Renewable Energy https://www.miningweekly.com/article/sa-inc-must-act-now-to-take-ownership-of-battery-metals-value-chain-2020-06-26/rep_id:3650
The following is a small clip from the report.
Renewable energy’s scalability is a major plus. One can install a 100 kW photovoltaic solar power plant and also build a 100 MW photovoltaic solar power plant, which has the potential to disrupt the way that traditional utilities operate.
“Traditionally, big power plants have been built with large transmission infrastructure. But what is taking place increasingly now is distributed energy generation systems, helped significantly by the proliferation of renewable energy, which interestingly is now at cost parity even with coal,” Mojapelo, a one-time McKinsey & Company business analyst, points out.
When you take all of that into account, the need for stationary energy storage is huge. Bloomberg estimates that by 2040 there will be 2 800 GWh of installed stationary energy storage systems, up from 17 GWh last year, a massive increase, and capital investment is anticipated at $660-billion in this space.
“It’s a big deal and it’s real and it’s here. The growing share of renewable energy and stationary energy storage is real.
“When you have a morning and evening energy demand load and you need to flatten the curve instead of running those diesel generators in the morning and the evening, you install batteries to store power during the off-peak periods and you use it to meet requirements during the peaks. The consequence of that is that all our transmission infrastructure capital investments can be deferred for much longer. The business case for stationary energy storage is real and it’s here, “Mojapelo emphasizes.
For vanadium batteries, it is the long duration type of storage that can be served. Some forecasts are that by 2027, 90% of stationary energy storage deployments will be long-duration storage, which is important for vanadium because this is the space in which vanadium shines the most.
Vanadium flow batteries are simple in their architecture. They use vanadium in different states – in the liquid form is one element. It has full discharge capabilities and it can operate as an uninterrupted power supply that is fast and, as importantly, it is safe. They are long-lasting. They have a 25-year life.
Within that period, there is no degradation of the electrolyte. At the end of the period, the electrolyte can be put into another battery. At the end of the life of that second battery, a recycling facility for that electrolyte does not have to be built.
Vanadium flow batteries are heavy duty long-duration batteries, with the biggest 800 MWh version currently under construction in China. The first 400 MWh half of that project is expected to be completed this year. In 2015, the 60 MWh vanadium flow battery Sumitomo installed in 2015 is still working well.
Battery storage uptake is on the rise and in Africa, particularly, there are interesting developments against the background of electricity access on the continent being a big issue. Just to support its growth, Africa needs to install 7 000 MW of new electricity generation capacity each year.
“This is not going to come by relying on big power stations. If you use the systems, you can reach the continent a lot quicker,” Mojapelo advises.
The World Bank has launched a program of 17 000 MWh. South Africa’s 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) makes an allocation for battery storage of 2 000 MW.
“In addition, when the IRP talks about a peaking capacity of 9 000 MW, a lot of talk assumes that that’s going to be gas but if you read the IRP text carefully you’ll see that there is an openness to other technologies that can fulfill this. Long-duration energy storage systems can provide a peaking solution,” he points out.
“The third thing I’d highlight is that we’re looking at is something like 15 000 MW of renewable energy generation capacity. What that means is that you need storage. South Africa will allow parties to generate electricity for their own use without having to go and get a license as long as it is self-contained and it’s not being fed into the grid. That itself opens up a massive market of parties that can deploy solar with storage,” he calculates.
Bushveld developed a mini-grid at its mine to show that the economics works at a time when the regulations limited it to under 1 MW for self-generation.
It built a 4 MWh battery, four-hour storage, with one megawatt per hour, to prove that it could be done sustainably, without subsidization. This mini-grid is moving forward with a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB).
“We’ve got an EPC that is wrapping it all together with solar. That project is going to deliver power to Vametco at a cost that equal to what we get from Eskom. So, that what it tells you is that the bigger projects are going to be even more cost-effective.
“To their credit, Eskom has also woken up to the value of batteries and they’ve gone public with plans to procure 1 400 MWh of battery storage.
“We expect them to go to tender anytime now and that project alone is massive. We know it’s going to be multiple technologies. That’s well and good for us. We think that vanadium flow batteries have a story to tell and certainly, we hope they can get a share of that program.
“Our approach as a company is to acknowledge that the technology has been around and the future is battery storage but there are major hurdles in that the amount of vanadium you will need to support this is massive.
“If you look at estimates of something like 10 GW by 2027, if vanadium flow batteries get 10% of that market, the amount of vanadium that is required is more than 50% of what we produced globally last year.