It seems that $15 per kWh of storage should be achievable with them. At this price, it's trivial to install enough grid-scale storage to completely move off fossil fuels in more southern areas.
What is the fraction of California batteries that went up in flames during the last year?
They weren’t asking you to do research for them, they asked if you had done research for yourself.
I’m not sure what your point is? All batteries are bad? Oil is good? What?
Most modern devices have an integrated 3.7v Lithium battery so standardisation should be possible but I see no market forces for this - devices with short lifespan (limited by a non-replaceable battery) are more profitable.
Look, I'm all for better battery technology, but we are also building a ton of mini bombs that we all hold in our pockets. We need to be realistic about the practical applications of this. Do you really want to be on a flight where a Sodium laptop battery decides to go on a runaway reaction? Lithium reactions are hard enough to contain as it is. We need to start building the policies and defenses before this becomes mainstream.
What makes you think the risk will increase in the future?
Go on.
> but we are also building a ton of mini bombs that we all hold in our pockets
Yea. That's the definition of "battery".
Clearly you are against batteries.
We are all sitting on ‘minibombs’ since we developed cars and personal devices with batteries. That is the point of those objects, to carry an extremely dense storage of energy in order to operate. And indeed, that is the basic premise of a bomb, concentrate high amounts of energy in a small volume, but similarities stop there. Human development has made those devices extremely safe to use, fortunately.
However, there is no mention of this technology in consumer devices and gadgets like laptops, smartphones and tablets. I get that the site is about clean technology as a replacement for the currently more polluting technology. But I’m interested to see when these sodium ion batteries will appear in phones and laptops and what difference they may make to the cost, price, weight, performance, safety, longevity, etc.
Phones and laptops are weight/volume sensitive, and sodium ions are a lot larger than lithium ions, thus the battery energy density is lower.
Sodium batteries, if the technology works, would replace EV batteries and provide support to the electrical grid, and would be purchased at thousands of times the volume of iphone ad laptop batteries
But their impact on energy storage to stabilize the grid, both technically and in terms of prices, can not be overstated. Cheap, safe storage is the key component missing in Europe for using more renewables. Without that you need to keep gas plants in reserve, should there be a few days without sun and wind.
There were a few such days in December 2024, and their impact onto energy prices is difficult for energy-intense industries. https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_average/chart.htm?l=...
But more on that point, it always struck me as bizarre that lithium was dominant in so many areas despite vastly different requirements. For home and grid storage, battery weight is almost immaterial, while it's a paramount concern in portable devices. I think it would be very surprising indeed if one chemistry performed best in all scenarios. Lithium became dominant primarily because it had so much research and supply chain maturity behind it, even if it was suboptimal for areas like grid storage. Glad to see other battery chemistries are getting more investment.
I would say the bulk price of lithium ion batteries is the most you could possibly remove via materials changes. When smaller batteries are more expensive, that's based on factors that would also affect other chemistries. And the bulk price for laptop capacity, 50-99 watt hours, is $5-10 and dropping.
That's just the old Powerwall. Most home backup batteries for the last 5 years have been LFP, not Li-ion. I think even Tesla uses LFP in Powerwalls now.
If a sodium battery is heavy and bigger but used for gridscale then that'll work fine.
CATL is launching volume production of their second generation sodium ion battery in December 2025. That's in about 2 months. I'm sure they'll use most of next year to ramp up production but they are targeting multiple gwh of production capacity with this first factory. More will likely follow. Apparently converting existing LFP production to this is relatively easy. This is not some experimental thing but a completely validated and ready for mass production chemistry.
Some basic stats of their cell: 175 wh/kg, ~10K charge cycles, -40 to +70 degrees celsius operating range, 5C charge rate (very fast basically). That's basically very competitive with LFP for both storage and low end EVs (up to 500km/300miles is a number they've cited).
That is all straight from CATL's recent press release on this. They are either playing some really amazing poker game here or they really are about to massively change things in the market.
That temperature range means these batteries can operate pretty much anywhere on this planet.
Peak Energy is actually starting to produce low volume production for their unique chemistry for grid storage. Their pitch is basically that they can deploy these in the desert with passive cooling only. No fans or moving parts. No cooling liquids. Nothing. Apparently this should work fine in a desert where it's freezing cold at night and blisteringly hot during the day. No fire risk. No mechanical parts that can break. Basically plonk them down and forget about them. Of course highly uncertain if they can scale all the way but it sounds promising.
