1.1. The vanadium battery industry has entered the stage of industrialization and promotion
The development trend of the global vanadium battery industry can be summarized as follows: foreign countries take the lead, while domestic countries catch up. 1) Overseas: In 1984, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) first proposed the principle of all vanadium flow batteries, and vanadium battery technology was officially introduced; In 1997, UNSW sold vanadium battery patents to Pinnacle, who granted the relevant patents to Vantech (predecessor of VRB) in 1999. With this technological advantage, VRB quickly grew into the world's largest vanadium battery company at that time; In 2008, due to the impact of the economic crisis, VRB ceased all of its business and the development of overseas vanadium batteries came to a standstill. 2) Domestic: Basic research on vanadium batteries in China began in the late 1980s. In 1995, the China Academy of Engineering Physics began the development of vanadium batteries and successfully produced 500W and 1KW prototypes in the same year; In 2009, China General Energy acquired VRB and obtained its core technology and R&D team, officially entering the fast lane of vanadium battery development in China; In 2022, China's first national vanadium energy storage demonstration project, the Dalian Rongke 100MW/400MWh project, was officially put into commercial operation, marking the transformation of China's vanadium battery industry from a large-scale commercial demonstration stage to an industrial promotion stage.
1.2. With increasingly mature technology, domestic vanadium battery projects are accelerating their landing
The technology is becoming increasingly mature and the industrial chain is gradually becoming complete, accelerating the landing of domestic vanadium battery energy storage projects. At present, the core technology of vanadium batteries is in the hands of a few countries such as China, Japan, and Australia. China's liquid flow battery technology ranks among the top in the world, with representative enterprises including Shanghai Electric, Dalian Rongke, Beijing Puneng, Wuhan Nanrui (a subsidiary of State Grid Yingda), etc. Leading vanadium battery enterprises abroad mainly include Sumitomo Electric of Japan, UniEnergy Technologies of the United States, Voltstorage of Germany, and Inventy of the United Kingdom. With the gradual maturity of technology development in various links of the industrial chain, vanadium battery energy storage projects in China are accelerating their landing.
Vanadium batteries are mainly composed of electrolyte, electrodes, proton exchange membranes, bipolar plates, and current collectors, and are divided into positive and negative "half units" through proton exchange membranes. In positive and negative half cells, vanadium ions exist in the+4/+5 valence state and+2/+3 valence state respectively in the positive and negative electrolyte. During charging and discharging, the electrolyte flows through the positive and negative chambers through an external storage tank through a push pump, and undergoes oxidation-reduction reactions on the electrode surface, generating current.
The inherent safety, high flexibility in capacity expansion, and decreasing marginal cost with the duration of energy storage of vanadium batteries determine that they can be fully positioned in the high-capacity and long-term energy storage market. The current mainstream energy storage solutions in China include pumped storage, compressed air storage, and electrochemical energy storage. Electrochemical energy storage is specifically divided into lithium batteries, flow batteries, sodium batteries, and lead-acid batteries. Compared with lithium batteries, vanadium batteries have outstanding safety performance, easy expansion, and no resource bottleneck. Our judgment differs from the market's: the market generally believes that vanadium batteries have energy density