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Vanadium offers unique characteristics as a battery material, as it can shed electrons without changing its ionic state, ensuring great cycle stability. The South Korean company Standard Energy has developed a battery with only 1% degradation after 20,000 cycles. The company has already carried out 10 MWh of projects in its domestic market and now intends to expand internationally.
The South Korean company Standard Energy has developed a battery with only 1% degradation after 20,000 test cycles. The company uses vanadium ion batteries (ViB).
He presented the ViB at the recent Smart Energy Week in Tokyo. The companys project and marketing director Gyucheol Lee said the company was developing vanadium-redox flow batteries 10 years ago. However, this type of battery was never able to exceed 80% round trip efficiency, as electric pumps were needed to move large amounts of electrolyte from one tank to another.
The company then focused on using vanadium in the same way as lithium: as an ion battery. Vanadium is an interesting candidate for cathode materials, Lee explains, because it has many dispensable electrons in its atoms and has four ionic states. The multiple ionic states allow their electrons to move without the material changing from metallic to ionic state between charging and discharging. According to Lee, the change from metallic to ionic state favors the growth of the cathode-electrolyte interface, the main degradation mode of lithium-ion batteries.
Since metal dissolution does not occur in vanadium ion batteries, the company has tested its batteries in the laboratory. By cycling them at a grueling C-rate of 3, with a depth of discharge of 100% for 20,000 cycles, the company saw only 1% degradation.
In addition to this superior lifespan, the batteries are also safer than their lithium-ion competitors. Standard Energy can use aqueous electrolytes in its batteries, making them virtually non-combustible. Based on test data, the current product also offers high power with a C-rate of 5, with a round-trip efficiency of 96%.
High C rates are only sometimes sought. Power and energy supply requirements vary depending on applications. Lee stated that vanadium-ion batteries do not require a change in cathode design, as is the case with lithium-ion batteries, referring to the other use cases for LFP, NMC and NCA batteries. Vanadium ion batteries could be designed to provide 10-hour long storage for PV and wind systems or 5C for UPS and frequency regulation without needing to change their cathode design.
However, there are some drawbacks. Lee says vanadium is much heavier than lithium, making its batteries only usable in stationary applications, such as large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) and residential storage systems.
Another problem is the cost. Vanadium is currently very expensive. The price has increased 20-fold since the company began developing the product. With nascent production capacity and high resource prices, the batteries cost approximately twice as much as competitively priced lithium-ion batteries.
Lee expects the product to be priced more competitively when the gigafactory the company plans to build comes online in two years. He also believes vanadium prices could decline again. Vanadium is not in short supply, with large quantities available in Australia, China and South Korea. New mining projects could drive down the price of raw materials.
The company started selling its products in South Korea in December 2023. So far, it has sold 10 MWh of batteries. Standard Energy sells complete systems and assists project developers and engineering contractors with system installation and design. The company is now awaiting certification for use in Japanese networks. European certification could take another two to five years, but is already in the planning phase, Lee said. |
