Cleantech Canada recently looked at the potential for vanadium battery technology to eventually take a share of the energy storage market.

As quoted in the publication:

Tucked into the fourth row of the periodic table, slotted in among an unassuming mass of transition metals, vanadium is another high-potential element with its own unique properties, and an equally encouraging value proposition.

“[It’s] the only metal on the planet which can act in its own right—just as one metal—as a complete battery,” said Tim Hennessy, president and COO of vanadium battery maker, Imergy Power Systems Inc. “Every other battery you need two elements… to create this difference which allows a battery to exist.”

Unlike lithium-ion devices, vanadium-based batteries will never power your cell phone or laptop—and you’re unlikely to ever find one tucked under the hood of your electric car. While mobile applications aren’t their niche, for large-scale storage projects and microgrids—both fast-growing segments of the renewable energy and utility markets—vanadium batteries offer a range of appealing features that could see the technology chip away at lithium’s dominance of the storage space.

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