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The most popular investment sector in the past two years is new energy, attracting countless heroes to bow their backs. As a trillion-level track with long slopes and thick snow, new energy sector includes everything, which is always speculated and new. Among them are the super giants of photovoltaic and lithium batteries, as well as emerging industry companies such as solid-state battery , sodium battery , and lithium batteries. Each sub-industry has its own characteristics.
Today, let’s talk about vanadium battery .
1. From Baicaoyuan to Sanwei Bookstore
Vanadium (chemical symbol V) comes from the name of a beautiful goddess in Nordic mythology "Vanadis" (translated as Vanadis). This is because vanadium is rich in compounds, and most of them have beautiful and colorful colors . Vanadium has many reserves on the earth, and its reserves are even higher than copper, tin, zinc, and nickel. However, since vanadium element is too scattered and there is not even a decent mineral, vanadium really has no sense of existence.
In industrial production, vanadium is actually quite widely used. Vanadium is widely used in steel industry and chemical industry . Adding a little bit of vanadium to the steel can make vanadium steel , which can greatly increase the elasticity and strength of the steel, with excellent wear and explosion resistance, and it is both resistant to high temperatures and strange colds. No wonder traces of vanadium can be seen everywhere in automobiles, aviation, railways, electronic technology, national defense industry and other departments. In addition, vanadium oxide ( vanadium pentoxide ) has become one of the best catalysts in the chemical industry, known as "chemical bread", and a catalyst for many important chemical reactions. Although
is widely used, the amount of vanadium is not large . Generally, only 10 grams of vanadium is added to a ton of steel. Although my country's steel production in 2021 is as huge as 1 billion tons, the amount of vanadium used in the vanadium is only about 20,000 tons of vanadium pentoxide, which can be said to be a very niche element.
Perhaps vanadium will remain silent in ordinary terms, but in the 1980s, vanadium batteries were born.
2. Security is its biggest feature.
The so-called vanadium battery is called all vanadium redox flow battery. It is one of the types of flow batteries, such as zinc-based flow batteries, iron-chromium flow batteries, etc. The biggest use of vanadium batteries is the field of energy storage , and it does not involve power batteries for the time being.
With the emergence of renewable energy such as photovoltaics and wind power, the peak and valley differences of electricity are getting bigger and bigger, and the volatility in the power supply and transmission and distribution fields has greatly increased, and the impact of the power grid is also increasing day by day. Therefore, the importance of large energy storage power stations on the transmission side has received more and more attention. The figure below shows the changes in the peak and valley electricity price of in one day.
Source: State Grid
Security is the biggest feature of vanadium batteries.
The essence of a battery is to convert chemical energy into electrical energy, and ordinary batteries have certain dangers. However, the chemical properties of vanadium element itself are not very active, and the all-vanadium liquid flow battery electrolyte ions are present in aqueous solution , and there will be no thermal runaway, combustion and explosion; at the same time, the stack and electrolyte are independent, which can increase the power of the stack and the electrolyte to increase the power storage capacity, and can be expanded to a 100-megawatt-level energy storage power station. The figure below shows the charging and discharging principle of vanadium batteries.
Source: International Renewable Energy Agency
The lithium batteries we are familiar with are highly dangerous. Although the ever-elevated manufacturing and packaging technology can reduce risks, the risks of lithium batteries explosion and combustion still exist. Consumer electronics and power batteries are fine, but once a large energy storage device explodes, the consequences are catastrophic.
In view of this, in June 2022, the National Energy Administration of issued the "Twenty-five key requirements for preventing power production accidents (2022 edition) (Draft for soliciting opinions)", requiring medium and large electrochemical energy storage power stations , and ternary lithium batteries, sodium sulfur batteries, and should not be used, and cascade power batteries should not be used. In other words, major energy storage devices disable ternary lithium batteries, sodium batteries and recycling batteries. In this case, vanadium batteries have gained widespread favor from all walks of life for their excellent safety performance.
In addition to security, vanadium battery modular management is convenient for , and its power and capacity are adjustable. By connecting multiple energy storage units in parallel to the busbar, a larger-scale energy storage system can be built. Therefore, the capacity expansion is simple, and compared with lithium iron phosphate battery , there will be no additional safety risks in the case of large capacity.
