VRB Power terminates most of staff, calls outlook grim
VRB Power’s vanadium flow-battery technology might have held potential as a utility-scale energy storage system, but in the end the Vancouver-based company has failed to execute and is on the road to insolvency. The company released a press release this afternoon announcing that it has been unsuccessful in seeking a merger, sale or some kind of financing that can keep the company afloat.
“The company has substantially curtailed its manufacturing, research and development operations and laid-off or given notice terminating most of its employees. Given its current financial and operational status, the company has ceased accepting new orders,” it stated.
VRB says it will still seek offers for a possible sale, as well as look for ways to license its core technology and patents, but in the meantime it is forced to dispose of its remaining inventory and other redundant assets. “In the event the company is unable to make adequate arrangements to discharge its outstanding liabilities, or for other reasons, it may need to consider seeking other remedies under applicable corporate or insolvency legislation.”
Given the current economic climate, it’s not surprising. That said, it’s a shame — there were high hopes in the renewable energy community for the potential of vanadium flow batteries as an economical way of storing wind and solar energy and helping relieve bottlenecks on the grid. When VRB announced it was selling a big system to a wind-farm developer in Ireland there was a lot of excitement, but it failed to close that deal. Since then, all the company has seen is a string of dinky sales to one-off pilot projects.
Chances are the assets will be scooped up by some other, better-funded company at a firesale price, and chances are it won’t be a Canadian company doing it. VRB, however, wasn’t the only supplier of this type of flow battery, and of course there are other chemistries out there with similar — or greater — potential. These include zinc-bromide (Premium Power), lithium-ion (A123), and sodium-sulphur (NGK) batteries. Gridpoint, for example, just announced today that it was selected by Xcel Energy to manage the flow of energy between a 1-megawatt sodium-sulphur battery from NGK Insulators and the grid.
So buck up, folks. We’ll get to energy-storage paradise in good enough time. There are other pokers in the fire.
Tags: energy storage, VRB Power
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am
[...] VRB Power terminates most of staff, calls outlook grim [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
It wouldn’t have been more than a niche solution anyway; there’s not enough vanadium for wholesale energy storage.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Cyril R, I’m afraid you are badly wrong. Vanadium Redox had the opportunity to amswer almost all enbergy storage problems and challenges. In fact I strongly believe this is one of the reasons why VRB Power failed to execute, it was fazed by the targets.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I worked at VRB power from March 2007 through to July. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. It was managed by a group of people that were technically astute however, had no brains for business. I witnessed many decisions that had no economic sense. It’s a shame that it was so badly run, it was a good technology
June 19th, 2009 at 7:29 am
This company paid directors and senior staff 6 figure incomes using shareholders money. The company should have operated as a small business and expanded as sales increased if they had any business sense at all. I believe the battery assembly was not cost competitive in it’s design as it should have been.
The new board of directors should be paid only out of profits and the management team should only get commission on sales without a base wage as should the sales staff. The marketing should be through dealerships with no direct sales. Shareholder money should be used to build product, and the dealership network should control the product design and constantly make the product better in cost and function.