As we increase the percentage of electricity generated from renewables, one of the concerns is intermittency and the need to meet peak demand that can – and often does – occur at the same time renewables are not generating (or not generating as much). In fact, this fear is the basis for claims (including from people in prominent positions) fuelling the fear that there will not be power when it is needed.
What does this have to do with renewables?
We can move the discussion about renewably-generated electricity (and concerns about intermittent nature of some of those sources) to one about beyond batteries and the need for the component metals and ‘end of life’ questions and start talking about energy storage.
A promising technology, vanadium flow batteries (often called v-flow batteries), lasts for more than 20 years, discharges 100 percent of its stored energy and can be used seemingly over an unlimited number of cycles. They require vanadium, which can exist as several ions of different charges in solution. V-flow batteries use the multiple valence states of vanadium to store and release charges.
Jubilee Metals Group plc (LON:JLP) is a diversified metals recovery company, focusing on the reprocessing of historical mine waste and surface materials. Their projects in South Africa include the Hernic Platinum Project, DCM Platinum & Chrome Project and the PlatCro Platinum Project.
