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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Jasper Jolly

Powering change: UK battery firms aim to unlock the way to net zero

Jonathan Marren, CEO of Invinity Energy Systems
Jonathan Marren, CEO of Invinity Energy Systems, claims that ‘on a levelised cost basis, we are better value than lithium’. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Think of battery manufacturing and it may evoke images of Elon Musk and Tesla’s sprawling “gigafactories” around the globe, or China’s vast, hi-tech clean rooms churning out cells to go in anything from electric toothbrushes to mobile phones and cars. But at Invinity Energy Systems’s small factory in Bathgate, near Edinburgh, workers slotting parts together are hoping that Britain can also play a part in the battery revolution.

These batteries, which rely on vanadium ions, are put in 6-metre (20ft), 25-tonne shipping containers. They will not go into cars, but the manufacturer hopes the technology can win a place in a global rush into storage to usher in the shift to net zero carbon grids.

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