Bushveld Energy is the battery development arm of Bushveld Minerals (LON:BMN). Its focus is on developing and promoting the role of vanadium in the growing global energy storage market, through the use of Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries.
Chief executive Mikhail Nikomarov tells Proactive: “Vanadium Redox Flow batteries are a very different technology from what we usually have in energy storage or in large-scale energy storage. Right now it's mainly Lead-acid or Lithium-ion. Both of those are solid state technologies and so they don't last very long - the more you use them the quicker they degrade and while they're great for power applications they're not great for energy applications.”
“Flow batteries are great because if you want more hours you just add more liquid, more electrolytes. So you've got that flexibility and obviously it becomes incrementally cheaper to make it bigger in that sense. The other benefit is that it lasts for twenty years - you just can't get that from other technologies,” Nikomarov adds.
Bushveld Minerals boss Fortune Mojapelo explains: “We have a unique position in the supply side with a huge resource base - low cost, high quality vanadium in South Africa, which positions us better than anybody else in the world in our view.”