The world is waking up to the benefits of vanadium flow batteries. Japan and China are leading the adoption of this compelling technology for energy storage, and new-uses include hot climates and AI data centres that demand solutions capable of standing the test of time.

This rapidly growing global trend is now making its way to Australia, where these big, long-life, heat-resistant, environmentally friendly batteries are set to be a crucial part of the  solutions needed to achieve energy security, industrial electrification and the global roll out of AI data centres.

ASX-listed Australian Vanadium (AVL) is offering investors leveraged exposure to what many observers say will be the next critical mineral to enjoy a sustained price run.

Australian Vanadium offers a portfolio of energy opportunities, including energy-storage solutions, set to play a role in AI data centre scale up.

With a market cap of $60 million, Perth-based AVL is a vertically-integrated vanadium company with operations spanning vanadium mine development, electrolyte processing, and building, owning and operating utility-scale vanadium flow batteries.

But it is AVL’s strategy to become a major energy storage business that is driving the current surge of interest in the company and has led to the recent jump in its share price.

AVL continues to grow its pipeline of energy-storage project opportunities, working with proven battery partners such as Sumitomo Electric. Projects include AVL’s recent announcement of an MoU with Alcoa to assess the use of large vanadium flow batteries to complement Alcoa’s Western Australian operations and AVL’s recent submission to build, own and operate a big vanadium flow battery in Kalgoorlie.

A key strength AVL can bring to its growing pipeline of energy-storage project opportunities is its innovative process for producing vanadium electrolyte, which is the all-important ingredient in the battery.

AVL’s relocatable electrolyte technology, V-NOMAD™, allows it to produce the vanadium electrolyte on site, eliminating what would otherwise be the high cost of transporting big volumes of electrolyte to the large vanadium batteries expected to be installed across the country and internationally.

Watch AVL’s presentation at Diggers & Dealers here

AVL managing director Graham Arvidson told the recent Diggers & Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie that the company’s three divisions were all positioned for catalysts this financial year.    

Mr Arvidson said the energy “signal” coming from major overseas markets endorsed AVL’s strategy.  

While China continues to lead the world with many gigawatt-hours of vanadium flow battery already operating and many more in construction, large scale vanadium flow battery projects are now accelerating around the world. These include large projects in Japan, Europe, India, America and Australia.

Mr Arvidson said that in Australia, it was crucial that new energy storage technologies came into the mix alongside lithium-ion, otherwise the country would replace its reliance on petro-states for liquid fuels with a reliance on lithium-ion battery supply chains for energy storage.

“Vanadium flow batteries are literally the only storage technology that’s fully commercialised for decades at gigawatt-hour scale, that is ready to scale up and can actually be delivered competitively,” he said.

Mr Arvidson said the main factor supporting vanadium flow batteries was that they do not degrade.

“That just simply leads to very good life cycle economics,” he said. “Big batteries are being deployed all around the world and this is the year that they go international at scale”.