Member Info for Zebediah16

AC going or staying doesnt make a difference at this stage which is critical.

Anyway the placing was also going to hang over any rise, without some proper news. Just turning the drill bit is not enough

MTJK: UPS systems ultimately go back to diesel generators. They might have some minor batteries to power corridor lighting. Keeping diesel backup generators operational is a huge headache. How can you be sure that a diesel generator will power up? Its not surprising that some of the backup diesel generators failed last week with the national outage. Ironically it takes a breakdown to expose weaknesses

IMO early adopters of VRFB will be the money no object crowd - critical infrastructure not rich people. Peaking generation, grid frequency regulation and UPS backup for hospitals and other infrastructure. The US is going to retire 150 GW of peaking generator that is ageing, which is currenlty generated by oil fired boilers, gas and probably diesel as well. If we estimate 4 hours peaking supply -thats 600 GW Hrs of battery capacity. To keep fossil fuel generators for peak power, you have to keep them idling. Just like a car they cant go from 0-100 without warming up

The two big alternatives are pumped storage and battery power. In the UK all pumped storage opportunities have been exhausted . Even in the US, pumped storage will be hard to build with environmental clearances, and it will cost a *lot* of money. It really is between Lithium Ion and VRFB. In the US Elon Musk will probably muscle in with Lithion Ion to keep his Gigafactory in the news. But VRFB is gonna take a signficant slice becasue it is clearly an industrial battery

reteps: exactly a VRFB will be cheap compared to building a new pumped storage facility . Those things cost billons

its cost effective if you have some control on demand. If you have industrial process that must be kept running or maybe hospital supply then its a different issue. You have to build in extra capacity in storage which is expensive. Maybe you are on an island and there is no other solution. With a grid there is a load balancing - its always sunny somewhere

thats an article about grid peak power management (base load plus peak load). . Peaking power generators are a separate category of generation. In the US grid, peaking power is currently supplied by fossil fuel generators which are ageing and will be replaced by battery storage (VRFB, Pumped storage etc) in the coming years. Its a good article to read again when I have some time

With a totally cutoff mini-grid (simple VRFB plus PV farm arrangement) I would guess the VRFB might have to supply base load as well if the PV supply drops from some reason e.g. a rainy day. If you wanted guaranteed electricity the VRFB would be large. BMN will provide some practical experience

Minigrids are not practical with renewables IMO . Or they will be very expensive

nobody from ESKOM there which is strange - as far as I can tell

https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2019/08/02/eskom-death-spiral-restructuring

this article (as of August 2) says that Eskom is in a death spiral and the government is not taking restructuring seriously. Eskom is a vertically integrated monopoly and apparently the unions are not allowing any restructuring

alfa : how would you size the BMN VRFB battery? Any rules of thumb. Being able to supply half a days usage ? One factor might be if BMN is a continuous operation, or demand fluctuates through the day

Mini-grids are expensive and inefficient. Its better that a utility runs a national grid and balances demand and supply. the bigger the better. Its why the UK has a national grid and interconnectors with France etc. But even if the World Bank or African Development Bank go ahead with the renewables project, they have to be convinced that Eskom will be able to evacuate the power generated and pay back the loan ( is it a grant or loan? ) . They do have money to spend but they dont want equipment to fall into disuse ( I hope)

jeremy: Regarding Eskom, I find this bit interesting from the article you posted.

"Dropping demand for electricity, meanwhile, also cut into revenue, as more South Africans go off the grid. "

Thats a vicious downward spiral for a heavily indebted organisation. Maybe BMN going off grid was becoming inevitable and they dressed it up ;-)

I keep harping on about China but the growth in EVs and EV charging points there is simply phenomenal. eg see:

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/chinas-ev-charging-stations-powering-up/
"Charging infrastructure in China for electric vehicles reported fast growth in June, statistics from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance has shown, China Daily reported. By the end of June, charging piles for EV in China totalled more than 1 million units, with a year-on-year growth of 69.3%, the organization announced on Wednesday."

by comparison the UK has about 10,000 . I know its much smaller country but still .

India is woefully lacking. For a still poor country, it spends about USD 100 billion on oil imports . They need to cut down on this bill out of strategic necessity

yeah the growth for VRFB will certainly come from outside ESKOM. BMN might get a slice of the Work Bank tender . I dont know how much - that USD 400 million also includes distribution networks, not just batteries . Right now the World Bank is looking for reasurances that the SA govt considers ESKOM too big to fail. So it might be a while

A good tender would upset the tradtional Vanadium forecasts which are based on traditional usage patterns. But the traders would look for sustainability. My money is on what happens in China and the US. One problem I suspect is the fear of how scalable Vanadium supply is . Last years spike was pretty damaging IMO

so how come the SP didn't budge . Negotiated buys or some were sells?

stodgy88: well that didn't pass the test of time too well. BMN is still a common mining stock. Depending on ESKOM to right historical wrongs was always a bit optimistic

BMN is the lowest cost producer. Its a general rule of thumb that low cost producers survive a recession and projects that were less viable fall by the wayside

Find the bottom and you will strike gold :-). As long as you dont use your nose thats fine

If nothing has changed at BMN, the Vanadium price is close to where it was in Dec 2017. The BMN share price was around 9p . Its not correct to say thats nothing has changed.

expert: its the job of management to act on objects and shape the desired trajectory

perhaps that sounds pseudo profound much like your post> I am getting bored

I would second Pdubs comment re management. Focus on the management , especially when the SP dips like this. Do you have confidence in the management? It doesnt really matter what sector they are in - business management is a difficult game and it has to be good. .Too many companies seem to acquire sociopathic charlatans as CEOs who can't believe how easy it is to rip the company off. Many others dont have that vision thing and are way over their heads though they play a good game

by the time ZEN have drilled a well and are actually producing , oil will be out fashion

China’s EV charging network now largest in world
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/chinas-ev-charging-network-now-largest-in-world/

some of the recent placing subscribers (at 2.5p) appear to be top slicing or taking some profits. We need some positive results to get going