There are other companies with production plans (or actual production happening) on this front as well.
Sodium ion has definitely left the labs now and it's now a matter of time before either these batteries are mass produced and widely used or something even better comes along to displace this. My guess is sodium ion will eat significantly into LFP market share for both storage and automotive in the next five years or so. After that, I would be very disappointed if nothing better comes along. Five years is about the same time it took for LFP to make a big dent into NMC market share. It might be some time before these things start showing up in the US though because of the tariff situation and the lack of local production capacity for this new chemistry. But if it is successful elsewhere, it will eventually happen there as well.
The biggest feature of this chemistry is actually the low cost of the materials. There are no exotic metals that you need. Everything needed can be sourced cheaply and locally in abbundance in pretty much every country. There have been some persistent rumors that CATL is targeting a long term cost of this chemistry of around 10$/kwh starting at maybe between 30 and 50$. 10$ is almost 10x lower than what is common today. Most EVs only have about 500-700$ worth of battery at those prices. As opposed to 5-7K right now. And many manufacturers don't produce their own cells so they would be paying more.
The cost is basically why people are a bit bullish on this technology. The low cost is a really big deal. It changes everything.
Reverse that, why don't other countries / companies try and steal their talent and IP? Is everyone resigned to think that China are undefeatable on the technology/manufacturing of these batteries?
It's not insurmountable for 'the West' to claw back some of that manufacturing, including high-tech items like batteries. It will take a large, long-time and very expensive effort, however. But talk is cheap, and largely 'the West' has drunken the neoliberalism kool-aid and is staring at quarterly shareholder value so little gets done.
Heck, some Western government are even in bed with the fossil fuel industry, desperately trying to hold back progress in order to claw a bit more profit out of the industry before the full force of the electric revolution hits.
The west is mostly drunk on populism, nativism and boomer welfare. If it were the neoliberal hellscape you imagine, it'd at least be competitive.
I have heard that the USA has abandoned that strategy recently, but I think it is too early to see any impact.
All the research is in finding ever better combinations of anode/cathode.
Lithium mining and processing is dominated by Western countries, which is why China is incentivised to develop and manufacture sodium ion batteries. They know the game and haven't ignored it, unlike the West who ignored the geopolitical risk of China dominating rare earth processing for 20+ years.
The West should have a similar incentive despite having most of the lithium, namely supply risks for graphite, cobalt and nickel. There is a lot of research going on but mostly in Europe.
Citation needed
> All the research is in finding ever better combinations of anode/cathode.
Trivial matter then.
For heavy users and given a standard range of 250+ miles, we are talking about a longevity of 1 000 000 miles. I never had a car with more than 200.000km (120 000 miles).
Also, there's just smog you need to pass which is significantly less than in many other developed countries. Some have yearly required checks that would check all safety features like brakes, tires etcetera. That's where a lot of cars fail that would just keep driving in the US
my 95 mx-5 has nearly 360,000 mi. on it
Outside of the rust belt, cars last quite awhile as long as you change oil and the occasional rubbery bit.
I'm actually scrapping a 99 Jeep TJ right now because the OEM powertrain is just awful, but the rest of the vehicle is perfectly fine.
All I know is that the charge to mass ratio of an Na+ ion is less than that of an Li+ ion, and that elemental Na and Li are both highly-reactive with violent exothermic reactions when exposed to water. I need someone with chemistry or materials science experience to help me explain what the advantages are and how those advantages exist.
The allure is cheaper input materials, potentially very long lifespans and creating a hedge against the boom and bust cycle of the lithium market.
> The allure is cheaper ...
When it comes to grid energy storage, cheaper (while also safe and performant) is better, don't you think?
It's really well done and digs into all the details on sodium-ion. Lots to like with sodium-ion (charge rate for one) but cost isn't going to be competitive for at least 5 and more likely 10 years.
brybell•4h ago
dwd•3h ago
They also don't need some "critical" minerals such as graphite, cobalt and nickel.
fart-fart-FART•2h ago
stephenitis•1h ago
dwd•1h ago
As with the rare earth minerals, the supply of graphite, cobalt and nickel is vulnerable hence the designation as critical minerals by Western Governments.