PP is closed ... Hmmm - Wondering what our next VRB news reease will feature ???
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"It’s taken 40 years for lithium-ion battery technology to evolve into its current state, powering everything from the smallest electronic devices to Tesla’s 100MW battery farm in southern Australia. But utility-scale Li-ion batteries are rare. 99% of grid storage today is pumped hydro, a solution that will always be limited by geographical and environmental constraints. For utility-scale chemical batteries to take off they need a new technology, says Jim Conca, and that technology is the Vanadium Flow Battery. He explains how the V-flow battery outcompetes Li-ion, and any other solid battery, for utility-scale applications. They’re safer, more scalable, longer-lasting, and there’s much more Vanadium than Lithium in the Earth’s crust. But commercialisation suffers from the high cost of Vanadium extraction. So researchers are working on how to store more electricity through improved chemistry, and improved cell and stack designs. And, of course, lowering the cost of that Vanadium extraction. Conca plots a pathway to making V-flow batteries less than half the cost of Li-ion per kWh."