Gildemeister and American Vanadium Finalize Mass Storage Battery Pact

Vancouver, BC-based American Vanadium Corp. announced it has entered into a master sales agreement with GILDEMEISTER energy solutions of Germany whereby American Vanadium will market and sell GILDEMEISTER’s CellCube vanadium redox flow batteries in North America.  The CellCube is a commercially available energy storage system, with over 100 systems installed globally, that is capable of scaling to multi hour and multi megawatt size.  While American Vanadium will initiate sales efforts immediately using commercially available vanadium electrolyte, the goal is to integrate its own electrolyte supply from its Gibellini Mine in Nevada which is currently in the permitting phase.

“This confirms the achievement of our goal of vertically integrating into an energy storage company that controls America’s only domestic supply of vanadium, the critical element in the vanadium redox flow batteries,” said Bill Radvak, President & CEO of American Vanadium. “Efficient and economic energy storage technologies have been cited as the ‘Holy Grail’ in unlocking the huge potential of renewable energies and the commercial development of microgrid technologies.

“With GILDEMEISTER as the world leader in commercial production of vanadium redox flow batteries, and American Vanadium having the only commercially viable source of high quality vanadium in North America, there are tremendous advantages to the development of the North American market for our CellCube energy storage system,” said Lars Möllenhoff, Managing Director of Cellstrom GmbH, part of GILDEMEISTER energy solutions.

“Given that the Cellcube battery will last twenty years and that our high purity vanadium electrolyte doesn’t degrade and is fully recoverable, we have a significant performance and cost advantage over other large scale energy storage systems,” said Ron Mac Donald, Executive Chairman of American Vanadium.  In addition to these advantages, American Vanadium has developed innovative financial approaches to facilitate the sale of the CellCubes in American, including leasing the batteries entirely.

“As a result of this agreement, American Vanadium will be able to immediately offer energy storage and microgrid systems to wind and solar generators, and emergency and remote power applications, in addition to providing grid reliability and efficiency optimization for commercial, industrial and military applications,” added Bill Radvak who blogs on cleantech issues for Huffington Post.