Next up, we have Graham Arvidson, the CEO of leading metals and energy company, Australian Vanadium, and its wholly owned energy storage business, VSUN Energy. Graham is a highly respected executive with over two decades of experience in key leadership roles including project studies, design, construction, commissioning, and operations management across the Australian and international resource and energy sectors. Prior to being appointed CEO of AVL in 2022, Graham held key leadership roles with IGO, Primero, Pilbara Minerals, where he established a track record in successful project development, operational turnarounds, and optimization of mineral processing operations. Please welcome him to the stage.
Thank you. It's a real privilege to be speaking here again at Diggers. It's always a favorite place for me to come and reconnect. Today, I'm happy to be back again and tell you about some significant evolutions in our business here at Australian Vanadium. I'd like to step you through not one, but three value creation platforms that we substantially advanced in our business, and that we've, I think through a hard won success, positioned so well for this coming financial year to create value and find re-rates not in one, but all three of those opportunities.
As I step you through those three platforms in our business, I'd appreciate if you could just keep a couple of case studies in mind that I'm going to share with you in terms of what the markets are signaling, and I think why it should endorse our strategy and how we've positioned ourselves. I'll start with Japan. In Japan, they have a really forward-looking, I guess, progression in terms of attracting energy storage assets into their grid. They have an annual LTDA auction. I'm just providing a bit of detail, but I'll get to the point. This is a 20-year fixed revenue agreement for capacity, and that's attracting long-duration energy storage assets. This year, and that will continue every year in auctioning, 4 GWh of non-lithium energy storage was awarded. I think that's really important to understand.
It's the first year that more non-lithium than lithium energy storage was awarded. There is a very strong strategic intent in Japan to make sure that they have a mixture of energy storage technologies, not just one single, being lithium-ion, to meet their energy storage needs. Indeed, my second case study to share with you really is Australia. I think it's fair to say in Australia in the last year, we've found that being reliant in our supply chains, which equals energy security on petrostates can create real crystallized risks. Indeed, we're doing a great job, I think, in Australia, bringing low cost of energy through renewables backed by firming energy storage technologies.
That is currently being done almost exclusively by lithium-ion, and that is doing a great job, but I think for Australia, we have to ask ourselves, do we also then want to trade petrostate reliance with a single lithium-ion source? I think the answer is no. For me, it is inevitable that new storage technologies have to come into the mix to diversify. I am here today to tell you that vanadium flow batteries are literally the only storage technology that is fully commercialized for decades at gigawatt hour scale that is ready to scale up and can actually be delivered competitively domestically.
I think for Australia, that is an incredible opportunity, and for our business, not just domestically, internationally, how can we link these three platforms in our business to help Australia, to help our partners like Japan, to help critical metal solutions in the U.S., where vanadium is becoming more and more critical? We are very excited about how these platforms we have created can lead to those diversification outcomes and competitive solutions. Very quickly, the three platforms are metals. In metals, we are very proud that we have done the hard work to progress an asset when the vanadium spot price-wise has been relatively unexciting for people, but the demand curve is exciting.
Not many people in the world have been advancing vanadium metals assets to shovel-ready, and we are releasing our combined Optimised Feasibility Study towards the end of the year, and we have one permit remaining, which is not far off on the horizon, and we think it is just so valuable to have a tier one asset in Western Australia ready to go as the tailwinds come into the metal. In the midstream, we have always seen that as a strategic link. It is actually turning out to be much more than that for us. So we have established commercial production here in Australia. We have put that into operating batteries and proven that we can deliver 70% domestic outcomes already with operating assets that have exceeded client expectations.
We are now qualifying with a broad range of respected OEMs globally, and that is going to lead to a much broader sales of electrolyte possibilities in the coming year. On the downstream, we are particularly excited that we have put in the work to create a long-duration energy storage platform. We are not recreating the wheel. We are trying to create the same business model that others have forged the path in lithium-ion supply chains. We just want to bring our supply chain advantages to the use cases that I will step you through today, each of which are expanding and growing and really are first of their kind use cases that the energy sector has never needed and for which vanadium flow batteries are super exciting.
They're a great fit, and we're pursuing near-term pipeline opportunities such as the Kalgoorlie VBESS slated here in Kalgoorlie, a 500 MWh battery, and other pipeline opportunities such as the Alcoa MoU that we announced this week, where we'll look to see how our supply chain can benefit their supply chain and figure out how big industrial-scale vanadium flow batteries can assist their decarbonization and energy cost journeys. The factors supporting vanadium flow batteries are multiple. I'll try and keep it short and say the main factor is that these batteries do not degrade. If you partner with someone like Sumitomo Electric like we have, they can guarantee the battery for up to 25 years with zero degradation. That just simply leads to very good life cycle economics.
If we layer on the various other benefits like non-flammability, domestic supply chain security outcomes, it becomes a very compelling proposition for many use cases. They're very good at long duration, so the hallmark of a vanadium flow battery is the longer the duration, eight, 10, 12, 14, 16 hours, the better the economics become where almost all other technologies have the opposite correlation. You're probably going to ask me, why aren't these being adopted more quickly? I think there's a very simple answer that the market hasn't quite been there, and we've been surprised that people are actually not selecting superior life cycle economics. They're selecting sticker price. I would say there are use cases where we're definitely coming across customers where they just focus on life cycle, and that's where we're just excited no matter what.
