In the Northern Miner Article dated April 24, 2017, “Robert Friedland: Celebrating a lifetime of achievement”, Friedland discusses why his company HPX took an interest in Pu Neng (formerly Prudent Energy) a vanadium redox battery producer. HPX partnered with VanSpar Mining Inc., a Sparton subsidiary, and VanSpar owns an 18% interest in Pu Neng.Excerpt from the article:
“HPX also holds a controlling interest in Pu Neng, a Beijing-based developer and manufacturer of advanced energy storage systems. Pu Neng has invested about US$90 million on vanadium redox battery systems and has installed 51 units at home and abroad. One unit is part of a demonstration project operated by China’s State Grid Corporation, which is producing and storing energy generated from wind and solar sources.
“We think there’s a revolution coming in vanadium redox flow batteries,” he says. “You’ll have to get into the mining business and produce ultra-pure vanadium electrolyte for those batteries on a massive scale.”
“We’re very deeply interested in how you store electrical energy in the grid,” he adds.
“The beauty of the vanadium redox battery is that you can charge and discharge it at the same time, something that can’t be done with a lithium battery. With a vanadium redox flow battery, you can put solar power and wind power into the battery, and you can put excess grid power into the battery at night, and at the same time you can have a stable output into the grid.”
