Member Info for Alfacomp

Ninvestor - because he is unalterably stupid, or just trying to fool others into doing just the thing that is the last thing he would actually do.

numpty5 - wow that's some surgeon. Hat's off to you and your sense of humour which has kept us all entertained for more hours than you may appreciate. Best of luck with everything and watch out for the crows in the first episode of the latest Worzel Gummidge series.

Furthermore if all the mines and Heavy industries in South Africa cannot get their electricity from Eskom where do you think they are going to get it from. The cheapest new source is renewables and this will play right into our battery energy storage hands thank you very much.

Utter nonsense Berserker.

You are aware that we sell our stuff outside of South Africa are you ?

Lindon - as is de rigeur with political announcements these days it is hard to know what exactly it is that they are claiming . Is it 2.2GW of battery storage, or 2.2GW of private individuals's cars that are connected to EV chargers? Or is it a mix of both ?

2.2GW / 44 = 50MW per site. 4,500 rapid eV charges works out at roughly 100 chargers per site. So on the surface of it that looks like half a megawatt power per car charger. That is insanely high so I wonder if the curse of the energy journalist, the 'h' in GWh has maybe again been missed off and it should read 2.2GWh (i.e. at a lower overall power of maybe only 12.5MW per site - that is still potentially 125kW per charger)

Imagine each charger works is used for 2 hours, twice a day at 100kW power. That would work out at an energy of 100x 2x2x100 = 40MWh per site so it looks like a 50MWh battery might be just about right for a 'charging park' of 100 charging spots, possibly outside a supermarket or motorway service station.

How big might such a battery be ? well if you assume 1MWh per 40 foot shipping container (8 foot wide), then you need 50 containers footprint. Each container is about the size of 2 car parking spaces, so 100 parking space in all. Battery and parking spaces occupy similar footprint, so not altogether crazy. If they were VRFBs then you might even consider the idea of packing the VRFBs tightly together and driving the cars on top of them if you are really concerned about space.

So this £1.6Bn of private investment - what is that all about ? - if we assume the total battery capacity is 2.2GWh then that would work out at £730 per MWh, or USD 946 per MWh - well in excess of the prices that are currently being quoted for both Lithium-ion and VRFB battery builds (though of course if you elect to buy the cheaper Li-ion unit you would be having to replace it every few years) - leaving some more money left over for installing the charging stations and paving the car park.

jagadish, that stuff is not generally commercially available. If you want extremely high fields (typically about 18 Tesla) then these day you tend to use a High-Tc superconducting insert. The amounts of Vanadium used for this application, per annum, might be a hundred Kg or less

As someone who used to have a company making superconducting magnets I can confidently disagree with the statement that Vanadium is used for making them. Niobium is the main metal that is used in classic superconducting magnets, in the form of NbTi and Nb3Sn wires.

that we might be starting to move into a news season ?

Yeah I had to tell them about a number of VRFB projects in europe that they did not have listed

The Hubei one has a Phase 2 that is 100MW/500 MWh and there is also another Chinese project in Jiangsu 200MW/1000MWh

Also you have to be very careful about not accidentally blundering into a situation where you are taking opinions from those that have vested interests in other technologies.

For example Prof. Bladergroen is a vice-chair of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy Youth Division so it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that he may see VRFBs as a competitor for Hydrogen energy storage. I think both can exist - VRFBs for 2-8 hr grid storage and green hydrogen for things like interseasonal storage and potentially electrical flight. the inherent energy losses in electrolysis and conversion back to electrical energy mean that Hydrogen won't ever be able to compete with Batteries like Lithium-ion or VRFB

with people like that and our other resident expert in Vanadium science Christoper 'outspoken' Ecclestone of Hallgarten it is best just to stick to the line that Energy Storage is going to become very important in future and leave it at that. All the while whilst smiling sweetly and knowing that you know more about it than these people appear to do.

YTSS - don't waste your time on him. He obviously knows it all and resents being told that he doesn't by a civilian.

