Enerox GmbH known by its trademark name (“CellCube”), one of the world’s first and largest developers, manufacturers, and sellers of Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (“VRFBs”), is pleased to announce its strategy to de-risk vanadium supply and price risk. CellCube and U.S. Vanadium (“USV”) have extended their sales agreement to cover the increasing demand for VRFB electrolyte.
CellCube extended its agreement with electrolyte supplier USV in February 2022 to secure future business in an increasingly challenging supply market. This agreement includes long-term supply assurance clauses for up to 3 million litres/year as well as a price cap over the 5-year term and is the first step of CellCube’s strategy to secure access to vanadium electrolyte long-term, and to reduce dependencies on volatile vanadium price for their business growth. This move comes as the current microgrid boom and new 24/7 net-zero renewable applications move the energy storage demand towards longer duration of 8-hour plus.
The demand for long-duration energy storage solutions such as the VRFB has reached an all-time high, especially during the last year after most countries made bold commitments to curb methane emissions at the UN Climate Change Conference (“COP26”).
“As part of our go-to-market in North America, we want to use electrolyte which has been regionally processed within North America ensuring long-term deliverability at a competitive price,” says CellCube CEO Alexander Schoenfeldt. “We are pleased to have secured access to U.S.-Vanadium’s ultra-high pure electrolyte long-term which in combination with our own post-production handling in the US marks the opening of a new era of cooperation in the industry. This move is aimed at more standardization of electrolyte and its processing to achieve high quality performance for a 20-year + operation without any capacity loss,” he added.
The microgrid market segment in the US contributes significantly to the exploding demand and challenging vanadium supply situation. A key CellCube activity, currently being installed in the United States as part of a resilient and sustainable microgrid, has been the kick-off project for the cooperation with USV.
USV CEO Mark A. Smith, commented, “This agreement reflects today’s rapidly accelerating growth of the VRFB industry and of USV’s ability to supply VRFB manufacturers with Made-in-America ultra-high-purity electrolyte. We look forward to supplying CellCube with the world’s finest and highest purity VRFB electrolyte and helping to fuel CellCube’s continued growth around the world.”
Alexander Schoenfeldt added, “Following the initial step of securing long-term purchase prices for our gigawatt-hour pipeline, CellCube is working now to establish an Enerox Vanadium Electrolyte Service (“EVES”) which we will roll-out throughout other CellCube projects and regions.”
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