Member Info for Alfacomp

These are the most disturbing observations:-

"The Model 3 was obliterated, and its battery pack was destroyed, flinging burning-hot battery cells around the neighborhood.

Battery cells broke through two windows of two homes -- one landed on a person's lap, while the other landed on a bed and caught the sheets on fire, the police said."

Highanddry - you briefly mentioned new electrolytes - to be honest there is very little going on in developing new vanadium based electrolytes because the classic single acid Vanadium one works so well.

Many academics in the US like to push the idea that Vanadium is rare, because it is not mined in the US, but this is not correct - Vanadium is more earth abundant than Zinc, Nickel or Copper. They push this angle also because it is 100x easier to get a research grant on a crazy new electrolyte than it is to further optimise the existing commercially successful Vanadium chemistry.

Yep I think you've put your finger on it there BBN:-"direct activities which will lead to a substantial role by South African entities in the development of the technology in future."

The Bushveld Electrolyte plant is planned for the future. Had it already been built the Eskom tenders could not be claimed as being in support of future electrolyte plant developments. This is no doubt precisely why the electrolyte plant plans have been timed as they have been.

he never went away C2

jonny you need to read between the lines - the world bank are not interested in simply funnelling money back to first world battery producers. They realise that it makes much greater sense in the long term if they can allow Africa to stand on its own two feet.

jonny - perhaps on an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of the tender rules

Indeed this is Frederic Verdol the Senior Energy Specialist at the World Bank who specifically namechecked Bushveld when describing batteries made in South Africa

Would that be the same World Bank that is providing the finance for the Eskom BESS tenders ?

Indeed they are one and the same - does anyone really think that Bushveld are not going to get a significant fraction of the Eskom BESS contracts, with everyone from the World Bank, the IDC and the South Africa Government behind us ?

perkylad - yes any investment needs to be judged on its usefulness over a specific period. VRFB's obviously have the advantage that the electrolyte does not degrade, unlike the internal structure of a solid state battery like Lithium-ion

Dbush that is not correct, the deal to supply Vanadium to the Invinity/BMN joint venture would allow BMN to get electrolyte made in the UK, with BMN picking up a concomitant benefit directly and via it's ownership of Invinity

"Vanchem has the potential to process over 10% of the world's Vanadium"

This is the simply fact that the share price still has not got yet. It is why we bought Vanchem from Duferco. It is how we can guarantee to supply VRFB companies across the globe and why we are at the very centre of the global Energy Transition.

Dbush - there's lots of other costs that come in when making high-purity Vanadium electrolyte out of standard purity Vanadium that gets chucked into steel so do not get too hung up on the apparent connection between the two prices. You can probably add 20-30 USD per Kg V premium to make high purity electrolyte. Sure the VRFB guys love to tell the world that they'd like to see the price of Vanadium at 10 dollars a Kilogramme, but they will be a waiting for a long time for that.

on the BMN board now. I won't duplicate the content here because then it makes sense to only discuss it in one place.

A fine thread from BigBiteNow on twitter:-

https://twitter.com/BigBiteNow/status/1329364453649952768

The diagrams that are available on that platform really help to tell the story, but here's some highlights.

#IES update states, "these deals have importance that belies their size," because they open up access to clients with serious capacity expansion, when the early installations prove themselves up.

...

2 years first refusal rights on all forms of vanadium supplies to Invinity, so long as BMN hold more than 5% of the stock. Current holding c. 8.5%.

...

(Interims) demonstrates a 163% uplift in base sales, to 13.7MWh and upside increasing 40% to 36.4MWh.

If investors aren't getting excited by this uplift then they really should be because traction is not only being gained but its with serious players, who will help snowball...

....

This is "where we see out advantage over lithium being far far greater."

These opportunities are building out now. Energy storage is happening now.

IES pipeline, closed to upside, as of 23rd Sept = 56.8MWh

If all projects are closed out, then BMN has first refusal...

....

The more IES/Enerox grow, the more BMN vanadium production, can move from the steel sector, into this greener, mining cycle irrelevant new sector.

Right now, the market is giving BMN zero credit for this progress and the clear blue sky opportunity that it brings with it.

...

And if all that weren't enough, here's what #IES had to say about their "comparable kilowatt hour cost...vanadium vs lithium."

(44mins 20s)

"what we always focus on is the levelised cost, the cost of delivering a kilowatt hour to customers, over time."

Now here's the best bit. . ."on those measures, today, we are about 30% lower than lithium."

Already.

"In the long run, we believe we are going to be about 60-70% less than comparable kilowatts hours delivered out of lithium"

...

The more projects that are completed, particularly for the likes of the Oxford Superhub, the California Energy Commission...

...and today's deal with Ameresco,

"one of the largest independent energy services providers in North America and the United Kingdom,"

allows that levelised costing to demonstrate itself, to customers with considerably more purchasing power, all of which can be fed by BMN Vanadium

...

All of which allows the likes of IES to expand their footprint and deliver what is really key here, scale.

Demonstrated here on slide 12 of the presentation.

Just look what that 56.8MWh of base to upside work delivers. Now imagine that 10 or even 20 fold.

Colt45 - if OT and YD different parties, how do they relate to CC (Cribb Construction not CuppyCakes)

Lawrence H - Bushveld has not agreed a placing. The question of whether the CLN's are converted to shares is entirely dependent on whether the lender decides that they want to take the loaned funds back as cash, or as a stake in the business going forward.

LawrenceH - with respect I run an export business and nobody in that area or in logistics in general knows what is going to happen or what to prepare for, despite regularly receiving letters from HMRC telling us that we need to prepare. The problem is that they cannot tell us what to prepare for. Thank god I don't sell any short-shelf life products. It is bad enough trying to stock up on things that may or may not have tariffs applied after 1st Jan.

Pat48 - you are slightly confusing Cellcube the Canadian listed company with Cellcube the trademark that Enerox have spent years developing for their VRFB battery systems.

The first of these will no doubt cease to exist in a few months, the second will go from strength to strength in the next few decades.

let them put tariffs on - nobody will be cutting the prices to US customers so that they pay the same as before. It might even push up prices outside the US also. Nitrovan would unlikely be affected and it may even increase demand for it from the US if they have to pay more for FeV

Cellcube is their trademark. The Canadian company Stina Resources tried to cover themselves in the Cellcube name when they took over Enerox a couple of years ago, but the wheels fell off that wagon as they talked a good mine but did not have one during the 2018 price spike.

sponsored by Nedbank.

Now where have we heard that name before ?