London South East | The UK's favourite investor portal.

from logging status changes and updates, or receiving and creating new orders to concluding the job and reporting time, material and expenses. Such solutions are easy to deploy and intuitive for end users to learn and use. When coupled with workforce management tools, such solutions unlock significant productivity gains for utilities who are trying to get the most from their workforce and assets. A modern enterprise solution in this scenario provides an IT hub from which all of the requisite business data can be delivered–one version of the truth. If an investment project is being managed through such a platform then cost, progress, performance, changes and variations can all be viewed in one dashboard. “As we seek to address South Africa’s growing energy demands and provide the power we need to connect every person to the grid and drive industrialisation of the economy, modern enterprise software will not only be about asset utilisation and maintenance,” Cassoojee says. “It could also help manage investment in projects such as constructing new generation facilities, new transmission capabilities or extensions to the electricity grid to get more villages and customers connected. Better management of assets and infrastructure are key to recovery of operational and capital costs, so that we can build a more sustainable energy sector.”

https://it-online.co.za/2019/06/11/enterprise-applications-core-to-the-renewal-of-sas-energy-sector/ New trends in energy storage, small-scale embedded generation, and smart grid systems are disrupting the power sector, a trend that will accelerate in South Africa with the recent lifting of licence restraints on power plants. This, along with the planned unbundling of Eskom and licencing of more independent power producers, will move us away from a centralised supplier to a more dynamic market. That’s according to Mohamed Cassoojee, MD for South Africa at IFS. He says with municipal and national energy assets in disrepair and a transition to new, decentralised, green energy sources underway, the South African power industry must embrace technology to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve asset utilisation. Against the backdrop of these challenges, South Africa’s energy sector should look towards enterprise asset management (EAM) and modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to more tightly manage the renewal and extension of its power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure, adds Cassoojee. Such solutions can help the national power utility and municipal power companies to better prepare for the seismic shifts currently underway in the energy market. Government is aware of these challenges. Speaking at the recent African Utilities Week conference, Energy Minister Jeff Radebe said that government needs to invest in infrastructure and turn around the untenable situation around Eskom’s growing debt and increasing tariffs. He further noted that distributed generation and smart grid systems will disrupt the traditional power utility delivery model. Optimising maintenance and field service The shift will require a much more dynamic and optimised approach to maintenance and field service. South African energy companies must thus embrace digital transformation as an imperative. This transformation begins by embracing enterprise asset management to improve asset utilisation, according to Cassoojee. The subsequent steps are enhancing upstream and downstream supply chain management, resource optimisation, introducing enterprise operational intelligence, embracing new technologies such as the Internet of Things, machine learning, and predictive maintenance, and becoming a smart utility. To get this right, organisations must implement an enterprise backbone that accommodates asset and project management, new energies and markets, visualisation of the entire value chain, and mobility apps, Cassoojee says. Mobile technologies that support the field workforce have a vital role to play in driving better ROI from utilities’ investments in enterprise asset management and enterprise resource planning solutions. Today’s leading enterprise asset management solutions feature powerful functionality for mobile management of the complete workflow of work orders – from logging

