The past few days have seen various announcements across the lithium-ion battery production value chain in Europe, Australia and the US.

Energy storage systems based around vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) are being developed for residential use in Australia by partners Australian Vanadium (AVL) and Gui Zhou Collect Energy Century Science and Technology.

Lithium has been added to a list of raw materials deemed essential to secure supply in Europe, for the first time ever, by the European Commission.

An agreement to support the manufacture and sale of vanadium flow batteries has been struck between Australian Vanadium and Enerox, which makes and markets systems under its CellCube brand.

Invinity Energy Systems, supplier of a grid-scale vanadium flow battery being installed at a site in the UK will rent the battery’s electrolyte out to the investor developing the project, thereby helping lower the upfront cost of getting the system deployed.

The Energy Superhub Oxford in England is a sophisticated project to create a decarbonised urban environment using a mix of advanced technologies. Jorn Reniers, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science gives us insights into his role, which is to make a digital twin of the Superhub, including its 50MW hybrid battery storage system.

The new CEO at VRB Energy, a maker of vanadium redox flow battery energy storage devices, claims that ongoing improvements to its technologies will allow it to outcompete lithium-ion energy storage in the coming years.

There’s a race to develop new technologies – and adapt existing ones – that can either be complementary to lithium batteries, or even compete with them. Representatives from three technology providers offer up some case studies, data, insights and opinions on where they think the market could go.

Germany company Voltstorage, claiming to be the only developer and maker of home solar energy storage systems using vanadium flow batteries, raised €6 million (US$7.1 million) in July.

Long duration energy storage is “essential” to help accelerate renewable deployment, according to the US Department of Energy’s Dr Imre Gyuk, who moderates this panel discussion with Matt Harper from flow battery provider Invinity Energy Systems and Russ Weed from gravity energy storage company ARES.