Thai renewable energy company BCPG has invested $24m in VRB Energy, a vanadium battery company.

BCPG says the investment will be used to expand VRB Energy’s production facilities to serve growing demand of its VRB-ESS systems in China and the developing energy storage market in Thailand and across the Asia-Pacific region.

“According to BloombergNEF and Wood Mackenzie, global energy storage will increase 122 times between 2018 and 2040, and global energy storage capacity is expected to grow at 31% CAGR through 2030. BCPG’s investment in technology-leader VRB Energy will pave the way to more opportunities as an energy storage solution provider in Thailand. The vanadium flow battery technology can also enhance performance of our existing renewable power plants and be applied to new green projects in the future”, said Mr. Bundit Sapianchai, BCPG President.

On March 15th, 2021, VRB Energy was awarded a 100 MW / 500 MWh vanadium flow battery project to be integrated with a 100 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) power station in Xiangyang, Hubei Province, China. This will include construction of a 50 MW per annum production facility, which is the first phase of a 1,000 MW per annum VRB-ESS® “Gigafactory”, and a vanadium flow battery intelligent energy research and development (R&D) institute. The initial 40 MW / 200 MWh VRB-ESS and 50 MW per annum manufacturing facility are under development.