but that's what happens when you don't vent the hydrogen to the atmosphere
For example by just working with a handful of customers. Or by building a tiny factory that merely prove technical feasibility instead of a bigger one that would prove the business case as well as the technology benefits in terms of cost. Big battery factories are expensive and risky. And most battery tech doesn't really get profitable until you have a big factory and a few years of optimization. The price of the first batteries is generally really high and it can take years to get there.
This has been a problem with battery tech in particular where mostly companies in the US or Europe don't get much funding for new tech and where China actually seems to be doing a bit better. Which is why sodium batteries are shipping in China (CATL) and sort of stuck in R&D for many years elsewhere.
With flow batteries, the technology is kind of proven at this point. They work, they exist, etc. What's left to prove is the price point: can it be done cheaply? Everything seems to suggest yes. But proving that is going to require scaling production and a massive amount of investment to get that going. Think billions, not millions.
Small retail customers are not helpful here because those don't pay until after the factory gets built and starts shipping product. Demand is never the issue. It's doing the leg work to get to the promised price point at which that demand exists. That requires investment.
We are going to start a work coop soon to build and sell the educational kits, as soon as we finish with the initial development. We also have a Hardware X paper coming, showing the initial results of the DIY kit. Things are slowly coming together, but it takes a while since we're literally doing these experiments in our houses.
The technology looks great, but they seem annoyingly incompetent at marketing/selling their product...or are just holding out for "whale" customers, refusing to work with anyone except microgrid (ie college campus) and utility scale customers.
So many promising products and technologies die because the inventors/developers hold out for huge customers while ignoring the huge demand from retail/small/medium corp customers.
"We won't talk to anyone except corporations with deep pockets. Once we find a couple of those, we'll be filthy stinking rich!" instead of "if we sell the components at a price that undercuts LiFePO4, we'll have as many customers as we can handle, and there's plenty of margin for distributors and retailers, so we don't have to be B2C."