Construction has begun on a facility which will make electrolyte for vanadium flow batteries in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, by vertically-integrated vanadium producer Bushveld Minerals.

Using vanadium for battery electrolytes could be twice as profitable as supplying it for steel production, which is currently the major industrial use for the abundant metal, vanadium producer Largo Resources has said.

Largo Resources, a vertically-integrated vanadium supplier launching its own line of redox flow batteries for energy storage, is establishing 1.4GWh of annual battery stack manufacturing capacity.

Large-scale Vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) technology looks set to be deployed at a 100MW solar energy power plant in China, two years after a smaller-scale demonstration project was commissioned in the region.

Vertically-integrated vanadium mining, production and supply company Largo Resources wants to launch its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) onto the market within a year-and-a-half, predicting that the technology will play a “critical role” in addressing significant demand for energy storage.

A solar-plus-storage microgrid being deployed at an alloys mine in South Africa will feature a vanadium flow battery energy storage system, using locally sourced vanadium electrolyte.

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.

While we do acknowledge the challenges faced as a result of COVID-19, we cannot afford to lose sight of the opportunity renewable energy and energy storage solutions, such as the Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) present, argues Paul Vollant, Director of Sales and Trading at vanadium supplier Largo Resources.

Accelerator selected the maker of an organic flow battery among a group of “startups with the potential to dramatically alter the future global energy landscape”.

There exist opportunities for flow batteries to target areas of the market lithium-ion “can’t provide in an economically justifiable way,” the chief commercial officer of Invinity Energy Systems has said.