The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
If you decide you're going to make a flammable flow battery by ignoring water and using some other organic solvent then you can easily get higher energy density than VRFB, but if not then you are stuck with water and the maximum voltage you can generate in it before you start turning the stuff into a nicely explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.
When will researchers stop trying to beat the 'higher energy density is better' drum and start facing up to the fact that if you are going to start building massive batteries then the only issue is "don't risk the lives of hundreds of people" one.
Copper ore grades over 1% are excellent.
If you look at this ( https://twitter.com/messages/854932009755586560-1103380528043040768/media/1397373434200461317 ) you will see how worldwide ore grades have been falling, with the US below 0.5% and worldwide average only 1% - and that was in 2010 !
I've spent some time chatting to Matthew about wider things - he is very clued up but sometimes tends to see problems where there are none - for example suggesting to a relatively small tin miner that they could somehow take greater control over their end product pricing - as Anthony points out they sell direct to the smelter and the cost of getting 1T of Tin from the mine to the smelter is only 150 USD - out of a sale price of $30,000+ USD per Tonne !
What is more interesting to me is what Anthony says around 18 minutes in - turning Namibia into the 'Bushveld complex of new technology minerals' - this is not some idle suggestion, remember who his father and uncle are.
James - before you start lecturing people you might wish to understand that FerroVanadium is measured in $/kg - specifically kgV - ie kg of Vanadium contained whilst Vanadium Pentoxide is by convention measured in $/lb - V2O5 is a purely stoiohometric compound so always contains precisely 56% by mass V whilst FeV the V content depends on the specific alloy composition.
Mike - you can of course make a 10 hour lithium battery out of 10x 1 hour lithium batteries simply with a switch that switches to a new battery each hour. This of course costs at least as much as 10x the cost of a 1 hour battery.
The main point about VRFBs is that when you want more energy storage capacity you don't need to add new power stacks, all you need to do is add more Vanadium electrolyte into the electrolyte tanks. Thus the cost of a 10 hour VRFB may only be 1.5x the cost of a 4 hour VRFB not 2.5x as much.
The fact that this is being install on a Marine Corps base is of course a very significant thing and will of course bode well for the upcoming second phase of Ameresco's Defense Dept study:-
https://microgridknowledge.com/vanadium-flow-batteries-ameresco/
Sanchez - he is simply trying to dominate the board for whatever I know not what.
You have been following the Bushveld, Vanadium and VRFB story to know exactly what the deal with the actual technology that we are talking about is. Others looking in on this will not and will only see a public discussion board filled with bile and nonsense - if they wish to educate themselves on the subject of Vanadium and VRFB flow batteries then they will need to read the articles here:-
https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1
All very reasoned points BBN - I am sure that Siemens will have done extensive due diligence.
They will have no doubt visited the VRFB's in Karlsruhe ICT, at EPFL and in Liege, just like I have.
They will know about all the excellent engineering work going on in Germany, by Fraunhofer Umischt and Volterion, by people such as Voltstorage and Schmalz and Thyssen-Krupp, all of which I have described in articles on the Bushveld Perspective (eg https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/energy-storage-europe-2019-416 ) and like all of us they will have seen the effects of the 2018 Vanadium price spike on the nascent VRFB manufacturing industry. They will have concluded, just as I did at the 2018 Vanitec and IFBF meeting in manchester, that whoever controls the supply of reliably priced Vanadium will be catalytic to the development of the VRFB energy storage industry. This is precisely where BMN comes in, because unlike FAR or any of the other hopefuls BMN actually has significant global production potential.
happy to quote precisely what you messaged me yesterday:
"last request: please reach out to these sanchez-type guys and encourage them to take their comments back to the BMN board. I have 0 ****s to give and I won't tolerate any more nonsense about Bushveld on the Invinity board. I really wish BMN no harm but I won't let anyone try and gin up Bushveld's role anymore. I've told you for months that you need to really review Bushveld's status and back off the almost blind admiration you people seem to have for Fortune. It is truly almost cultish, Trump-like, in light of the facts staring you in the face."
You are starting to sound like a raving nutjob now so I suggest that you stop posting whilst you have any credibility to protect.