Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The trend continues for periodic table investments, this time in vanadium.

Recently, vanadium batteries are becoming the "rookie" in the electrochemical energy storage family.

Why do you say that? First, the Energy Bureau mentioned in relevant documents issued in June that medium and large electrochemical energy storage power stations should not use ternary lithium batteries, sodium-sulfur batteries, or echelon batteries.

As soon as the document comes out, the heat of vanadium battery rises, followed by the integration news that constantly appears in the industry, such as Dalian Rongke holding hands with Panzhihua Vanadium and Titanium, General Energy holding hands with Hegang shares, Weili holding hands with China Nuclear Titanium Dioxide... Vanadium battery manufacturers and vanadium raw material companies have taken this opportunity to deeply bind upstream and downstream, preparing for future track dividends.

Then, on November 3, another heavy news was released: China's largest all-vanadium flow battery energy storage system officially opened. Affected by this, November 4 noon, vanadium battery plate index rose 3.69%. Vanadium and titanium shares rose 9.96%, and stocks with energy storage concepts such as CNTI also rose to varying degrees. Among them, vanadium resources leading enterprise vanadium titanium shares from the beginning of the year, has nearly doubled.

For the rise of vanadium battery track, Guotai Junan optimistically judged in the recent report that China's all-vanadium flow battery has been on the eve of large-scale industrialization. It is also predicted that vanadium batteries will lead lithium batteries in the future and dominate the (large-scale) energy storage field. It is expected that the penetration rate of vanadium batteries in the energy storage field will reach 15%-20% in 2025.

01. On the eve of the outbreak, starting from the second half of this year, the fund focusing effect of vanadium battery track slowly appeared, and listed companies smelling dividends acted one after another.

Longbai Group revealed the latest progress in vanadium battery layout on the investor interaction platform."The battery materials research institute of the company is currently conducting research and development of vanadium battery technology and storing relevant technologies. In the future, the company will actively promote the industrialization of vanadium battery materials according to the market conditions of vanadium batteries. "

Hyde shares also invested 1 billion yuan with Yongtai Energy, another listed company under Yongtai Group, a major shareholder, to establish Detai Energy Storage Company, focusing on the layout of the whole industrial chain of all-vanadium flow battery energy storage.

Shortly after its establishment, Detai Energy Storage frequently released investment layout trends. First, in the upstream of the industrial chain, acquire 65% equity of Huihong Mining Development Co., Ltd. of Dunhuang City, Vanadium Resources Company; then in the downstream application scenario, Detai Energy Storage will also invest in the auxiliary frequency modulation project of 2× 1000MW unit full vanadium flow battery energy storage of Zhangjiagang Shazhou Electric Power Co., Ltd.

The pursuit of the secondary market also transmits the heat to the primary market. Kuang Zhenren, Asia-Pacific sales manager of Beijing Puneng Century Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with the media that after the heat rose,"not only in product sales, but also in investment, investors kept discussing the possibility of financing." "

Yang Linlin, vice chairman of Shanghai Electric Energy Storage Technology Co., said in September that the company had completed 42.5 million yuan of pre-A financing last year and would start Series A financing this year. Shanghai Electric Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd. is a company focusing on vanadium battery business.

According to the data of China Chemical and Physical Power Industry Association, with the gradual opening of the scale process of vanadium battery in the field of energy storage, according to the permeability of 10% in electrochemical energy storage, by 2025, the installed capacity of vanadium flow battery can reach about 4GW, with an average annual compound growth rate of more than 120%.

02, born nearly 50 years, has been in the marginal role Although the heat of vanadium batteries has just begun, but the concept has a long history.

As early as 1974, with funding from NASA, Thaller proposed a new type of electrochemical energy storage technology-flow battery, which is the predecessor of vanadium battery.

Ten years later, it was Professor Marria Kazacos of the University of New South Wales in Australia who really succeeded in developing vanadium batteries. In 1986, Professor Marria Kazacos patented the vanadium flow battery system, marking the real birth of vanadium batteries. Later, the patent was transferred to the University of New South Wales.

After filing a patent, the attractive prospect naturally attracted many companies. In 1997, UNSW resold the patent rights to Pinnacle Mining Company of Australia, and UNSW stopped research on vanadium batteries of V2+/V3 + and V4+/V5 + type in sulfuric acid system. However, shortly after obtaining the patent, Pinnacle discovered that the research of vanadium battery was far from simple and could not make the product itself, so in 1999, the patent licenses in Japan and Africa were granted to Sumitomo Company of Japan and Vanteck Company of Canada respectively.