In addition, from the main material of the all-vanadium redox flow battery, the core material element vanadium of the electrolyte is abundant in the earth, and there is no resource bottleneck problem. Moreover, during the operation of the battery, vanadium is never lost. After the energy storage system is deactivated, the electrolyte is easily recovered, and there is no problem of disposal of decommissioned batteries faced by other energy storage technologies. The advantages of all vanadium redox flow battery technology are many and easy to see. It is similar to the technical maturity level of lithium ion battery. Why is it a step backward in the promotion and application? This is still going back to the eternal topic of commercialization. The cost of energy is relatively high. 2Innovative business model, breakthrough cost桎梏 In 2018, the supply and demand relationship of vanadium resources was unbalanced due to various reasons, and the price of vanadium raw materials for all vanadium redox flow batteries skyrocketed. According to Huang Mianyan, “the price of vanadium pentoxide has increased by four or five times from RMB 120,000/ton in 2017 to RMB 400,000/ton at the end of 2018.” Cost reduction is an eternal topic in various industries. And such market prices directly push the all-vanadium flow battery energy storage technology to the point where commercialization is unacceptable. While improving the power density of the battery through technological advancement and the use of cost-effective battery key materials, the vanadium material of one of the main constituent materials is also due to the electrolyte portion accounting for 60-70% of the total cost of the flow battery. The focus of cost control. Its high price and volatility affect investor confidence and affect customer acceptance, which is of course one of the keys to the commercialization of all-vanadium liquid storage technology. In addition to the long-term strategic cooperation to ensure the stable supply of raw materials and reduce the procurement cost, which is a common mode in the capital market, for the application market, the company can use vanadium electrolyte without consumption, high residual value and recyclability. The electrolyte leasing solution was proposed, and the owner did not need to consider the price of vanadium, and only had to bear the initial investment and the regular lease cost of the electrolyte. Dr. Huang Mianyan said: "Our cost goal is to reduce the investment cost to 2000-2500 yuan / kWh in the next 2-3 years. If the electrolyte is taken away, the investment cost may be about 1000 yuan / kWh. In this business model, the investment return calculation of energy storage projects finally has the possibility of profit increase. The first commercialization project of all-vanadium flow battery came into being in Zaoyang, Hubei. 3 kinds of application prospects are good In various application fields, because the user sid

http://mchuneng.bjx.com.cn/mnews/20190611/985406.shtml The cost of energy storage technology has broken through the turning point of the industry. 2019 will be an exciting year: we have seen a number of technological breakthroughs, and a variety of application scenarios continue to land, and energy storage is showing its value. During the “Energy Conservation International Summit and Exhibition 2019”, leaders of government departments, experts and scholars, top industry executives in the industry, and power energy group gathered together to see the future of energy storage. As a strategic cooperation media of the summit, Polaris Energy Storage Network has dialogues with many experts, scholars and corporate executives on energy storage policies, technologies, applications, etc. We will organize our own findings and texts into columns. In the quantity, we look forward to working with colleagues in all aspects of the energy storage industry to explore opportunities together, overcome difficulties, create the future, and welcome glory! [Capacity Capacity] In the fourth chapter, we exchanged the market application prospects of all vanadium redox flow batteries with Dr. Huang Mianyan, President of Beijing Puneng Century Technology Co., Ltd. Wen | Polaris network of energy storage: clean juvenile In the field of electrochemical energy storage, in addition to the overwhelming lithium battery that occupies the largest share of the market, the "niche" technology such as the all-vanadium flow battery has the same strong market competitiveness with decades of research and development results. Then, how can the all-vanadium redox flow battery energy storage technology catch up and return to the mainstream? 1 precipitation for 30 years, long-term performance advantages are obvious “The all-vanadium flow battery is not a new energy storage technology, it has been more than 30 years old.” Dr. Huang Mianyan, President of Beijing Puneng Century Technology Co., Ltd. introduced the Polaris energy storage network. First of all, from the battery structure, the biggest characteristic of the flow battery is the operation mode of the electrolyte "extracorporeal circulation". The operation under low temperature and low pressure is more conducive to heat dissipation, avoiding the hidden dangers such as fire and explosion caused by thermal runaway of the lithium ion battery. . In addition, the non-flammability of the vanadium battery electrolyte itself increases its safety. In terms of operation effect, the all-vanadium flow battery is especially suitable for long-term energy storage. The current electrochemical energy storage systems commonly used in the peaking field are 2 hours and 4 hours of energy storage time, and the flow battery can be 6 hours, 8 hours or even more than 10 hours, can meet the demand for electricity at night with photovoltaic power generation. In addition, the most prominent feature of the all-va

