some shade.
SCoutS I note the report was written by four scientists at Imperial College in 2018. That corresponded to the spike in V prices when they were 4 times higher than today. Can you tell me where in that article they have recognised this huge reduction in raw material costs, which are a significant part of overall VRFB costs?
Also since that article was written, Avalon (a company you seemed completely dismissive of) and BMN (whose CEO you have patronisingly called biased) developed the electrolyte rental model which significantly reduces upfront capital costs of VRFBs and deals with the issue of V price volatility. Could you direct me to the point in the article where this has been taken into account? I can’t find it and this would be a serious omission.
Interestingly I did find this quote, even allowing for the above issues with the relevance if the article:
“air.”
“For applications with greater duration and cycle requirements, vanadium redox flow stays competitive..”
that report by Oliver Schmidt produces those conclusions based upon the assumption that Lithium-ion continues to have a reduction in cost of 30% for every ten-fold increase in worldwide installations.
When you take into account recent reductions in pricing of VRFB's (which Schmidt was unaware of - I personally checked that with him) you find a similar reduction in VRFB pricing at levels of installation some 100x lower. Furthermore this does not take into account the reductions in Capex that are possible using leased electrolyte.
Obviously our tenacious turnip has been trawling through my twitter history to see if he can try and get some dirt on VRFB technology. I first covered this work 15 months ago :- https://twitter.com/BMNperspective/status/1105742349710299136 and then again here:- https://twitter.com/BMNperspective/status/1256630349846777856
Try again turnip !
how are you doing bolgas?
Flow batteries have been able to provide a lower LCOS than li-ion this was only not the case during the brief period when vanadium was expensive. The interesting metric is the LCOC - in which the li-ion batteries are dominating against gas peakers in the US or conventional generation in Europe. If the LCOC comes down as well then the tech is a no brainer
There are already requests coming in looking at next generation technology, is it flow? Is it something solid state? is it air storage?
Large battery projects of Any tech require deep pockets, so I fail to see what your point is?
And you may be interested to know that VRFB can offer a lower LCOS per kWh than li-ion.
I think its fair to say that a few names here have been revealed to be only here in an attempt to undermine confidence in VRFB. Unfortunely for you those with those deep pockets that you mention are confident in it.
oh parsnip give it a rest you don't know anything about battery costs do you ?
You want investment independent from state or without ties to li-ion. I show you one, and then you immediately disregard it and say it proves your piont??
The Only companies able to get into li-ion were the big hitters due to the huge costs with the li-ion production chain. That isn't the case for VRFB, hence why there are quite a few smaller scale manufacturers. The point is that larger capacity is being targeted, being backed, and is coming online. You can claim all you want that it doesnt make a difference to IES but as they operate within the same industry I would suggest that such a presumption would be foolish.
SABIC would disagree with you Scouts. They seem perfectly happy to back VRFB without any reliance upon li-ion.
ScoutS
As the saying goes buy a product cheep buy it twice.
The opportunity is there, the scalability is the factor...once production takes off then the value is virtually endless.
Li-ion output is in the order of 170 GWh annually - of which a fraction serves stationary storage. Flow batteries will have 100% of their production going to stationary storage. The opportunity is therefore in the billions, should a scalable product hit the market, which I think Avalon have in the development phase then the value is massive! Just a matter of when the product will hit the market. When it does - we'll all know about it.
Nice. Thank you for sharing your views.
I am a research analyst. My focus specifically is on alternative technologies.
Hi Mkx007, would you mind me asking how you are involved with the energy storage market?
That was meant to say beginning.
Professional interest - I know the energy storage market well and am just waiting for the right time to invest. I like the company and the board post merger. Just need to wait for the alignment of company potential in a growing market. That and i'm invested elsewhere for more short term gains. I have watched many flow batteries come and go and the demise of RedT is one of them...hence my cautious approach.
Manufacturers, and also developers are being to offer flexible warranties to match the application of the system. That means if you're cycling it a lot and the DoD is high then the lifetime will be much shorter compared to 1 cycle/day at a conservative DoD. No one is guaranteeing it wont happen as accidents do happen but safety is a much higher priority.
And as an extension of your point, do you feel that lithium-ion battery manufacturers are now able to give 100% guarantees that a thermal runaway is no longer possible and not a risk?
Out of curiosity, why are you active on this board Mkx007?
So why is it being used as such? If you can conclude through testing that a system will not be a risk if thermal runaway occurs then you can safely install a it in a building.
It's like airbags, you want to know they are going to work when they need to and in most cases completely irrelevant for the car owner however will you ever buy a car without airbags?
Flow batteries need scale for them to compete, li-ion has the scale and they are now getting all the dots on the Is and crosses on the Ts in terms of safe installation.
as the DoE Energy Storage Systems committee reported last year UL950A "evaluates the fire characteristics of a battery energy storage system that undergoes thermal runaway. The data generated can be used to determine the fire and explosion
protection required for an installation of a battery energy storage system."
It is not a general rubber stamp that you can put on the side of a product to assert that it is 'safe'
UL9540A is a "Test Method for Evaluating Thermal Runaway Fire Propagation in Battery Energy Storage" - it is not a standard though many people are talking as if it is and if you look at the title you will see it is pretty much irrelevant to VRFB's
this piece of paper does not make Lithium-ion battery cells any safer it only defines a test for evaluating them when they do fail.
This is simply not true. The battery to be installed requires a permit to be installed. If the battery has passed UL 9540 A and other UL required testing as LG Chem and Samsung SDI were very quick to do to ensure continuation of sales. The system can be installed. The regulation was sweeping for all "battery" storage technologies so it's very relevant as similar limitations were place on VRFBs and with lead and li-ion which is ridiculous. Thankfully this is under consideration at the moment - potentially opening the market for companies like IES to get involved easier.
your welcome mkx, you presumably are suggesting the first one was old news so
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enel-is-back-in-new-york-city-with-a-bigger-battery
here is a more recent article which confirms lithium batteries may be used in NYC as long as the battery itself is not in the building. In the event of fire the battery needs to be completely flooded to stop the fire.
Fatbanker...thanks for referencing something from 2 years ago...
check out the UL standards that all batteries must adhere to before installations are allowed. Flow batteries have no issues getting these approved but the process is expensive.
Thanks for the clarification FB. They are not being approved for use in buildings. The issue seems to be the population density of New York and the issues of safety when having something that has the potential to be dangerous being able to affect so many.