The German sale of 1600 units means this company is different, while in the past they were speculative, this one item changes things. Any preconceived ideas about the tech or company must be re-evaluated since then.
Other considerations around tech or competitors are often pointless, its all about the ability to execute sales and get units delivered. I don't care if there are other companies doing the same thing, that's irrelevant even if they have significantly better equipment, it means nothing unless they can make and sell them. So Musk might be a competitor with lithium batteries, but the market is big enough for both and as we see, the Germans are happy to buy these instead. Others will follow. Considering the lifetime TCO for vanadium storage is much better than for lithium, without some of the safety issues and operating environmental issues (ie too hot, cold doesn't make lithium work well) there's a greater chance the vanadium offering will outperform lithium as the benefits are seen over time.
All vanadium has to do is continue to operate and win sales from places like the German grid.
I don't see the case for lithium mass storage as strongly anyway, grid-scale storage is not the ideal scenario for lithium, and while they do currently have the market dominance, the immaturity of the market means there is scope for an alternative (if one can break through the barriers to come to market with such a product) that can compete easily against lithium. Note, the hard work is done here - RedT has obviously done it. So the main case for thinking lithium is the only game in town is already invalidated.
Of course, if I'm wrong and lithium does turn out to be the only product sold, then we're all screwed anyway as Chinese companies are moving into this space. The investment case for storage tech then becomes one like PV solar, in the running of sites rather than the sales of the kit. However, note that China's energy storage strategy used a flow battery to inform its policy:
https://www.vanadiumcorp.com/news/indus ... ng-part-2/He [Jim Stover from VRB/Pu Neng] says that the company was “thrilled” with the success of test deployments at China State Grid since 2012, which included a rigorous 240-hour test against four different applications including peak shaving, renewables load-shifting, frequency response and renewables smoothing – “sort of micro-responses to fluctuations in solar and wind”. This initial 2MW/8MWh trial run helped inform China’s 2017 energy storage strategy document, including the several, multi-hundred megawatt-hour flow battery projects green-lit for development over the next decade.
All that said, RedT does make a hybrid lithium-vanadaium product, that offers fast discharge to cater for peaking from the lithium, that's backed by large storage from the vanadium, thus making the lithium battery last a longer. There's no reason to think the two compete as much as suggested.
What has come now to the market – which is a fact – is that it’s the cost of degradation on the lithium which is the problem for grid storage, McGregor says. "Trading using a [lithium] battery, you have to work out what the cost of that use is. With flow you don’t have a cost because there is no degradation"
The VC case is again, for entry level companies that are trying to break into markets, and would have applied to RedT last year. The sales to Anglian, Germany and others show it is a viable company, and thus one of the 1/10 successful ones. I admit it has been shaky at times, but then that's how these companies start off.
But either way, these are macro investment arguments, and the case for RedT today is that if they have the sales revenue booked in the H2 results then I think the sp will start to take off then. Whether they become the biggest storage company or not is irrelevant unless you want to hold for 10 years.