https://smallcaps.com.au/tungsten-stocks-asx-ultimate-guide/ Once deemed an impurity in other valuable minerals, tungsten is now considered a critical material in many world markets due to its economic importance and few substitution options. Though, in recent years other commodities have attracted more attention as society continues to modernise and technology evolves. Old-fashioned tungsten lighting filaments are being increasingly replaced by light emitting diode (LED) lights and the electric vehicle (EV) trend has market experts warning of reduced demand for some tungsten-based tooling in the automotive industry. Despite this potential threat, demand is so far stable in the automotive industry and continues to rise in sectors like energy (particularly oil and gas) and defence. Other market dynamics include government regulations in China threatening supply and ageing mines closing down throughout Europe. These multiple factors at play have resulted in analysts forecasting higher tungsten prices in the near-term with a potential supply deficit on the cards and a dire need to develop new mines outside of China. Tungsten has been categorised by the US Department of Defence, the British Geological Survey and the European Commission as a “critical” and “strategic” raw material due to its economic importance, supply risk and little potential substitutions. More recently, tungsten-based materials have received attention as promising anode materials for lithium-ion batteries, with new research finding that niobium tungsten oxides could be used to make the batteries much faster charging. According to a report analysing tungsten end uses, published late last year by Steel & Metals Market Research (SMR), tungsten end use demand is expected to grow by more than 25,000 tonnes to 130,000t by 2027. The increase in some sub-segments, eg wind energy, cannot compensate the overall loss to the tungsten market,” the research firm said. However, this is being offset by population and wealth growth in emerging markets, as well as the rapid advancement of urbanisation, which will push the need for tungsten in segments like construction, railways, energy and consumer durables. However, with several major mines set to reach their end of life during the outlook period [from now to 2028] new mine supply will be required to ensure stable supply of primary material,”

https://www.energy-storage.news/news/world-bank-sets-up-partnership-to-drive-forward-energy-storage-in-emerging World Bank Group has set up a “global international partnership” to support the deployment of energy storage in developing countries, just a few months after committing a US$1 billion sum to the sector. That earlier investment injection, aimed at ‘mobilising’ up to US$4 billion in investment for battery storage in developing countries was announced in September, starting off a “global programme to accelerate investments in battery and other energy storage media for energy systems in developing and middle-income countries”. Announced at the One Planet Summit, the investment drive unveiled in September was aimed at enabling the mobilisation of US$4 billion in concessional climate finance from the public and private sectors, geared towards a deployment target of 17.5GW of energy storage by 2025. Under the World Bank’s criteria, that funding is for: 1. Projects that hybridise solar and storage and displace diesel and other fossil fuels, shifting solar generated energy using batteries to cover peaks in demand. 2. Standalone batteries that can deliver grid services to vertically-integrated utilities and 3. Minigrid or microgrid solutions for remote regions, including islands. Earlier this week, at another event, the World Bank launched the global Energy Storage Partnership to further support the sector. The idea is to foster cooperation in areas including technology R&D and demonstration, storage system applications, system integration, communications networks and other necessary infrastructure such as energy management systems. The partnership will have a technology-neutral approach, potentially supporting all forms of energy storage and will focus on “developing and adapting new storage solutions to the needs of developing countries”, thereby creating an economic opportunity by expanding the overall market worldwide, building the sort of scale that can lead to big cost reductions and rapid technological improvements. The World Bank said in a release that it believes the current market for batteries, driven by the electric vehicle industry, is producing mainstream technologies that “cannot provide long duration storage nor withstand harsh climatic conditions and low operation and maintenance capacity”. Furthermore, developing countries are not as readily able to access other flexible energy resources such as natural gas to balance their networks as renewables penetration increases.

