Member Info for Alfacomp

HighandDry - if you want to understand the true scale of the market and the role that VRFB's could play in it you should read this series of articles :-

https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/energy-storage-europe-2019-414

https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/energy-storage-europe-2019-415

https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/energy-storage-europe-2019-416

an interesting angle - some of you may be looking at that 168 hour battery duration figure and be thinking, cripes isn't that going to be awfully expensive as it's essentially a 4 hour VRFB with tanks that have been increased in size by a factor of 42 ?

Well yes the cost of the system is going to be not unreasonably higher if you go from a 1MW/4MWh VRFB to a 1MW/168MWh VRFB - maybe a factor of 10-12 times. But it is not as much of an increases as you would have if you used Lithium-ion - there the cost would be 42 times higher.

HighandDry - there's quite a bit more discussion on batteries on the BMN board.

The DoD are VERY interested in VRFBs for providing backup capability across many of their sites. Their backup requirements are strenuous, requiring up to 168 hours of battery duration. VRFB's are considered as a viable alternative to Diesel Generators (DG) in the study undertaken by the Department of Defense Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) in 2019.

In their conclusion they write :-

"This work offered significant insight into the viability of replacing a DG with a BESS in a microgrid. First, based on assessment of the reliability modeling results and critical load coverage curves produced, we can conclude that a VRF battery enabled microgrid can provide satisfactory reliability performance at all five sites by meeting the baseline performance requirement over a 168-hour outage that could occur at any time."

and

"It is important to recognize that VRF BESS technology is early on in its development and deployment lifecycle and has not yet appreciated the vast cost reductions due to economy of scale that Li-Ion has enjoyed. "

willdo - no your understanding was incorrect

That's not the same guy

exciting times for electric vehicles in the midlands it would seem.

https://hypromag.com/rare-earth-magnet-recycling/

SloppyG - I'm glad to see that the Nature guys understand what is happening in VRFB energy storage. They explicitly put Vanadium first, ahead of all the normal things you read about under a Musk headline:-

"More energy will need to be stored, meaning a greater need for vanadium, nickel, lithium and cobalt. "

Mitch - if BEL are to sell any of Enerox I would hope that it is at significantly higher than the price that they bought it at. Why would BEL throw away the control of the VRFB industry that they have fought so hard to obtain

or will they ? They cannot do so forever.

I count 56,000 more shares bought than sold today.

As I said the Zuma Park Village appears to be in the ELIAS MOTSOALEDI LOCAL MUNICIPALITY which is north east of pretoria so over 1000km from East London where the electrolyte Factory is being built.

https://easytenders.co.za/tenders/bid-number-emlm-05-2021bid-description-el-emlm-05-2021-38813

yep if you want to see this 800MWh battery by Rongke it is shown here:-

https://twitter.com/BMNperspective/status/1327166300666335232

I'm not sure the Zuma Park Village stuff is related to us - it appears that is about 1000km from East London. I think this is an informational error.

This 'multi-grids' technology that is used in their Titanstack systems is, I believe, some kind of patterning in the electrodes that produces a complex flow field in the electrode felts. This allows large sized power stacks to be made. Many people are working on similar concepts so it is not something only owned by StorEn. But good luck to them and everyone making VRFB power stacks - greater efficiency there not only reduces the ohmic dissipation during charge-dishcharging but also indirectly allows a greater percentage of the dissolved Vanadium to participate in battery storage, allowing more energy to be stored with the same amount of Vanadium (though the ultimate improvement that could be obtained might only be about 25%)

somtam - you are indeed correct - by putting taxes on fuels the government incentivises itself to encourage as much fuel to be used as possible - i.e. it positively encourages wastefulness when what it should be doing is the opposite - instead of receiving money for every TerawattHour used up the government should be forced to spend money, like we are.

Professor Kevin Anderson of Manchester university, someone I have a great deal of time for, agrees that it amounts to barely a scratch

https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1328967278445072384

It's a question of vanity versus sanity.

https://www.sainvestmentconference.co.za/programme-2020/

Opened by the president.

Fortune speaking at 3:30

yes a big target but only 1/10th of the money to be spaffed on HS2