An official opening took place this morning for the new vanadium flow battery electrolyte factory in Western Australia build by Australian Vanadium (AVL).

Australian Vanadium has secured a site and progressed the design and development of a flow battery electrolyte facility in Western Australia.

Japanese petroleum firm Idemitsu has invested in a vanadium mining, processing and electrolyte production project in Australia, while two other major vanadium projects have progressed.

Vanadium flow batteries are considered a leading light of the push towards technologies that can meet the need for long-duration energy storage. Not least of all by the companies that mine the metal from the ground. Andy Colthorpe learns how two primary vanadium producers increasingly view flow batteries as an exciting opportunity in the energy transition space.

US Vanadium, which counts high purity electrolyte for flow batteries among its range of vanadium products, has said it will expand its annual electrolyte production capacity to 2.25 million litres a year in response to demand. 

With a view to creating a mass market design for vanadium flow batteries, Australia’s Protean Energy will deploy a 4MWh battery energy storage project in South Korea that will be researched over eight years of operation.