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bobf - are you not aware of the VRFB's that are being built that are larger than 400MWh in size ?

Pdub - all the best of luck old friend. Get yourself better and know that we're all rooting for you here, and very much looking forward to having you back troll-hunting as good as ever.

Sounds like a good idea inner harmony - oh except for the fact that the administrators already get this information and once the post has been deleted it's gone anyway. You need to trust people more mate.

Positive news dryland. Sorry but no trades analysis this evening as still on the train. Maybe tomorrow morning if people really want it.

exactly spbhoy - the volume is very low at the moment.

Ian Conn, CEO of Centrica:-

The Key technologies that are enabling customers to be more powerful ... the technologies that are going to make a big difference are: combined heat and power units, solar, heat pumps at the point of use, batteries allowing for storage and re-export of energy or optimisation, the combination of batteries and demand response, which is allowing customers to effectively become virtual power plants, where you switch on a battery and reduce demand at the same time .... "

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting/sessions/strategic-outlook-on-the-future-of-energy [6 minutes in]

be careful what you wish for bassguy

both at 41p. C'mon guys sort yourselves out

James - indeed David was a great guy that I used to have lunch with in the Cavendish on occasion, before he wrote Without Hot Air and became much more sought after.

The 70m2 for 1.5MWh works out at around 45m2 per MWh - this is somewhat higher than the more recent estimates that we have from UET of 40 MWh over the area of 3 basketball courts - that works out at around 32m2 per MWh - so let us say 40m2 is a good figure to remember.

His figure of 36,000 tonnes of Vanadium for 10GWh energy storage is somewhat in disagreement with his own figure of 20 Wh/Kg - the latter one would give 5,000 tonnes per GWh energy storage. The 5,000 figure is the conservative one that we all tend to adopt now, though the mixed acids electrolyte and possibly other Vanadium electrolyte mixes under development could improve on this figure.

Still - to the final point - long term supply of Vanadium. There are many in the United States who claim that Vanadium is exotic, or even rare. This is a misconception brought about by extreme US-centricity and the simple fact that the US doesn't have a Vanadium mine - QED it must be rare.

This of course is nonsense as there is more Vanadium in the earth's crust than there is Nickel, Chromium, Zinc or EVEN COPPER ( https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/vanitec-4th-energy-storage-meeting-part-1-274 ) and of course a lot more common than 'battery metals' Lithium or Cobalt. At present Vanadium is mined at 1/1000th the rate of Copper so it looks like Vanadium is the perfect metal to build an energy storage industry on.

Just because an element is common does not mean it is cheap as chips, because it still needs to be mined and refined, but the point is Vanadium Flow Batteries are here, are gaining acceptable quickly and are ready to help support the transition to renewable energy at a massive scale.

gambit - of course it was the shutting down of Highveld Steel when Evraz could not get a bail out from the government that took roughly 12,000 tonnes of V out from the global supply which ultimately precipitated the July 2017 Vanadium bomb going off.

https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/vanitec-4th-energy-storage-meeting-part-1-274

295 quids worth to be precise faramog

Cut the K chartist

bobf - I was quoting MWh and a UET system so you need to be careful with your comparisons. Lithium-ion of course suffers from degradation which VRFB's do not so when this is taken into account the LCOES become comparable for 1-daily cycle.

a very interesting article:- https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-can-the-uk-meet-its-climate-goals-without-the-wylfa-nuclear-plant

that I have just commented on - those here might wish to set up disqus accounts also

bobf - certainly UET VRFB container can be stacked and at the IFBF earlier this year they stated a 40MWh VRFB battery capacity would occupy half of the area your just quoted

as requested

https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/trading-analysis-21st-jan-2019

who wants some of it ?

Yeah we'll string him along for longer next time eh Pdub ?

Good find sanchez - now commented upon

The key difference between using batteries for solar and for wind is that solar can only really be considered for charging the battery once a day - unless of course you have some crazy kind of demand that has multiple peaks that need filling when the sun is on in the middle of the day.

With a conventional demand profile - relatively smooth but with a general peak in the evening then you have the opportunity to use the battery multiples times within a 24 hour period to balance supply and demand.

If solar averages 1 cycle a day, with the sun on for 12 hours (a generous approximation as the peak intensity is perhaps only 8 hours) then you might use as a rough approximation the idea that a battery working with a wind source of energy may be operable for the full 24 hours - i.e. at least twice as many charge-discharge cycles in each 24 hour period.

You should note that almost all LCOE calculations are done for 1 battery cycle per day, which obviously does no favours to VRFB's when compared with Li-ion.