February 6, 2024: Largo and Stryten Energy said on February 4 they had finalized formation of a 50-50 joint venture to lease vanadium electrolyte and boost US commercialization and adoption of vanadium redox flow batteries.

The move combines Largo Clean Energy (LCE), a Largo subsidiary, with Stryten’s VRFB business Storion Energy — nearly a year after outline plans for the deal were reported by Batteries International.

Storion has exclusive rights to offer the flow battery market vanadium from holding company, Largo Physical Vanadium, in the form of leased vanadium electrolyte. That model provides a vehicle for investors to invest in physical vanadium assets while those non-degrading assets are stored in VRFBs.

Largo is known for its high-quality VPURE and VPURE+ vanadium products sourced from its Maracás Menchen Mine in Brazil.

Stryten president and CEO Mike Judd said Storion will create a much-needed, cost-effective domestic supply chain for vanadium electrolyte and component parts for VRFB technology in utility-scale BESS applications.

He said Storion’s proprietary continuous manufacturing process and patented purification process could offer domestically produced electrolyte to support the US Department of Energy’s Long Duration Storage Shot goal to reduce the levelized cost of storage to $0.05/kWh by the end of the decade.

Francesco D’Alessio, president of LCE, said: “Storion’s competitive VRFB pricing model is expected to challenge the dominance of lithium for utility-scale deployments, increase the adoption of this technology and secure leadership for the US in this key energy infrastructure application.”