As you can see, most of that is utility scale storage—the light blue.

Now, my job is to find my readers an investment in that theme in which they can potentially make a lot of money.

And I have found one for large scale energy storage—a unique company, but is using a proven technology that is rapidly being adopted around the world. It can store and deploy renewable energy for decades—with no power loss over time—and do it economically.

I can set this up for you very quickly:

When the world needed small energy storage–lithium and cobalt to store energy in cell phones etc—industry found new deposits and new processes to make it all economic. 

Junior public companies raced to develop new assets.

And I found some great investments there. In 2016 I focused readers on Lithium X (LIX-TSXv) at 45 cents—and within weeks it was $2.80.  In 2017 I focused them on StandardLithium (SLL-TSXv) at 90 cents, and three months later it was $2.75.  Also in 2017 I explained how First Cobalt (FCC-TSXv) at 50 cents could be in production quickly…and it tripled in short order. The point here is…my research pays off. 

But lithium and cobalt are for small-scale energy storage.  Now the world is thinking bigger…how do we seamlessly work in HUGE increases in renewable power into the grid.  

And I think the prize for investors is much bigger.

So yes, large-scale, utility-scale energy storage is the next multi-billion dollar problem to solve. And I’m on it.  

But what has me really excited is that my research shows the same answer to this issue—storing tens of MegaWatts of power for western utilities—would also work for providingpower to remote locations all over the world. 

That makes for a pan-global market.  Really, it’s so big that it will likely be filled with a mix of technologies, each with different products.

But I know I have found one of the winners.  And as the Market comes to understand how big this story will be, investors will flock to this micro-cap.  (If there’s one thing I’m good at in the Markets, it’s sniffing out where A Big Run is about to happen.)   

And I think that’s going to be in vanadium, #23 on the periodic table, symbol V. But this Big Run will be a bit different from lithium and cobalt, and I’ll explain why.  

In essence, I’m not convinced vanadium miners will get the first wave of institutional investment dollars.  And in this young industry—large-scale energy storage–I want to find A Big Winner in the first wave.

Vanadium-based batteries are used for large scale energy storage because they have very different properties than lithium and cobalt. 

Vanadium batteries are easy to explain:  

Vanadium is a great metal for energy storage because it is safe in several different forms, and all the battery does is change Vanadium from one form to another.  As it does this, it creates an electric charge.

It’s simple—low-tech—and it’s scalable; many can be put together to store hundreds of MegaWatts of energy.  It’s a proven technology, as there are dozens of vanadium batteries operating in the world today (and many were designed and made by the micro-cap company that is my #1 play in this sector).  This meets the needs of the utilities.  

Let me give you one quick example, and I will do a whole story on this later:

Right now, in March, the state of California has negative electricity prices about 20% of the time; at least that’s what it was last year.  Negative pricing means you pay your customers to take it, and it cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars last year.

Even more ironic, neighbouring states Oregon and Washington shut down their own clean power sources to take the California power.

You pay for dozens of vanadium batteries very quickly when you pay your customers that much money every year.

You see, if utilities could store all that energy that comes from renewables—they would not be forced to pay millions to others just to offload excess electricity. (Up to 30% of wind and solar energy production either under-feeds or over-saturates the grid!)

VRBs are just starting to get commercialized—but it’s happening the world over.  (I kind of like being in at the ground floor of The Green Energy Solution!)

Vanadium and VRBs are also a China play. The Chinese government says increasing energy storage is key for them, specifically recommends the scaling up of vanadium redox-flow batteries in their most recent Five-Year Plan.  They want to integrate more than 300 GigaWatts (which would supply 25,000 US homes with enough electricity for a year) by 2020.

And now to my conclusion—I have found what I think is THE BEST way to play vanadium.  This company is vertically integrated, with its own source of vanadium (in the USA!) and worldwide sales of vanadium batteries.
 

While the deposit and business are established, together they are new to the public markets—the product of a very forward-thinking management team.

I’ve actually made it my single largest position EVER in the 9 year history of my newsletter—I now own over 1 million shares and warrants combined.  I think it has great potential at being My Biggest Win of 2018.

Why?  I see VRBs as very empowering, giving cheap electricity to remote locations—to businesses and homes—around the world, I see them as saving tens of millions of dollars for the most developed and progressive electrical companies in the western world.

I have spent months researching vanadium markets, this company and its technology, and I can’t believe this management team was able to put it all into a company that right now trades under $1.

And I’m going to tell you all about it in my next article.