Sumitomo Denko and Kansai Electric Power have been working together since 1985 to develop vanadium flow batteries. Around 2001, Sumitomo Denko built a number of all-vanadium flow battery energy storage systems and used them for office buildings, factory power supply, and supporting facilities for wind farms and golf course photovoltaic arrays.

At the same time, Vanteck acquired a 59% stake in Pinnacle, acquired the core patent rights, and changed its name to Vanadium Battery Energy Storage System Technology Development Company (VRB Power System) the following year. The company acquired Reliable Power Company in 2004, thus controlling the all-vanadium flow battery market in North America and becoming the world's largest all-vanadium flow battery company at that time.

However, because VRB went public with the concept of vanadium battery, and there was no mature product, coupled with the financial crisis in 2008, it caused the capital chain to break and was forced to go bankrupt and liquidate.

The bankruptcy of VRB also allowed another vanadium battery research and development company to see an opportunity. The predecessor of Puneng is Puneng Technology, which was incorporated in New York by Yu Zhenhua in 2006. At the end of 2007, in order to maximize financing, Yu Zhenhua and partner Wu Zhengyu separated the company's vanadium battery team and zinc-bromine battery team for independent financing. Among them, Yu Zhenhua's vanadium battery team established the current general energy company.

Shortly after its establishment, Puneng obtained financing from Defengjie and Detong. However, Puneng was still a long way from commercialization at this time, and it was in urgent need of core technology breakthrough. The sale of VRB was tantamount to a rare opportunity. Therefore, Puneng submitted the acquisition application at the first time and successfully bid for 2.15 million US dollars, thus mastering the core patent right of vanadium battery.

After that, whether it is research institutes or enterprises, domestic vanadium battery research and development has also been continuously appearing vanadium battery news. For example, on June 11,2020, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it had successfully developed a new generation of low-cost, high-power all-vanadium flow battery stack; in 2015, Panzhihua Iron and Vanadium announced that Panzhihua Vanadium Battery had been mass-produced... However, in the past ten years, although vanadium batteries have developed in small steps, they have not ushered in explosive opportunities and have always been in a marginal role.

03. From supporting role to supporting the popularity of vanadium battery concept recently, it originated from the Twenty-five Key Requirements for Preventing Electric Power Production Accidents (2022 Edition)(Draft for Comments) issued by the National Energy Administration on June 29. It is suggested that ternary lithium battery and sodium-sulfur battery should not be selected for medium and large electrochemical energy storage power station, and power battery with graded utilization should not be selected.

As we all know, the construction of large-scale chemical battery storage plant, the primary consideration is safety. Compared with other types of batteries, the electrolyte ions of all-vanadium flow battery exist in aqueous solution, and thermal runaway, combustion and explosion will not occur. Some people have summarized the characteristics of vanadium battery in one sentence: safer than it, it can't be installed, safer than it can be installed. The policy end further raises the requirements for energy storage safety, which just gives vanadium batteries a chance to stand out.

In addition to safety, vanadium batteries also have a characteristic: durability. But this feature is also one of the reasons why it has been unknown in the past. Compared with lithium batteries, vanadium batteries have a long life, but their volume is also large. Vanadium batteries with the same capacity are about 5 times the volume of lithium ion batteries. Therefore, vanadium batteries have always been unknown in the past ten years of rapid development of consumer electronics.

But now, due to the booming development of photovoltaic power generation and wind power, the demand for large-scale energy storage is getting stronger and stronger. When large-scale energy storage is carried out, the requirements for life are extremely high, and the large volume is within the tolerance range. After all, the energy storage power station is not something that needs to be moved from time to time. The performance of vanadium battery coincides with the energy storage scenario.

From a more macro point of view, China is currently the world's largest vanadium reserves, which is the unique advantage of domestic development of vanadium batteries.

In comparison, in 2021, the global reserves of domestic lithium resources accounted for only 7%, and the output accounted for less than 15%. The lithium battery industry chain relies heavily on overseas mineral resources.

According to some data, by 2021, the domestic vanadium output exceeds 50,000 tons, and the corresponding vanadium pentoxide output is more than 110,000 tons.

Of course, vanadium battery is not perfect, one of the roadblocks is that the initial cost is very high, but also rely on "scale" to solve, but now there is still a certain amplification risk in the process of vanadium battery industrialization, the technical path is not mature, and there is still a certain distance from the long-term actual large-scale use, to scale still depends on time, and still have to wait.

References:

Start-up State "Universal Energy: Only East Wind"

Vanadium battery energy storage, true trend or false tuyere?

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Tech Diagonal (ID: TechDJX2022), Text: Mia, Editor: Feifei

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