FlexBase, a Swiss developer building a data centre complex at Laufenburg on the German border, selected UK battery maker Invinity Energy Systems to supply vanadium flow batteries for 1.5 GWh of storage. That equals enough electricity to power roughly 200,000 typical UK homes for a day, marking one of the world's largest flow battery installations. Invinity shares surged as much as 53 percent before settling around 30 percent higher.

The deal reflects growing demand for storage that can smooth volatile electricity use from AI computing. Vanadium flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolytes rather than cells, allowing multiple daily charge cycles with minimal degradation over up to 10 hours, compared with 1-2 hours for lithium-ion. FlexBase said the site could eventually expand to 2.1 GWh. Invinity CEO Jonathan Marren recently said data centre operators increasingly see the fire safety advantage of vanadium over lithium-ion for installations beneath facilities.

Still, vanadium flow batteries cost more and take up more space than lithium-ion, limiting adoption so far. Data centres are under pressure to prove they can flex demand as grids face congestion and long connection queues. Britain's National Grid recently partnered with Nvidia to test whether data centres can cut power use by over a third within a minute during grid stress events without disrupting operations. Invinity's share surge signals investor appetite for flow battery technology as AI demand strains energy infrastructure.