Member Info for Alfacomp

Orackle - no chance. That doesn't stop me correcting obvious rubbish written about BMN.

kevkan - no they appeared to be hitting the battery hard with full on 100kW charges and discharges - the battery balancing thing is a bit like tuning a car engine - you need to really crank it up to 11 to do the tuning. I guess when they are happy they have got this process completed then the 'commissioning' will be over and the battery will be handed over to eskom to run their tests - this will be the official Eskom appraisal test phase as opposed to the Bushveld commissioning and testing phase.

zeus - I'm sure that it will take just as long to test a 100kW battery as it does a 200kW one.

Fortunately one can assume that the results can be directly scalable - this aspect of electronics is highly linear - simply plonk a second battery unit, isolation transformer and inverter set down next to the first lot if you have twice as much money.

If you want to save a bit of money you don't buy two inverters and two transformers you just buy bigger versions of the same things and use them across your double battery setup. I'm sure that you can save a little bit more money if you put all the dc components into a single 40 foot container instead of a two 20 foot ones.

The main point is not about cost at this stage - it is the fact that Eskom are clearly so keen to test out a VRFB that they allowed us to provide only a 100kW unit for test and did not insist on a 200kW unit. That already shows great faith in VRFB technology - they did not have to do this.

Degsy - there is no chance that Iron will be supplying Bushveld Minerals - if you look here you will see that BMN already has two of the largest Vanadium resources in the world - https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/vametco-mine-visit-407 plus another on the way in the form of Brits which is next door.

BMN doesn't need any more Vanadium or Iron - in fact it has about a million tonnes of crushed magnetite piled up outside the front door of Vametco which they would be happy for people to cart away for 1cent a tonne. I'm therefore surprised that anyone might wish to pay much more than that to dig up new iron ore, crush it and the concentrate it.

jonny - well it seems pretty clear that eskom have revised their test procedure to trial a 100kW Flow Battery. This of course means that we needed to provide only half as much stuff, which all costs money.

Can't imagine why they would do that - any ideas ?

Orange88 - alas you don't know what you are talking about. The quality of the ore at Vametco is not the issue.

(angled brackets) are taken out

it should read:-

This might leave you with only the ability to cycle 2.2 to 3 on one side vs 4.2 to 5 on the other side.

my were removed.

This might leave you with only the ability to cycle 2.2 3 on one side vs 4.25 on the other side.

should read

This might leave you with only the ability to cycle 2.2 3 on one side vs 4.2 5 on the other side.

faramog - the electrolyte as delivered is in the oxidation state 3.5 - or as close as you can have it to that. I am assuming that in an ideal situation the first charge is enough to take 3.5 to 2 on one side of the battery and 5 on the other side.

I am hypothesizing now:-

If you start with a slightly non-optimal oxidation state 3.6 then you can only raise one side to 5, at which point you can go no further, whilst the other side goes from 3.6 to 2.2. This might leave you with only the ability to cycle 2.2 3 on one side vs 4.25 on the other side. This clearly does not seem ideal as it suggests you've only got 80% of what you really want.

Thus there may be a process whereby one can balance a battery by precharging then filling one or other side of the battery with your non-ideal 3.6 starting material until you get a better balance that allows both sides to fully transit a full unit of 1 oxidation state.

Hypothesizing over

This is just to illustrate one particular kind of battery training/balancing/running-in whatever you'd like to call it that might be necessary at the start of battery operation.

stingstim - what you mean like this one ? https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/slides/slide/lithium-ion-fire-at-drogenbos-11-11-2017-37

No I don't think so, but it is a fair point - lithium-ion batteries are intrinsically more dangerous.

RK - I'll take £20 now if you are offering.

gkb47 - both the original electrolyte and the replacement electrolyte were I believe supplied by UET

I recall that I saw at least 3 trucks operating we had to follow in the vans at a little distance for safety. I did notice a few rocks that had come off but nothing bigger than say 0.5m di - probably not worth driving a truck over it. I believe that Vametco has responsibility for maintaining the roads but the trucks are owned and operated by a subcontractor. I have no idea how they don't get into arguments over tyres.

gkb47 - because Bushveld Energy has not built an electrolyte plant yet

BBN

1. Whilst we were there the electrolyte was being run in - this is a process of progressively converting the V(3.5) electrolyte that is delivered into both sides of the battery at the start into V2-3 on one side and V4-5 on the other. You cannot start with V3 and V4 separately put into the two sides of the battery because it would contain significant stored energy which might be dangerous to fill. This is a process I shall describe in more detail later on. This process happens only once and is expected to be completed in less than 2 weeks.

2. You are correct there are only the BMN VRFB and the BYD LFP battery that are currently operational.

reteps you are wrong it was moving

cindercone - I don't need to as they are not Vanadium Flow ones

as promised

https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/eskom-battery-site-visit

I guess you will all see how busy I have been at 7pm

Lionel yep got it thanks