it was a bit worrying as there was somewhat of a stagnation in battery chemistry, but having non toxic/dangerous battery storage is going to make off-griding so much more attractive.
technically speaking, if every household had solar panels and batteries it would not only be cheaper than the grid it would also have complete independence from oil fluctuations, weather disasters and centralization.
now if you combine that with electric cars that charge off your off-grid system and transition to eletric appliances instead of something like gas the benefits keep stacking all while being pretty much net neutral post manufacturing.
Grid level batteries are going to be a more efficient way of using the same materials to achieve a particular level of supply. It's just at the moment there's a "competency arbitrage" where infrastructure is way slower than building it yourself.
High density housing is unlikely to be compatible with that.
Also rental dwelling owners and people with limited economic resources tend to be less likely to make those kinds of capital investment.
However, it's the onus of the gov't (regional or federal) to create the investment needed for large, industrial scale solar and battery storage. That's what taxpayer money should be spent on.
They will, assuming the people that went off grid stop paying for it. As fewer people pay for it the costs per capita grow
But they're not worse off, because the upgrades are better. For them to be worse off, the upgrades they pay for has to be worse than what they got today.
Which is fine if your fantasy includes offshoring all of that and shipping the finished products in to the local market.
Which, no matter how you slice it, has to be more energy intensive than manufacturing locally.
Hetzner does this!
(Pardon me if you live in another country. I'm starting to wish I did.)
Solar does seem to be influenced by those, though. So before battery storage is really, really cheap and plenty, for off grid situations I do would prefer backup gas as well.
(can also be produced locally: https://www.homebiogas.com/shop/backyard-systems/homebiogas-...)
But if you have a BBQ with propane and the sun didn't shine for many many days that should be sufficient.
Sodium-ion is exciting because it has the potential to have less degradation over time, much less sensitivity to cold and less reliance on rare earth metals. Could also end up significantly cheaper. However it has struggled to reach the same energy densities and so hasn’t been practical thus far.
This seems like a big step towards it being a practical technology choice for certain models, if it bears out.
Another thing here is that volumetric density matters more than weight density in cars. Space comes at a premium and while weight affects efficiency somewhat, it pales in comparison to aerodynamics and rolling resistance. The difference between the best and the worst cars on the road is at least 3x. You have some heavy, brick shaped, monstrosities that barely do 1.5 miles per kwh and then you have some cars with low drag coefficient that easily do 5-6 miles per kwh. Even swapping tires can add meaningful range. Weight reductions help a bit but the difference between the best and worst energy densities on a 60kwh battery is probably 1-2 big passengers in terms of weight.
Peak energy makes sodium ion batteries for energy storage. Their pilot batteries are deployed in a desert. High temperatures during the day, freezing temperatures at night. They use only passive cooling without any moving parts (fans, pumps, etc.). Aside from that being impressive, that also lowers maintenance cost because it reduces the amount of stuff that actually needs servicing.
Sodium ion gains back volume because it doesn't need cooling. At the cell level, they are worse but at the pack level, it starts looking pretty decent. Anyway, there are multiple sodium ion batteries on the road now in China. It's practical right now. The rest is just the widening technology gap the US and EU have with China. We'll just have to wait a few years for local manufacturers to catch up. Some models with these batteries will probably start making it to the EU in the next two years or so.
Well it is exciting, but not for the reasons you think. More like a Michael Bay movie exciting...there is nothing practical about this design. Most of the cost will be safety systems designed to prevent the battery from being exciting and even then a crash will likely set them off. Pure Na-ion probably isn't viable and certainly isn't viable in a car. Maybe mixing in some Na into the Li-ion to stretch the small amount of Lithium but even then you are significantly increasing the volatility of the battery.
This isn't a practical step, its an act of desperation from people who don't want to admit that large scale electrification is a dumb idea. We electrified everything that made sense to electrify a half century ago.
People say the same thing about Li-ion batteries yet they have proven to be significantly less likely to catch fire compared to ICE vehicles [1].
> people who don't want to admit that large scale electrification is a dumb idea. We electrified everything that made sense to electrify a half century ago.
I'm very curious to hear why you think this. If nothing else, the 'situation' with the Strait of Hormuz would seem to have shown the importance of energy independence achieved through large scale electrification. Individually, I couldn't go back to an ICE car or even garden tools, they're worse in every way.
1. https://www.mynrma.com.au/open-road/advice-and-how-to/unders...
Isn't the nasty thing about lithium fires not how likely they are, but how difficult they are to put out, as well as how hot they burn?
If all we’ve got is opinions, let’s go with yours.
Elemental sodium is reactive. Ionic sodium is not, lest you blow up your dinner. Furthermore, the lithium part of a Li-ion battery isn't the flammable part, the electrolyte is.
> If you want to replace FF there is exactly one solution, that's nuclear.
You're proposing to... replace vehicular internal combustion engines with nuclear reactors?
> Stop acting like you care about this issue. You have never cared enough to learn about it, so until you do, stop spreading misinformation about how physics works.
It's wild for you, in particular, to take such a weirdly aggressive stance here. Zero basis in reality, just virtue signaling.
There is nothing in my comment that could possibly be interpreted as meaning I don't care about people dying in fires.
> If you want to replace FF there is exactly one solution, that's nuclear.
We're talking about batteries, so I'm not sure how this is relevant unless you want reactors in cars?
> Stop acting like you care about this issue. You have never cared enough to learn about it, so until you do, stop spreading misinformation about how physics works.
I made a single, sourced, claim in my comment and didn't mention physics once?
