Fireside chat: Alex O'Hanlon and Jonathan Marren, CEO of Invinity Energy Systems

Alex O’Hanlon, our Industrials analyst, had the opportunity to sit down with Jonathan Marren, CEO of Invinity Energy Systems, and discuss where the business has reached in its commercialisation.

The discussion dissected how the debate over whether vanadium flow batteries work is in the past, and that the product is better understood as flexible, utility-scale storage than as simply long duration: with power and energy separated and no restriction on cycling or throughput, a customer can re-task the asset as grid demands shift.

This is demonstrated by the operating data, with dispatched energy passing 11GWh, and by how the Endurium programme is on course to take two thirds out of the previous product's cost. Furthermore, the FlexBase Group project at Laufenburg, set to be the world's largest vanadium flow battery, is telling: a two-and-a-half-hour system chosen not for duration but for flexibility, heavy cycling, and the reality that an asset beneath a data centre cannot be one you replace twice.