Freyr launches cell demonstration plant

Freyr Battery held an inaugural ceremony on March 29 for its battery cells customer qualification plant in the north of Norway.

The CQP in Mo i Rana hosts an industrial-scale demonstration battery cells production line based on 24M’s semi-solid lithium ion technology.

The ceremony came a day after Freyr announced plans to work with Glencore, Caterpillar, Siemens and the Nidec Corporation.

Freyr co-founder and CEO Tom Einar Jensen said potential areas of commercial collaboration for the partners included battery cell manufacturing, recycling, mining and refining and stationary battery storage for the power market.

The launch of the CQP came as Freyr pushed ahead with construction of its ‘Giga Arctic’ battery production plant at the same location.

Freyr plans to develop up to 43GWh of battery cell production capacity by 2025, with an ambition of up to 83GWh in total capacity by 2028.

The company announced last June that it had signed a battery materials deal for the CQP with Chinabased Changzhou Senior New Energy Materials and Senior Material (Europe), based in Sweden.

The firms have reserved unspecified supplies of separator material through 2028 and Freyr has an option to extend supplies until 2031.

Those deals followed the signing of nine other agreements with key battery material suppliers, for what Freyr said would be “more than 90%” of its raw material requirements for initial facilities, including the CQP.

VanadiumCorp selects Quebec as site for flow battery electrolyte test facility

VanadiumCorp Resource, the Canadian mining and technology company, has chosen Quebec to build an initial test facility for the production of vanadium electrolytes for VRFB batteries, the firm announced on March 29.

Production should start in the fourth quarter of this year and the test facility is sufficient to supply 6.2MWh of VRFB storage annually, the firm said.

VanadiumCorp is buying manufacturing equipment for the facility at the Carrefour d’Innovation sur les matériaux de la MRC des Sources (CIMMS).

CIMMS provides technical support services to innovative mining, metals and eco-materials companies active in the area.

Contingent on sales, potential production at the CIMMS site can expand incrementally according to market needs using a modular production-line design — each module having a capacity of four mil- lion litres annually, each providing about 80MWh of VRFB storage per year.

VanadiumCorp and CIMMS have signed a cooperation agreement to produce more than two million litres a year of highquality vanadium electrolyte.

Paul McGuigant, VanadiumCorp CEO, said the facility will help the firm plan production for the expanding global market for this key ingredient in longduration VRFB batteries.

Volt Resources launches battery anode plant study

Volt Resources said on March 27 it was launching a feasibility study into plans to establish a battery anode material (BAM) plant, potentially to serve the US markets.

The move came six months after the Australiabased company formed a new unit, Volt Energy Materials, to supply graphite products for lead acid and lithium battery markets in the US.

The BAM feasibility study should be completed in September 2023 and will be used to support a funding proposal to the US government.

CEO Prashant Chintawar said that while mining and processing of raw materials was the foundation of the company, Volt anticipates boosting the business by supplying battery manufacturers. “Due to a strong market interest in local natural graphite anode, supply deficit, and robust financial incentives from governments, we expect the feasibility study to deliver highly favourable project economics.”

In February 2022, Volt was selected as the coated spheronized purified graphite supplier for Energy Supply Developers — whose initial 50GWh lithium battery production facility is set to start operations at an undisclosed site in a Midwestern state in the US by 2025.

Freyr has also bought a site in the US state of Georgia to build its ‘Giga America’ battery cells manufacturing plant.

Macquarie, Shell back Australian Gridstack project

Macquarie Asset Management’s Green Investment Group and Shell Energy Operations are behind plans to develop a 200MW/400MWh Fluence Gridstack BESS in Australia, the firms announced on March 31.

The system (see image), to be completed late next year on the Rangebank Business Park in Melbourne, will have the storage capacity to power the equivalent of 80,000 homes across the state of Victoria for an hour during peak periods, the partners said.

The Rangebank BESS will help to stabilize the state’s electricity supply by providing additional storage capacity, which can be discharged at times of peak demand.

Shell Energy will have access to all of the system’s energy over a 20-year period. Fluence will build, service and maintain Rangebank.

Shell Energy Australia CEO Greg Joiner said the project is the group’s first grid-scale battery investment in Victoria and marks Shell’s first direct equity investment in a utility-scale BESS worldwide.

Investment details were not disclosed, but investment firm Perfection Private has a minority stake in the project.

Green Investment Group’s interest in the project will be transferred to its Eku Energy battery storage development business, which has a pipeline of projects around the world including the UK, Japan and Taiwan.