We're also looking to emulate what's happening in China, where 50 GWh of vanadium flow batteries are being built. They're deploying, in almost all cases, an electrolyte leasing model. Why might we do that? 40% of the value of the battery is a non-degrading, non-depreciating asset. Think of it like a gold bar in a vault that gives you a yield and will, at the end of some 50 years, still be the same and have a terminal value. That means we can attract very low cost of capital solutions into that, and you can create an outcome, importantly, where the sticker price is the same or even less than a lithium-ion battery, and you still get the superior life cycle economics and what we call proper infrastructure-grade technology.
Instead of having a battery that you chuck out in less than 15 years, we have a battery here that will last 50 years, and even if it does have an end of life, is fully recyclable with current technology. 2026 is the exciting year where things break out, and of course, China is inexorably continuing its journey with the 50 GWh rollout, and there's now 8 GWh of operating VFBs globally. There's no question about the commercialization. I just want to make that clear. Now it's being adopted around the world, and you could go to Switzerland and see the largest flow battery in the world in construction in a data center. I think that's particularly exciting, 2.1 GWh and it's on its way to success. In Australia, this is the wonderful early indicators of commercial deployment.
In Kalgoorlie, 500 MWh . On the East Coast, Sumitomo Electric announced a project that will be up to 1 GWh , and I think that is incredibly exciting. Don't stop there. If you do your research, you will find big batteries are being deployed in places like India, Japan, the U.S. So this is, in our words, the year that VFBs go international at scale. The three markets we are increasingly excited about and tooling our business up to focus on is, first, AI data centers. This is very exciting because it fits all the attributes of VFBs. Very quickly, if you are not aware, AI data centers have highly volatile power loads. That means if you want to connect to the grid operators are very reticent to let you do that.
What VFBs can simultaneously do is take that shock absorber load, siphon out any of that volatility, and present a common load to the grid, and also provide that UPS long duration backup. If you put a lithium-ion battery in a similar duty, it will probably fail in three to five years. This battery can cycle hundreds of times per day and not be fussed. So we are doing everything in our capability to take our existing technologies and make sure we are ready to deploy into that fast-moving market. So please watch that space. I think it is going to create lots of catalysts for us in the near term. In remote mine sites, an example is Alcoa, but we are talking to a number of probably people in this room who do see the next steps in their journey is firming with longer and longer duration.
Importantly, the secondary facet is we need technologies that are good at hot climates. If you have never worked in the Pilbara, I would assure you that it is bloody hot there, and a typical 45-50 degree day will mean that you have a lot of struggles with technologies like lithium-ion. We have deployed the Horizon Power battery, which is intentionally specced out to have no cooling, operate and cycle every day in 45-50 degrees. We are increasingly confident that the Pilbara and other places like it around the world will start to leverage vanadium flow batteries' advantages. Non-degrading, works well in hot climates, and it will back up long-duration renewables. So the three platforms, just quickly. What is VSUN Energy? It is a long-duration energy storage platform.
We are not trying to recreate the wheel, and really what we are doing is building a pipeline of big utility scale opportunities, making sure we have the bankable model, the partners, and everything there to support it, and then rolling out into big opportunities like the Kalgoorlie VBESS. We have been working towards that for two and a half years, and I am very proud of what we have pulled together in terms of a full supply chain solution, the financial, the technology, and other partners we need to deliver absolutely credible outcomes to these opportunities. We continue to grow that pipeline with things like Alcoa, where we can bring the siphon down to real build, own, operate opportunities where we can create profitable energy assets. Platform two was originally, in our world, a strategic link, but increasingly we are excited.
We've had unsolicited interest this year from our potential partners to say: How do we take the low-cost electrolyte production technology we've created here in Australia internationally? What's going to happen this financial year, we think we'll get the first chance to deploy our first V-NOMAD technology, which is a relocatable plant that can basically really dramatically reduce the cost of electrolyte production and then ultimately deliver more profitable VFBs. Our partners have recognized that, and they think there's a great opportunity to help them overseas drop their costs as well. That's the hallmark to me of a great business. This financial year, we hope you see that maturity coming through. Our existing plant can extend its sales customers while we expand into this V-NOMAD technology, which suits the gigawatt hour scale solutions.
Platform three, we're at a mining conference, and I would be beholden not to talk about it. Please don't lose interest in vanadium. The tailwinds are substantial on the demand. Each of those batteries I mentioned in a previous slide, they sum up to some 12% of the current vanadium market. The battery that's slated here in the goldfields is 2% of the world market. It takes only a handful of batteries to make a dramatic impact on the demand curve for vanadium. Yes, the spot price is low right now because of the steel industry. That's one story. There's also a story happening concurrently for the last four years that batteries are growing at 50%. I think that means it's so important that we have a really advanced asset, almost fully permitted with an OFS coming out, I think timely towards the end of the year.
I don't think you'd find any forecasters out there much different than this. This is the use of vanadium in VFBs. It is going to 13x over the next six years, and Australia and Australian Vanadium are well-positioned to lean into that thematic. I think we're very proud that we've put in the hard work and hard-won outcomes to keep advancing our asset to capitalize on that. I just want to pause on this slide for a moment because it is just pragmatic to think about what is a vanadium flow battery. That's a 500 MWh battery . It is tanks, pumps, piping. It's eminently deployable in Australia. With someone like Sumitomo Electric that we work with, absolutely bulletproof and proven. Again, they warranty it for 25 years, no degradation.
Keep that in your mind, and my hope is that we do see in the Pilbara, in the goldfields, these batteries doing the hard work of decarbonizing our industries. Thank you for your time. I want to just reiterate, we have three legitimate businesses, three platforms, all of which are poised for a very awesome year ahead. Keep an eye on us. Don't lose faith in the vanadium price because it has a lot of reasons to go up. Metals are interesting. Australian Vanadium's ready, and the flow batteries are expanding all over the world. Keep an eye on us. Thank you.