https://www.electropages.com/blog/2019/05/changing-lithium-ion-cathode-expected-improve-charging-times Consumer electronics, solar grid storage and electric vehicles could all see improved battery performance for charging if vanadium disulfide is added to a battery’s lithium cathode and cobalt oxide removed. A battery consists of two electrodes, an anode and a cathode, and an electrolyte. A battery charges and discharges when ions move between the two electrodes, and a lithium ion battery is no different. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found a way of creating a lithium ion battery that can charge in five to ten minutes and still retain its full capacity. Most batteries need 30-60 minutes. In a typical lithium-ion battery, the anode is graphite and the cathode is lithium cobalt oxide. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute solution is to alter the cathode by replacing the cobalt dioxide with vanadium disulfide. “There will come a day when there is not enough cobalt on the planet,” said Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, Nikhil Koratkar. “It [vanadium disulfide] gives you higher energy density, because it’s light. And it gives you faster charging capability, because it’s highly conductive. From those points of view, we were attracted to this material.” He adds that lithium cobalt oxide is not very conductive and that is what has limited the charging speed. The experiments Koratkar’s team has carried out to date have involved batteries that are small, a type of battery called a coin cell; because they are the size of a coin. “We want to demonstrate the concept in larger form factors, pouch cells. They’re used in cell phones and laptops. If we get the funding, we hope to do it in the next one to two years,” explained Koratkar. Stability Koratkar explained that previously researchers had been challenged by vanadium disulfide’s instability. This instability would see battery life shortened. Koratkar’s Rensselaer researchers found out why vanadium disulfide is unstable and how to stop that and make it stable. The instability is an asymmetry between the vanadium atoms’ spacing, which is caused when adding lithium. The solution is to coat the vanadium disulfide with a nanolayer of titanium disulphide. This stopped the degradation. The titanium disulfide acts as a buffer and gives mechanical support. With that instability obstacle removed, the researchers found that the coated vanadium disulfide electrode could have a high specific capacity. Due to vanadium and sulphur’s small size and weight they can provide a higher capacity and energy density than cobalt oxide. This could lead to a compact battery design. Koratkar added that cobalt is only mined in Africa and in the future there maybe supply issues and so alternatives need to be found. Lithium iron sulphate is another alternati

https://www.thearmchairtrader.com/bushveld-minerals-share-price/ A production update and a recent acquisition focused investors’ interest on South African vanadium miner Bushveld Minerals last week, causing a price spike that had fizzled out by Friday. But can the Bushveld share price stage a comeback this week? To its credit the specialty metal miner succeed in achieving explosive growth in 2018, managing to ramp up revenues from $2.8 million in 2017 to $192.1 million last year and to turn the 2017 pretax loss of $882 million into a profit of $86.6m. The steep increases were generated by last year’s massive spike in the price of vanadium, which is used in cars, specialty steels and industrial sized batteries, but the fickle nature of the minor metals market has also been the main headwind for the Bushveld share price which is now declining. At 25.25p the company is trading close to a six month low but this needs to be put into context of a share price that was continuously below 10p until late 2017. Why is Bushveld Minerals interesting? Compared with the more famous South African miners Bushveld is a relatively small player with market capitalisation of only £282 million serving a niche vanadium market which is used to make specialty steels used in cars and in specialty tools. But the area of real growth for the metal is vanadium-based energy storage. To call it vanadium batteries would be a little misleading because the “batteries” are the size of ship containers and can be linked up to produce enough power to supply hundreds of homes for hours or to generate electricity for industrial outlets. This is interesting not only for areas that don’t have access to the grid or stable electricity such as parts of Africa and China and other Asian countries but in the West as storage for renewable energy. A key problem that the European and American renewable energy industry has been facing is that wind and solar power are intermittent – there is electricity when wind blows but none when it is quiet – and that this power is not easily stored; this makes wind for instance very problematic as the main source of electricity. However, vanadium batteries can provide a solution to that problem. The largest such battery in use in the US can keep the lights on for 1,000 homes for eight hours. A similar sized battery has recently been commissioned in the Hubei province in China and will be used to store electricity generated by a large solar plant. Vanadium ups and downs Much as it would be easy to ramp up the case for Bushveld Minerals over the rise of vanadium prices which have gained the most of all the metals last year, the wild gyrations in the pricing also becomes problematic in terms of its effect on the company’s share price. While energy storage has the capacity to become a real boom industry as it will try and expand to match the growth of renewable energy other aspects of demand are work

