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knuttie and faramog - I would love there to be a financial intermediary that steps in and says 'yeah we'll buy all the Vanadium electrolyte that you can make and we'll own it and rent it out.' The trouble is that without a futures market in Vanadium how are they going to insure themselves against the possibility that all the Vanadium electrolyte that they bought at $100/KgV only be worth $10/KgV in 5 years time, say when everyone and their brother is digging the lawn to find a little of the magic stuff.

The question is who is going to offer futures in a commodity that exhibits the kind of errrm ahem unusual behaviour we have recently observed.

I see no reason why a percentage of Vanadium that is produced by BMN ever has to be sold at full price, but instead stays on the books as an asset that cost so and so to make and which can be rented out for $X per month. The only people who would like to see a high transfer cost booked as upfront profit are tax authorities that would like to tax it tomorrow, or if you are a worker incentivised by a short term profit sharing scheme. If instead workers are incentivised by share ownership in the company then they are in the same boat as us and should be amenable to a long term revenue stream being unlocked by the company.

faramog - a futures market is only really necessary if you are trying to offload the long term ownership onto a risk averse long term partner that wishes to insure themselves against V prices going down. There is nothing to stop BMN taking its own long term view on the book value of the Vanadium electrolyte assets - after all it knows better than almost everyone else what it can sell the stuff for. It would not be unreasonable for a company inside the industry to lead the way in this regard. Others, less aware of what is and has been going on with V pricing may take some time to seize the opportunity, if they come all well and good but it would appear that we may be able to proceed without them.

If someone is trying to play games with the closing price then they had better be careful that they don't end up in court.

.... to deceive ?

Wul_1976 et al,

why restrict the distributed energy model to charge points ?

Pay as you go microgrids are considered by some as precisely what Africa needs ( https://energytransition.org/2017/02/pay-as-you-go-solar-and-microgrids-considered-new-class-of-infrastructure-investment/ ) - the BE electrolyte leasing model is perfectly aligned with this - reduce the capex cost so that the organisations wishing to cover the cost of installation for isolated communities can do so at lower capital outlay. These organisations need not be government agencies or charities they could be private PV+Battery developers such as, err Bushveld Energy, or its partners.

The communities pay for the electricity they take using their mobile phones ( https://www.eniday.com/en/technology_en/pay-as-you-go-energy-with-mobile-payments/ ) - the charge is made to the mobile phone account so that the banks can be completely cut out of the loop. The incredible penetration of mobile phone operation even in communities without basic electrical supply really helps catalyse such a new business model.

what's the problem specifically knuttie ?

Multiple FB buys (80,085) trades today already - seems like someone is loading up again.

It is quite a searing indictment of UK AIM investors that so few can be bothered to pick up on what is happening here.

Brad29 - we have, I understand, used UET's mixed acid electrolyte in their battery that we are operating at Eskom but the Avalon battery does not use this. BE hope to be able to produce both conventional single acid and UET mixed acid (under license) in future in SA

Exactly right BBN - furthermore in this case the electricity customer is Sandbar Solar which is the largest installer of Solar systems in central west coast region of the United States - so this may be the first of many sales to Sandbar projects.

spbhoy - I would buy some more but I cannot get a buy quote on my platform at present

biganuf - no that is not really true as most of those are in hard to access illiquid stocks in places like china

jogj99 - well if what mcgrco says is correct then it is still short selling regardless of the fact it is done to offset an indirectly bought share.

On the subject of Vaneck's holdings there is only evidence of approximately 50% of the quoted Vaneck holding actually having been bought at this point. Thus if Vaneck, or a MM were consolidating the Vaneck purchase plus the TPEP sell before passing the orders to the market you might see significantly less buying than that reported by Vaneck as their increases in holding. This of course benefits Vaneck who don't push the price up as much as they would have done.

I'm shooting somewhat in the dark gr33ning68 but the numbers seem to work out about right.

errm well as a ballpark figure lets say 10% yearly rental cost of a Vanadium electrolyte that would otherwise cost you say $100/KgV (8 litres of electrolyte) which would store say (1/5000 th of 1 MWh = 0.2 kWh / KgV)

So multiply by 5 to get the per kWh cost - $500 to buy the electrolyte, $50 per year to rent it

Let's make this real by considering the home battery from voltstorage (6.2kWH) which was previously advertised at Euro 6999 all in to compete directly with the Tesla powerwall.

Renting the electrolyte could knock $3000 (2650 euros) off the price - almost halving it, replacing it with a $300 / euro 265 rental charge each year.

This works out at 240 pounds each year. At 13p per KWh you would need to save 1846 kWh per annum to pay the rental. That is 5kWh per day - so one complete charge per day (eg from excess PV you would otherwise have discarded) and you have paid the rental cost.

The Tesla powerwall battery is only guaranteed for 1 charge per day, but the VRFB you could charge as many times as you like - once we in the UK have variable pricing during the day (that's why they are handing out smart meters dontcha know) you may discover that it makes sense to charge in the middle of the night AND in the middle of the day when the nation's PV farms are going flat out and electricity is cheap - of course this is precisely what BMN are going to be doing with their Vametco battery.

Gr33ning68 - the Vanadium electrolyte doesn't change so there is no question of 'reclaiming' - instead it is reuse.

Imagine half of the Vanadium that we produce being added to the energy storage portfolio each year - rental income will increase essentially monotonically.

here:- https://beta.lse.co.uk/rns/BMN/bushveld-minerals-ld-deployment-of-vanadium-electrolyte-rental-product--crc2w9u2opzlpw6.html

Olly4 - I know Alberto well, whilst he is well informed and impeccably mannered he would be the first to appreciate he is nowhere near as experienced as Mikhail. Alberto would need someone like Mikhail on his team for it to happen and I don't see many that could fulfil that role.

batteries are pictured here:-

https://www.energy-storage.news/news/flow-batteries-on-a-budget-avalon-renting-electrolytes-as-a-service1

"the flow battery is designed to allow the grid-independent facilities to run on solar 24/7, which a lithium-ion battery solution would not be capable of providing."

Each one of the units pictured is I believe a 10KW/ 30KWh unit.

Santa Cruz is of course only 25 miles north of the Moss Landing power station which has plans for almost 2.3 GWh of battery energy storage:- https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pge-proposes-worlds-biggest-batteries-to-replace-south-bay-gas-plants#gs.hguivg