US flow battery makers discuss life under Trump

Amid the flurry of executive orders issued in the first days of Donald Trump’s US presidency, the nation’s energy storage industry has been keenly trying to determine which way the wind is blowing when it comes to their prospects, and flow battery developers are no exception.
“We must expect the unexpected and will need to be nimble and roll with the punches of the Trump administration,” said Matt Harper, the US-based chief commercial officer of British VFB manufacturer Invinity Energy.
Harper, and Eugene Beh, CEO of Californian aqeous organic quinone redox flow battery maker Quino Energy, were speaking to ESS News about the prospects of flow batteries, and the wider energy storage market, under Trump.
Invinity’s Harper admitted the uncertainty associated with the famously unpredictable president would give investors in any line of business pause for thought but said the economics of VFBs’ long-duration energy storage would win out in a nation in which data centers are seeing electricity demand rocket.
“Solar power is, by a clear margin the least-cost form of generation in the US right now,” he said. “The basic calculus of business dictates those things are going to be built. We see a need for massive [electricity] loads from data centers in California and Nevada over the next 10 years … and that means we need some form of balancing,” he added, referring to the need to supply power when the sun isn’t shining.
Quino chief Beh was even more bullish as he touted the fact his company’s technology can be sourced entirely in the US, uses materials from the fossil fuel industry – without burning them – in its electrolyte, and can be housed inside the carbon-steel oil storage tanks which proliferate across the US.
In terms of Quino’s electrolyte, the chief executive said, “It can be easily made in America and it’s probably about a quarter of the price of vanadium, so what’s not to like?”
The CEO added, of renewable energy, “I think it’s kind of unstoppable now, it’s just down to the economics.” With President Trump having threatened tariffs on imported goods, which could include foreign-made lithium-ion batteries, Beh added, “I sleep a lot easier than some of the other battery executives out there!”