VRFB News Industry giants are eyeing vanadium batteries, and energy storage "rookies" usher in the dawn of commercialization
2023-01-26 06:37 HKT
https://min.news/en/economy/18dfd588ed547e8989ba69c4186a6346.html
Excerpt
Metal vanadium, with abundant valence states, is an ideal element for composing flow battery electrolytes. In addition to the steel market, vanadium is activating another incremental market - all-vanadium flow battery, a flow battery technology route closest to commercialization, is becoming a "fashionable rookie" in the electrochemical energy storage family.
Currently, leading vanadium products are deeply bound with downstream battery manufacturers.
On October 13, CNNC Titanium Dioxide (002145.SZ) announced that it would invest 510 million yuan to establish a subsidiary of Huili Vanadium Energy. In July this year, the company also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Welead on the entire industry chain of all-vanadium redox flow batteries to carry out comprehensive and in-depth cooperation.
On October 11, Vanadium and Titanium Co., Ltd. (000629.SZ), the world leader in vanadium products, announced that it has established a joint venture with Dalian Rongke, a downstream flow battery manufacturer. The two parties agreed to build an electrolyte production line in Panzhihua City in 2022, with a production capacity of 2,000 cubic meters per year; from 2023 to 2024, according to the growth of the vanadium battery energy storage market, negotiate to invest in the construction of a production capacity of 60,000 cubic meters per year of vanadium electrolyte….
However, the current vanadium market is incompatible with the vanadium battery industry, which is also the weakest or most restrictive link in the industry chain that is difficult to effectively support the start and development of the industry. Therefore, the fundamental solution is to expand the source of vanadium, and finally form a large market that accommodates vanadium battery energy storage….
"At present, the biggest disadvantage of all-vanadium redox flow batteries is that the initial installation cost is high, but the industry is still in the early stage of development, and there is still a large space for cost reduction in the later stage." Wang Zhaohua, a researcher at Everbright Securities, believes that the cost reduction space is mainly reflected in the electrolyte and stack. For these two parts with high cost, the cost of electrolyte can be reduced by improving efficiency and leasing, and the cost of stack can be reduced through design optimization and self-controllable domestic materials.
The emergence of flow batteries in electrochemical energy storage also means that, according to different application scenarios, they can form a complementary relationship with other mature technical routes such as lithium batteries and sodium batteries.
From the perspective of market segments, Huang Mianyan believes that in general, all-vanadium redox flow batteries are very suitable for two markets, one is the grid connection of large-scale renewable energy; the other is the peak shaving power station on the grid side. In his view, "all-vanadium redox flow battery is a technology suitable for long-term energy storage as a peak shaving power station in the future. At the same time, flow battery is also very suitable for use as a supplement to pumped storage, and we have always defined the future market in this way. ."