1. US Department of Energy report 'Hydrowires' July 2019 quotes 3,500 cycles for Lithium-ion

2. Cellcube quotes $200/kWh build cost for VRFB - ( https://www.energy-storage.news/blogs/cellcubes-highly-vertical-ambitions-for-long-duration-redox-flow-batteries ) - he obviously has no idea of current VRFB prices.

3. Recycling Lithium (and other metals) from Li-ion batteries is harder than getting it out of the ore. Once in battery form they are dangerous devices (eg see the latest Lithium-ion battery fire https://twitter.com/BESTmag_news/status/1215614264804814848 ) - can you imagine trying to run a recycling plant where people send you these devices ? Can you imagine the dangers in just storing these things, let along trying to cut them open.

I couldn't agree more kevkan. It has been an exciting journey for those on this board but for me personally it has also been a very humbling experience to have been lucky enough to see this played out firsthand at the last 3-4 years of Vanitec and IFBF meetings.

I only visited the Manchester Vanitec meeting on an off-chance that it might be possible to find out a little more about the Fangchenggang Energy Storage park reports that first came out in April 2017 ( https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://v.gxnews.com.cn/a/16125133&edit-text=&act=url ) - Terry Perles was able to dig into this to discover that it was one of his Chinese contacts that was behind this project [Mu Wenheng, formerly General Manager and Vice Chairman of Chengde Xinxin Vanadium and Titanium Co., Ltd. (China’s second largest producer of vanadium and part of the Hebei iron & Steel group (HBIS)]

At that meeting I and a number of other members of this board (gambit et al) met Fortune, saw Mikhail take a major role in the Vanitec Energy Storage Committee and were able to discover (alongside a number of the commodity traders also present) that Vanitec had successfully agreed with the Chinese authorities that their rebar regulations would be upgraded to exclude 'quench and temper' bar which did not contain Vanadium and which was consequently brittle. ( https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/vanitec-2nd-energy-storage-meeting-part-1-206 )

Following that meeting gambit and I became fully engaged with the Vanitec ESC meetings, attending subsequent meetings in London ( https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/vanitec-3rd-energy-storage-meeting-part-1-175 ), Lausanne ( https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/vanitec-4th-energy-storage-meeting-part-1-274 ) and last year in Lyon. For all of those meeting Mikhail has chaired the ESC committee, building broad consensus across the industry about promotion, leasing and VRFB standards.

You don't get chances like this very often and I am delighted that I was lucky enough to be able to get in early and get a front row seat for the First act.

The Second act is just about to start, can you hear the orchestra tuning up ?

Part of the problem is that there are fewer UK grid market reimbursement mechanisms for (2-8 hour) duration energy storage. This will change as those running the grid understand that VRFBs are here and ready to go to work to displace gas peaker plants. This will not happen overnight but it will, and must, happen.

hotchips - those are the guys. I believe that C-tech also make V-electrolyte for some other people though cannot say who. With the changes at RedT coming both of these companies may be thankful of any funding that comes for flow batteries courtesy of this EU project.

Don't worry faramog the UK won't have to worry about getting any of these research grants soon. I wonder if the UK partners on that project, namely C-tech and Heights are going to still be funded as part of it ?

Well if the people who are running the project are as sloppy (no insult intended SG) as the people who write the article [cannot spot that the later price is 5 times higher than the earlier one !] then there is no chance they will be successful.

Can someone tell me if journalism has always been this bad ?

Well I'll have to ask Bobby what he thinks next time I'm on his yacht.

interesting comment:-

Daniel Mamadou, Executive Director of Talaxis said: "Our investment in HyProMag marks an exciting step for Maginito and for Talaxis. We are proud to be part of a project that has the potential to revolutionise the magnet recycling sector and support the growing global shift towards renewable energy and electric vehicles. This investment further strengthens our position as the supply partner of choice in the technology metals industry and underlines Noble's wider commitment to decarbonisation and sustainability.