In addition, vanadium battery cycle has a long lifespan . Currently, the cycle life of commercial vanadium batteries can reach more than 16,000 times, far higher than the corresponding service life of commercial phosphate , exceeding 20 years , and the reliability has also been verified by example. In addition, vanadium batteries are easy to recycle and have small charge and discharge losses.
Due to the long cycle life and high safety of vanadium batteries, vanadium batteries have obvious advantages in the cost of the entire life cycle. Vanadium batteries almost perfectly meet the requirements of medium and large energy storage scenarios. The safety and cycle life of lithium iron phosphate batteries and sodium batteries are lower than that of vanadium batteries, but the energy density is significantly higher, so they have advantages in weight and volume, and are more suitable for miniaturization scenarios. These types of batteries form a differentiated competition between . The following table shows the performance differences between several batteries.
Source: Shenwan Hongyuan Research Report
More importantly, China is a country with vanadium reserves, and vanadium reserves are the world's number one. According to the data from the US Geological Survey in 2021, my country's vanadium ore reserves account for 40% of the world's vanadium ore and 66% of the world's output. China's lithium resources are stretched and are controlled by others everywhere, but vanadium resources are indeed the world's leader and have strong self-sufficiency.
Source: State Grid
3. Vanadium batteries also need to face up to their shortcomings
For batteries, talent is far more important than hard work.
vanadium batteries have the advantages of high safety and long cycle life, but their energy density is an absolute shortcoming. Since the vanadium element is relatively large relative to molecular mass , the energy density of vanadium battery is only 12~40Wh/kg, which is lower than 200~300Wh/kg of lithium batteries, which is only 1/10 of the latter. Moreover, this gap cannot be compensated by technical means, which greatly hinders the application of vanadium batteries in consumer electronics and power batteries.
At the same time, the initial installation cost of vanadium battery is too high. Due to the imperfect industrial chain, its initial installation cost is more than twice that of lithium batteries. It will only be possible to reach a level below the lithium battery after large-scale mass production. In the current energy storage system, the investment cost of vanadium flow battery is as high as between 2.5-3.5 yuan/WH, which is far higher than the cost of 3-yuan energy storage of about 0.8 yuan/WH.
In addition, the technology of vanadium battery is not yet mature , and there is still a long way to go to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Currently, the cost of vanadium battery electrolyte accounts for 40%, and the cost of stack accounts for 35%, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in efficiency. Moreover, its core raw materials have long been relying on imported . The vanadium industry chain is long and involves many links, but the vanadium industry chain has weak supply capacity and does not have the ability to establish a flexible supply chain. All these seriously restrict the development of vanadium batteries.
4. Since it is sentiment, don’t hype
As mentioned earlier, vanadium batteries are mainly used in medium and large energy storage power stations on the transmission side. However, there is no advantage in consumer electronics, power batteries and small energy storage equipment on the consumer side. The key and fundamental purpose of vanadium battery operation is power supply, transmission and distribution, rather than the power generation ends of wind power, photovoltaics, etc. The main participants are China Power Grid and Southern Power Grid and other major central enterprises.The willingness to participate on the power station and user side is not strong and cannot be viewed from a utilitarian short-term perspective.
In addition, although the entire life cycle cost of vanadium batteries is low, this is based on the perspective of 10-15 years and above. The initial installation cost is too high, which discourages many companies and investors. Even if they receive subsidies, does not have economical and relies on the participation of the government and central enterprises. Energy storage power stations are essentially the logic of infrastructure. Once put into production and use on a large scale, it will benefit the country and the people. However, the country needs to invest in much more than one infrastructure. The country invests in several highways or develops new weapons. Energy storage power stations are probably not the most important and urgent infrastructure .
Finally, vanadium batteries still have certain amplification risks in the industrialization process , and the technical path is not yet mature. Most of the vanadium battery energy storage systems currently on-line are at the 5-10MW level. Given its high initial investment and long asset recovery period, the investment speed of vanadium batteries should follow the law of slow first and fast, and is still a certain distance from the actual large-scale use in the future, which is especially true in the capital market and the performance of listed companies.
Note: This article does not constitute any investment advice. The stock market is risky, so be cautious when entering the market. There is no harm without a transaction.
