The article from the National Post that you posted states:
Vanadium batteries are chemically and structurally different from any other battery. For the most part, battery technology hasn't advanced in decades: they're toxic, hold only a few hundred recharge cycles, leak power when not in use and are prone to overheating (ever felt the battery heat up in your phone or your computer as it's charging? Imagine that on the scale of a football field).
But the Vanadium-Redox battery, invented at the University of New South Wales in Australia, could avoid these problems: They have a lifespan of tens of thousands of cycles, are non-toxic, do not self-discharge while idle and do not generate high amounts of heat when charging. On top of all that, the vanadium battery has a marvellous advantage over lithium-ion and most other types of batteries: It can absorb and discharge huge amounts of electricity instantly and do so over and over, making it the only battery technology today capable of connecting to power grids to help smooth out the unpredictable flow of energy stored from wind turbines and solar cells.
After reading this article, I was thinking about the possibility of NOT using wind turbines and solar cells to power, at least part of a future mining camp. They would have all of the vanadium they need for use in the storage batteries. The government and native communities would like it because it would be "green energy".
I own property on the north shore of Lake Erie, with wind turbines on every side and around it. The area is refered to as the Erie Shores Wind Farm. These wind turbines are very impresive indeed, and are producing energy all the time, (the wind blows all the time in that area).
