H2 Inc, a South Korean based manufacturer of vanadium flow battery energy storage systems, has recently completed a Series B financing of $18 million. The company stated last week that funds will be in place by the end of 2022. Of the $44 million raised by the company since the launch of its first vanadium flow battery (VRFB) product line in 2013, $32 million has been acquired in the past two years. The latest round of investors includes vanadium flow batteries with a lower decay rate than lithium-ion batteries, making them a good technology to compete with lithium-ion batteries in medium time energy storage (4-8 hours) and a potential solution for future long-term energy storage (8-24 hours or longer) needs. But so far, the commercialization of this technology has been hindered by many factors, the most obvious of which are higher initial installation costs than lithium-ion, and the supply chain has not yet reached the production capacity required for large-scale projects (outside of China).

In the past two years, Vanadium Flow Company has announced an increase in project scale. In 2022, Infinity Energy Systems received several major orders, and CellCube, headquartered in Austria, reached a five-year agreement for the construction of a 1GWh production line in South Africa, as well as launching a 400MW project in Dalian, China in the first half of this year.

Infinity signs a memorandum of understanding with Dawsonggroup, a British commercial leasing company

One way to reduce initial installation costs is to lease vanadium flow battery products instead of purchasing them directly. The partnership announced on January 16th between flow battery manufacturer Infinity Energy Systems and commercial leasing company Dawsonggroup PLC will seek to achieve this goal. Both parties have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in order to reach a clearer agreement. Dawson Group Power Solutions Limited will exclusively purchase battery storage products from Ininity and become its exclusive leasing partner in the UK market.

The two companies are expected to sell over 50MWh in the next two years. As part of the agreement, Dawson Group has purchased 220kWh Infinity VS3 batteries, which will be installed at its headquarters in Milton Keynes, UK this year. This battery system will be used as a demonstration project for Dawson Group enterprises, for customers to watch Ininity's vanadium flow battery products.

Leasing vanadium electrolyte was a model previously used by Avalon Battery, which began exploring a wider range of leasing targets after merging with redT to become Infinity Energy Systems. Vanadium producers like Largo Resource in Canada also proposed this leasing business model after acquiring Vionx Vanadium Battery Company in the United States in 2021.

German New Vanadium Electrolyte Factory Approved

AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group, a producer of specialty metals and minerals, announced the construction of a vanadium electrolyte factory in Nuremberg, Germany. The management committee approved the plan to build the factory at its subsidiary AMG Titanium last week (January 9th), with a target annual production capacity of 6000 cubic meters of vanadium electrolyte. The basic engineering of the factory was completed in November 2022 and production is expected to begin by the end of 2023.

Although not explicitly stated, the announcement indicates that the factory may serve AMG Liva, the downstream energy storage department of AMG, which has recently launched a hybrid energy storage system product that combines lithium-ion and vanadium flow battery technology. The company sold its first system to Wipotec, a global intelligent weighing and testing technology supplier headquartered in Germany, in December 2022.

AMG stated that the expansion of the factory is an important strategic investment that will provide industrial customers with high energy efficiency and carbon dioxide reduction. AMG Titanium has outstanding technical expertise in producing highly purified vanadium products. Most of the world's vanadium supply comes from slag, which is a byproduct of smelting ores and metals.

CellCube states that its vanadium flow battery has a 45-75% lower environmental impact than lithium-ion batteries

CellCube (officially known as Enerox), a vanadium flow battery company headquartered in Austria, has released a white paper comparing the environmental impact of vanadium flow battery technology with other existing technologies in the industry. The white paper conducted a full lifecycle assessment from cradle to gate, analyzing the environmental impact of vanadium flow batteries from raw material extraction to customer deployment, as well as the 20-year service life of a four hour system with one cycle per day. These data were compared with research on lithium-ion and vanadium batteries in 2018 (Weber et al., 2018, Life Cycle Assessment of Vanadium Oxidation-reduction Flow Batteries).

Analysis indicates that the global warming potential (GWP) of CellCube's vanadium flow battery is 32.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, which is 15% lower than the vanadium battery in the 2018 research results and 45% lower than the lithium-ion battery. This is in the absence of recycled materials for reuse. As the materials are recycled and reused into the product, the GWP value of vanadium batteries can be about 75% lower than that of lithium-ion batteries.

更多阅读：
西藏配储要求容量不低于20%/4h，利好新型长时储能技术
液流电池公司Stryten和CMBlu进军美国市场
Invinity液流电池公司挺进东亚市场，两月内拿下3项订单
中南大学液流电池电堆解决方案亮相第二届中国国际新型储能技术及工程应用大会

全钒液流储能进入GWh时代！