Worth a re-read
Vanadium stocks guide: Here’s everything you need to know
June 6, 2022 |Jessica Cummins
Excerpts
It’s taken a while for investors to realise the potential of vanadium in the battery metals race, but interest is starting to pick up.
While EV production is a hot topic, stationary energy storage applications – where vanadium is needed, has industry experts particularly excited.
Stationary storage systems are big batteries often designed to store excess power from the power grid — including from renewable sources — for use during expensive peak demand periods.
BloombergNEF says energy storage applications around the world will multiply exponentially from a modest 9GW/17GWh in 2018 to 1,095Gw/2,850GWh by 2040, marking a 122-fold boom over the next two decades.
Vanadium producer CEO Fortune Mojapelo says if vanadium redox flow batteries capture just 10pc of the stationary battery market, by 2030 global production of vanadium will need to increase by as much as 50pc.
The outlook is big but while vanadium is set to become a key resource in the fast-growing battery sector as part of the renewable energy mix, most of its consumption (around 90pc) is used to strengthen steel.
Of the remainder, vanadium is used in aerospace alloys and chemical catalysts, and 1pc goes into vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs), which are regarded as a safer alternative to lithium-ion and better suited to large-scale applications.
They come at a higher upfront cost but have a far longer life compared to lithium-ion batteries.
In this guide, Stockhead explains the factors that have been driving vanadium stocks, and what will spur demand — and stock prices — into the future.