https://www.mysteel.net/article/5007474-0503/CONF--Chinas-prefab-push-calls-for-higher-quality-rebar.html China’s promotion of prefabricated building construction is influencing the businesses of Chinese rebar producers, resulting in higher requirements for domestically-produced rebar in both performance and use, according to Chen Jie, deputy general manager of Inspection and Certification Co (ICC) under China Metallurgical Group Corp, the country's largest state-owned engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company. “Chinese rebar producers are facing structural adjustment with the development of prefabricated building,” Chen told attendees at the Steel Export Certification Training Conference last Friday in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province. central government issued a guideline in September 2016 promoting the use of prefabricated construction techniques in concrete-, steel- and wooden-structure buildings, aiming to increase the proportion of such prefab buildings in new construction to 30% by around 2026. The present proportion is not known but in 2016 when the guidance was issued, it was just 4.9%. Beijing issued the directive, aiming to help save energy and resources in the construction sector, reduce pollution during construction, improve work efficiency, the quality and safety of the buildings. Chinese cities, especially those with the local population over 3 million and those in North China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, East China’s Yangtze River Delta and South China’s Pearl River Delta, are making great efforts to encourage prefabrication in housing, in high-rise buildings and apartments, and in bridges and roads, Mysteel Global understands. “as long as the construction project is government-sponsored, it must be prefabricated,”. Moreover, the promotion of prefabricated construction has gradually shifted the supply route for rebars from the previous “mills-traders-construction sites” to “mills-component processing plants-building sites,” she told delegates. Such changes may propel Chinese rebar producers to expand their role beyond just providing steel products to downstream manufacturing such as the fabrication of steel wire mesh and coupled rebar. “Rebar mills, with the appropriate facilities and technologies, enjoy the advantage of turning themselves from ‘steel producer’ to ‘service provider’,” the deputy general manager said. Chen also warned the audience, mostly Chinese rebar producers, that the widespread adoption of prefabricated construction will require rebar producers to meet higher performance requirements in the future. “As the central government aims to increase steel consumption in prefabricated construction, (higher quality) structural steel will be used more commonly than concrete and rebar,” she said. “Building contractors, with less rebar consumption in the

Third, battery storage can be transformational for the clean energy landscape in developing countries Today, battery technology is not widely deployed in large-scale energy projects in developing countries. The gap is particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 600 million people still live without access to reliable and affordable electricity, despite the region’s significant wind and solar power potential and burgeoning energy demand. Catalyzing new markets will be key to drive down costs for batteries and make it a viable energy storage solution in Africa. Already, there is tremendous demand in the region today for energy solutions that do not just boost the uptake of clean energy, but also help stabilize and strengthen existing electricity grids and aid the global push to adopt more clean energy and fight against climate change. Fourth, the World Bank is stepping up its catalytic role in boosting battery storage solutions There is a clear need to catalyze a new market for batteries and other storage solutions that are suitable for electricity grids for a variety of applications and deployable on a large scale. The World Bank is already taking steps to address this challenge. In 2018, the World Bank Group announced a $1 billion global battery storage program, aiming to raise $4 billion more in private and public funds to create markets and help drive down prices for batteries, so it can be deployed as an affordable and at-scale solution in middle-income and developing countries. By 2025, the World Bank expects to finance 17.5 GWh of battery storage – more than triple the 4-5 GWh currently installed in developing countries. With the right solutions, it can be possible to build large-scale renewable energy projects with significant energy storage components, deploy batteries to stabilize power grids in countries with weak infrastructure, and increase off-grid access to communities that are ready for clean energy with storage. The World Bank has already financed over 15% of grid-related battery storage in various stages of deployment in developing countries to date. In Haiti, a combined solar and battery storage project will ultimately provide electricity to 800,000 people and 10,000 schools, clinics and other institutions. An emergency solar and battery storage power plant is being built in the Gambia, as are mini-grids in several island states to boost their resilience. In India, a joint WB-IFC team is developing one of the largest hybrid solar, wind and storage power plants in the world, while in South Africa, the World Bank is helping develop 1.44 gigawatt-hours of battery storage capacity, which is expected to be the largest project of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa. Watch this space on May 28 for an announcement from the World Bank and the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) on a major initiative tied to the $1 billion battery storage program.

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for SloppyGuiseppe

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)