RE: Full Page Ad. Nat'l Post Today.....Pt 1It’s the major hurdle preventing renewable energy’s acceptance into the mainstream.
The moment the sun sets or the wind drops, that energy source shuts down for business. You can hardly power a major electrical grid on such uncertainty.
Likewise, any surplus of wind or solar power has nowhere to go — except to be either wasted or discharged back into the ground.
The truth is renewable energy will never realize its full potential until we develop efficient ways to store and harness the energy it produces. So that when the source is either offline or producing a surplus, we can continue to draw power.
The solution lies in energy storage.
Influential energy industry analyst Nick Hodge concurs: “Energy storage is the Holy Grail of the energy market.” In a recent sector report, American investment bankers Piper Jaffray project the blue-sky potential of this emerging clean technology frontier: “We estimate spending of $600-billion plus on energy storage solutions over the next 10 to 12 years.”
No wonder energy storage is the new global gold rush.
One battery in particular, the vanadium redox flow battery, already shows enormous potential as an energy storage solution. In fact, it’s the only battery technology today capable of powering everything from a single home right up to the storage demands of a power grid.
With the world now increasingly wireless, we depend on batteries like never before to run our netbooks, power our smartphones and soon, our vehicles. Battery technology continues to rapidly progress as consumers, corporations and governments drive the cleantech sector to innovate better solutions.
The race is on to build a better battery.
A little-known metal called vanadium is beginning to play a pivotal role in both battery power and energy storage technology. This is because vanadium makes highly powerful and efficient batteries — both in a stand-alone capacity for largescale power grid usage and as an additive in small-scale battery applications.
So, what is vanadium? Why is it so special? And why have you likely never heard of it?
Vanadium is a strategic metal that is essential for engineering as well as for the automotive, shipping, and construction industries. It is irreplaceable for its role in aerospace. This is because vanadium possesses the remarkable ability to make steel alloys both stronger and lighter. In fact, vanadium-titanium alloys have the best strength-to-weight ratio of any engineered material.
With the boom in global infrastructure development, steel consumption is driving the market for vanadium. While the steel industry currently uses 90% to 97% of the 60,000 tonnes of vanadium produced annually worldwide, its application in the growing trend toward battery power and energy storage marks a significant tipping of the scales.
It turns out that renewable energy’s greatest challenge is vanadium’s greatest opportunity.
The vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), invented at the University of New South Wales in Australia, is a game-changer. It has a lifespan of tens of thousands of cycles, does not self-discharge while idle or generate high amounts of heat when charging, and can absorb and discharge huge amounts of electricity instantly — over and over again.
VRFB technology not only provides the missing link in scaling renewable energy to national levels but also in reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Safe and versatile, the VRFB is fast moving toward mainstream acceptance as a medium for grid-scaled energy storage by the global green industry.
The signs are evident: China’s Prudent Energy, a rising star and VRFB manufacturer based in Beijing and Washington, was named to the 2010 Global Cleantech 100 as one of the most promising private technology companies poised to make a significant market impact over the next decade. Prudent Energy was chosen from more than 5,000 firms from 14 countries by an expert committee drawn from Fortune 500 titans including BASF, GE, Honeywell, IBM, Siemens and Proctor & Gamble.
“It’s a matter of a better technology winning the day,” according to Prudent Energy president Tim Hennessy: “Our vanadium redox battery energy storage systems are unique in their ability to repeatedly deep cycle and rapidly recharge with little or no capacity change. Our units have been independently tested, and the field results over the last three years have shown a performance way in excess of any other technology currently in the field.”
Prudent Energy has installed VRFB systems all around the world and, unlike other flow battery systems, the energy-holding electrolyte in their systems operates at room temperature and never wears out.