Elon Musk is famous for two things: Electric cars and reusable rockets.
His spectrum of expertise covers a great deal more fields, including patriarching multiple families simultaneously, using incendiary devices as marketing props, and of course launching road vehicles into solar orbit.
But one overlooked area of interest for Musk is energy storage.
Remember the Tesla Powerwall? It’s the domestic energy storage system which Musk once claimed was going to be an integral part of a business bigger than EVs themselves.
Now, like the Duffman, Musk may say a lot of things, but in this case, that very memorable blurb from 2019 is proving to be very much relevant today.
Tesla’s EV sales between 2022 and 2023 grew a paltry 15% — a major part of the reason for the collapse in EV maker stocks between early 2023 and today, as well as a factor in the collapse of lithium prices.
But in that same period, Tesla’s power storage revenues skyrocketed.
Why Is Nobody Talking About Power Storage?
In fact, according to CNBC: Battery deployment surged 125% to 14.7GWh in 2023, while storage and generation business profits “nearly quadrupled” as Tesla noted in its fourth quarter earnings statement released in January.
Now, granted, EV sale still account for over ten times the revenues of energy storage but the trend is pretty clear, and it’s supported from multiple directions.
Globally, the decarbonization mandate has been almost universally adopted.
ICEs are being banned across Europe; solar farms the size of small states are being built and switched on in China.
Billions are being invested in renewable power generation everywhere, with U.S. wind and solar now producing the equivalent of Brazil’s national energy supply.
In the U.S. specifically, the aging, overloaded power grid has become an issue in numerous cities, prompting more and more home owners to take matters into their own hands by installing backup batteries, or solar generation and battery combos.
So Elon is not wrong about the prospects of energy storage… What he’s wrong about is the form it will take.
Vanadium Flow Is A Lithium Killer… But There’s A Catch
Because while lithium rules the rechargeable space for EVs and consumer electronics, large scale energy storage is one place where it has one formidable rival.
And that rival is known as Vanadium flow.
Vanadium Flow batteries, as the name suggests, are designed around Vanadium — a metal primarily used in the production of high grade steel.
Put to work in a battery, however, a funny thing happens.
The resulting batteries are bigger and heavier due to a lower energy density (energy density is lithium’s primary advantage over all other popular battery types), but they’re also much safer, and much, much longer lasting.
I’m talking about a zero fire risk, and a service life expectancy of between 25 and 30 years — which coincides almost perfectly with the service life of a solar or wind farm.
So while lithium’s compactness and ability to cram a lot of power into a small package is the deciding factor in its usage in cars and wireless devices, in applications where size and weight matter little, vanadium becomes the dominant option.
The Vanadium Battery Advantages: Safer, Stronger, Cheaper
And it all goes back to economy.
Because over the life of a power generation project, lithium-based utility scale battery installations will have to be replaced no fewer than twice.
Where as a similar vanadium installation would last the life of the project.
The result: radically lower costs over the long run.
You better believe that Elon Musk already knows this, and you’d better believe that he’s scared… That’s why he hasn’t been talking about distributed energy storage lately.
Right now, one company, based in the UK, is arguably the world leader in vanadium battery development.
It’s small and almost unknown to the retail investment world, but it’s known to those who matter — including our department of energy, which has already funded multiple projects for installations in the U.S.
Just like Tesla’s involvement with the energy storage space, this company is flying largely under the radar.
But this sector is the fastest growing of the major rechargeable battery markets, and it won’t stay low profile forever.
This UK battery maker is valued at pennies on the dollar right now.
Learn more about it before it becomes the next rechargeable battery sensation. Fortune favors the bold, Alex Koyfman His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.
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