Our Research

The Current State of the Battery Industry

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The battery market in 2020 was valued at over $55 billion. This is expected to grow at a compound growth rate of more than 13% per year to support the 2/3rds of global power generation capacity added each year which will come from wind and solar. While most of the current battery storage market is dominated by lithium- ion and lead- acid batteries, these batteries are specialised for short-duration storage (approximately 4 hours). They are not feasible for long duration storage (>4 hours) and experience significant capacity degradation over a number of cycles. Because of the well-documented intermittency of renewable energy sources, there is increasing demand for long-duration energy storage solutions such as the vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB).​

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Why Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries?

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The last 10 years have been a watershed moment for the battery industry, with advancements arriving thick and fast and quickly replacing older outdated technologies. However, many of these popular batteries, such as the lithium-ion battery, present an array of issues that limit their usefulness. A few examples of these issues include significant safety concerns, capacity loss over a relatively short number of cycles, and environmental concerns regarding waste.​

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Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries may present the solution to several of these concerns. VRFB's:

• Last for up to 30 years with no significant capacity loss

• Are an extremely safe energy storage solution

• Contain a vanadium electrolyte that can be used and reused with a near-infinite life, resulting in a small environmental footprint

• Can overrate to 200% power

• Can be depleted to 0% charge, and fully charged to 100%

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What is limiting the adoption of VRFBs?

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Given the described advantages of VRFBs it may seem that adopting this technology is inevitable. However, uptake of the technology has remained a slow process due to a number of limitations and inefficiencies identified with the battery. These include:

• The high initial capital requirement of the battery is predominantly a result of the high price of vanadium

• Poor energy-to-volume ratio compared to standard storage batteries

• Poor round trip efficiency

• The sensitivity of the battery to the climatic conditions

• The lack of large-scale proof of concept batteries that are required to demonstrate new potential use cases

• Policy and regulatory boundaries

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How will BESS address these concerns?

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BESS will endeavour to address these concerns through its staged research and development program with the support of its key partners...

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