Western Australia is assembling one of the world's most explicitly localised vanadium flow battery programmes, combining a 500MWh state-funded tender with royalty relief and industrial offtake discussions.
The anchor project: 50MW/500MWh at Kalgoorlie
The state launched an expression-of-interest process in November 2025 for a 50MW/500MWh vanadium flow battery energy storage system (VBESS) in Kalgoorlie, backed by AU$150 million in state funding. The system is specified at ten hours of duration, with completion targeted for 2029.
The local-content conditions are unusually strict for a storage tender: the project requires Western Australian-manufactured VRFB technology built with locally sourced and processed vanadium. The 500MWh system alone would need more than 30 million litres of electrolyte, making electrolyte production capacity — not cell manufacturing — the immediate bottleneck.
Two bidders positioning for the award
Australian Vanadium Limited (AVL) has formed an exclusive partnership with Japan's Sumitomo Electric Industries to bid for the Kalgoorlie project, and submitted its Stage Two proposal in late July.
AVL is also expanding its electrolyte footprint. In November the state awarded the company AU$15 million (US$10.4 million) for a relocatable, high-capacity vanadium electrolyte manufacturing facility, funded through the Investment Attraction Fund's New Energies Industries Round 2. AVL already runs an electrolyte plant in Perth, completed in December 2023 with federal Modern Manufacturing Initiative support, and its subsidiary VSUN Energy supplied a 78kW/220kWh VRFB for a long-duration pilot in Kununurra with state utility Horizon Power.
Fiscal support: royalties halved
Western Australia halved royalties on vanadium products from 5% to 2.5% as part of the same push to build a long-duration VRFB market around local supply. The measure improves project economics upstream, where margins are tied to a V2O5 price that has traded in a narrow band near 97,000–98,000 yuan per tonne in China.
The private offtake angle: Alcoa
In August, AVL signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Alcoa to evaluate a 50–80MW VRFB at the miner's Western Australian alumina refineries, with six to eight hours of duration and total storage of 400–640MWh. A scoping study will cover electrolyte supply among other areas.
"The 500MWh system alone would need more than 30 million litres of electrolyte."
Alumina refining is an attractive flow-battery load: continuous, high-availability operations with steady demand and land available on site. If the Alcoa study converts, Western Australia would move from a single flagship tender to a repeatable industrial pipeline.
This article was assisted by AI analysis. Please refer to the original source for official information.