Vanadium pentoxide price (V2O5), reached US$12.4/lb, having more than doubled from US$5/lb when I started covering vanadium 8 months ago. The price is up over 500% since January 2016.

Mining Billionaire Mr. Robert Friedland was seen in a Vanadium-induced ecstasy at a London resource conference. Never could we have imagined the metal having such a euphoric effect.

There is no meaningful or declared vanadium inventory. With rising demand, vanadium consumers without pre-existing relationship with a bonafide supplier are truly at the mercy of a handful of traders.

Largo and Prophecy are two vanadium mining and exploration companies worth taking a look.

Fundamentals aside, from a contrarian viewpoint, the lack of vanadium coverage by mainstream media tells me what we have seen so far ain't nothing yet compared with what's to come.

In the article, I talked about vanadium redox flow batteries (VRB) which are ideal to store the electricity produced from solar and wind farms that struggle to sell their electricity at times of peak production; and compared to lithium-ion batteries, VRB are non-flammable, environmentally friendly, have estimated lifespans in excess of 10,000 cycles and maintain 90% of their capacity over 20 years.

• [Editor:Wang Linyan]