Member Info for Alfacomp

sahid, don't hold your breath as there is no obligation to issue a TR1 as BMN held below 3%.

somtam et al - if you can get us the twitter handles of anyone involved with this we'll make sure they are kept abreast of the unfolding VRFB story

and that we are fully funded to get to 6,800 Tonnes of Vanadium per year, making us the largest primary producer in the world.

and that VRFBs only need to take 18% of the stationary energy storage sector in order to require the world to double Vanadium production.

it is good to remind everyone that once our electrolyte plant is up and running it will be the largest in the world outside of China

there's a few of us missing from that list

mogwhy - as someone who has studied complex interacting many body systems I spent the first 3 years of my personal investing journey trying to find reputable and evidence backed explanations of technical analysis - unfortunately I found none and came to the conclusion that something that cannot be proven to even have statistical validity is not something I can place my faith in, unlike the fundamentals.

If you can recommend an evidentially backed up explanation of technical analysis I would be only too happy to read it. Unfortunately the best that anyone ever appears to be able to come up with is 'if people believe it then it happens' which is circular rhetoric and not analysis.

https://twitter.com/BMNperspective/status/1378775145813307396

Sanchez - that's a very nice paper - it is relatively short and describes the benefits of interdigitated flow fields in the stacks.

Improved stack power density means you can make fewer stacks to get the same power => lower cost

Improved stack power density also tends to yield better electrolyte utilisation => less ohmic loss inside the stack means that you can get to lower electrolyte reactive concentration before your operational voltage drops out => better electrolyte utilisation means that you need less electrolyte to store the same energy => lower cost.

Whilst the commercial outfits will not have given away their secrets like this I am aware of at least two VRFB manufacturers who already use the interdigitated flow field approach. This publication may well increase that number.

CG - the people watching this board don't realise just how close to the cutting edge they are. The VRFB story is only just starting to get taken up by people, such as Andy Colthorpe, in the Energy Storage industry - up until this point they had always given VRFB technology a sideways glance - "sounds good but we've heard these stories before and let's see the walk not the talk".

Part of the problem has been the multiple Vanadium price spikes since 2008 - this has basically set the nascent VRFB industry back a couple of years at each point. This issue is now being eliminated via vertical integration between Vanadium producers and VRFB users - yes you can thank Bushveld for pioneering that approach.

The other part of the problem is the wild claims being made by various flow battery startups all making extreme claims about their capabilities - Imergy which went bankrupt in 2016 was a good example of this :- https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/flow-battery-aspirant-imergy-has-let-go-its-staff-and-is-selling-its-assets

Whilst it is not unusual for high tech businesses to be making big claims to attract investment this time around things are different:-

1) Massive VRFBs ARE being built in china
2) Mines-to-batteries vertical integration is now a reality
3) Vanadium can now be leased as electrolyte instead of bought outright.
4) 100MWh-1000 MWh Vanadium electrolyte production plants are now being built in multiple locations :- China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UK and the USA.
5) Long Duration (>4hrs) stationary energy storage is now at the cusp of being acknowledged by market funding mechanisms in multiple locations (US, UK, Europe and Australia)
6) Improvements in PV pricing in the last 5 years now mean that standalone PV+storage is a competitive alternative for RE grid supply or for standalone commercial and industrial (C&I) applications.

NOW is the time for VRFBs.

that should say 'produced in the USA'

interesting that it is Bolong New Materials that looks likely to be supplying Schmid in their Saudi Arabian aspirations.

Vanadium was of course produced from oil fuel ash for many years before they stopped taking Venezuelan crude - since then they stopped because it was only really the Venez stuff that had enough V in it. Sounds like it is cheap, but it is not because there's all sorts of other nasties in the ash, and whilst these can sound valuable they can also be problematic for VRFB electrolyte.

I suspect that this source of waste material is preferred by the saudis because they may, err, have quite a lot of the stuff and might wish to burnish their 'green' credentials. Costwise it has always been priced just less than V from stone coal, but more than V from the smaller steel sl-a-g producers, and of course a lot more than V from primary producers.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191204005148/en/Navigant-Research-Names-CellCube-and-Sumitomo-Electric-the-Top-Flow-Battery-Vendors

I had not spotted before that BusinessWire is a Berkshire Hathaway company. I wonder if Warren Buffet ever reads it.

Libero, I never said that any MM position exists permanently, only the simple fact that they are in the business to make money, and to do this the simplest way is to sell short into any real buying strength on the assumption that you can simply walk the price back again later to get the shares you need from bored, distressed or leveraged buyers.

In recent weeks this strategy has not worked for them because we are too educated on the fundamentals and have been piling in buying shares on that basis. Traders like Borg have been holding back to get the lowest possible price that their charts and magic incantations tell them is the time to buy. As a result the Market Makers have had to double down at each stage, increasing the depth of their short whilst potentially uncovering bored/distressed/leveraged holders at each 0.5p price they suppress the price lower.

Eventually the get the shares they crave and then the whole sorry cycle can start again, unless of course major buying pressure appears and the MMs then decide to switch to strategy B, which is to let the price rise back up again so that new buying pressure has to pay top dollar. This Janus-like behaviour is further exaggerated by the fact that multiple MM's are (nominally) in competition with one another, so one Market Maker with one position is behaving differently to another with their own position - the MM at the top of the bid or ask effectively then has short term control over the direction of market travel and seemingly this 'market' can suddenly appear to switch from positive to negative on a dime.

Ignoring these simple facts does not make them go away, but equally it does not undermine the case for investing on fundamentals, because over long time scales, and with wide market awareness of the value on offer, these temporary mispricings will be eliminated. The only question is whether you are still a holder at that point - if you haven't done your research, or have played with borrowed money, or have run out of patience, then the likelihood is that you will lose out.

Daisydog - it is not very difficult you just need to see the world from the perspective of the market makers. They are in this to make money and are not running a charity. Ask yourself how they make money, not just in the fantasy scenario of when buys from MMs and sells to MM are in equilbrium, but also when they are not. AIM is an illiquid market with few players sensitive to the fundamentals. Professional Investors stay out of it precisely for this reason.

somtam - you missed the key piece of information 'if they are short of shares'

james - the problem that the Market Makers have is that people keep buying cheap. This leaves them with nowhere to go but to drop the price, because you can be sure that if they are short of shares they are not going to be increasing the price so that they lose even more money.

Cue lots of whining along the lines of 'the market makers don't go short' or 'the market makers don't gamble' - well, No and Yes - of course the market makers go short. That is where the term was invented. What are they meant to do when people are queueing up with their sweaty little fivers trying to buy shares - not indulge the overexhuberance of the naive Private Investor ?

Unlike someone, like myself, who actually manufacturers a product, the market makers have no ability to manufacture shares. All they can do is take shares from one person at one price and shift them onto another at a different price. And because they have plenty of time to rob from peter to pay paul they can do the selling before they have to do their buying, so win, win for them they have cash up front and hand out less later on.

And yes - the market makers do not gamble - they don't need to, the rules are bent in their favour - for example they can build naked short positions without having to ever let anyone know, all under the banner of 'making a market'. It's not gambling if you can simply rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, cycling investors money into your own bank account, it is borderline extortion.

the writing was on the wall for them some time ago. Hard to benefit from a spike in Vanadium prices if you use the stuff but don't produce the stuff.

bassguy - I hope you remember that they cannot do this every day

Spev - you have no idea what you are talking about mate. I suggest that you leave the board before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.