> Too bad there isn't enough Li for everyone to have one.
Could this be why companies are looking at alternatives? Either way, this claim really should be provided with a source.
What are you going on about?
Not even close. We electrify more and more as tech improves. Do you really think people were using electric leaf blowers in the 1970s?
You're saying: https://insideevs.com/news/786509/catl-changan-worlds-first-... ?
-20 Celsius just happens to be a temperature for which a retention ratio was specified in the parent article, and not the limit of the operation range.
The 1000km range likely has more to do with the efficiency of the drivetrain and the aerodynamics of the car more than the battery tech. kWh is an absolute value that is fungible and the Denza has a 122.5 kWh battery pack, which means its getting 5mi/kWh. For perspective my Rivian R1S gets ~350 miles on a 135 kWh pack which is about 2.5mi/kWh (so about half that)
The only part of the battery tech that could affect range is the weight. Sodium batteries are typically much heavier than Li-on. I believe the Denza uses LFP, which means it's likely somewhere else on the car that they're gaining improvement in the range - not from the battery tech. That being said, the battery tech definitely affects the charge/discharge rates.
So they have 2 essential advantages over LFP, retention of capacity to much lower temperatures and their cost will become significantly lower when their production technology will be more mature, because they not only do not use lithium, but they also do not use other expensive substances, e.g. nickel or cobalt.
Useful, but not a "breakthrough" in energy density. More like another good low-end option.
A battery that can charge as fast as you can pump electricity into it, as many times as you want opens up a lot of possibilities.
E.g. a car that has a 200 mile range and a 5 minute charging time is way more useable than a car with 300 miles of range that takes an hour to charge.
> metal
One of these things is a manufacturing input (metal), where as the other (stuff) is a manufacturing output.
Steel mills are on a different scale altogether. And anyway, the wholesale price of steel to manufacturing industry is around the $2.50 / kg mark for plate and hot rolled sections, but you have to be buying it by the hundreds or tonnes up qualifying for those prices.
And the government did nothing.
Why didn't a private investment company, even venture capital, extend them a bridge loan? It seems like the type of technology that could have decent returns in licensing fees.
I ask this question because it seems odd to someone in the software world so flooded with startups that the government would be expected to intercede on behalf of a startup.
The ramifications range from inability to obtain product liability insurance for manufacturers, the voiding of general liability for users, and the fire marshal shutting down places where the system is installed.
Keep in mind that new products get listed under new standards developed by manufacturers all the time. But only when the new standard demonstrates ordinary safety.
The simplest likely explanation is that vc did not believe the technology was worth betting on.
While for cars sodium-ion batteries will never reach the energy per kilogram of the best lithium-ion batteries, for stationary use it makes absolutely no sense to use lithium batteries, because sodium batteries will become much cheaper when their production will be more mature, so they should always be preferred to lithium batteries.
Even for cars, sodium-ion batteries have a second advantage besides price, they retain their capacity and their charging speed down to much lower temperatures than lithium-ion batteries, so they will be preferred in cold climates.
I'm looking forward to the eventual investigational report.
BTW, the company was Natron Energy.
The benefit to the country as a whole is potentially large, but most of it wouldn't show up as profit for the company itself. I'm sure it would do quite well if it was successful, but the benefits to car manufacturers and to having this sort of technology on-shore would not translate into monetary returns on private investment. That's the sort of thing government intervention is good for.
This is not about research articles, but it is advertising already existing commercial products.
There are a handful of competing Chinese companies, which have launched during the last few months greatly improved batteries, both for cars and for stationary energy storage, removing the main complaints against such batteries, like charging times, loss of capacity at low temperatures and use of materials that might become scarce.
The latest high-power chargers made in China that achieve the 5-minute charge times have their own batteries for providing the charge power, so they take from the grid only the average power, not the peak power.
I know not everyone can charge at home (especially if you live in an apartment), but the solution to that is pretty straightforward and a lot more convenient compared with trying to scale up fast charging to match petrol stations.
It has damped my enthusiasm for perusing it as a potential future home energy storage solution.
I have never heard such a thing and all the articles that I have seen about overcharging concluded that such batteries are much safer during overcharging than other kinds of batteries, the worst case effect being battery swelling.
In normal conditions, even during overcharging there are no obvious chemical reactions that could produce hydrogen cyanide.
For instance, at
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.4c02915
it is said that cyanide release can happen only at temperatures above 300 Celsius degrees. Such temperatures cannot be reached in normal conditions.
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X2...
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.5c02345
Also understand, nothing bad happens under normal conditions. It's when the cell goes awry that bad things happen. 300C is easily obtainable by a runaway cell. I mean, short two ends of the battery together with a thin foil and see how quickly it hits 300C...
Also I'm not trying to fear monger, battery failures are very rare. But SIBs aren't totally free of scary failure modes.
They only warn against the danger of not taking care during fabrication to eliminate the moisture from the electrode.
If such low quality electrodes are made, they are prone to decomposition at lower temperatures than the well made electrodes, which have been dried sufficiently.
Similar risks of bad fabrication exist for any kind of batteries, like there were a few notorious cases of lithium-ion battery models that were prone to catch fire.
Moreover, in most applications of such batteries one must use short-circuit protections, so it should be impossible to overheat a battery by shorting its outputs. If that happens, not the battery is guilty, but whoever has designed a device without protections.
The point is that absolutely any kind of battery presents risks. Without short-circuit protections, any battery could cause a fire when shorted.
There is no reason to believe that sodium-ion batteries are less safe than lithium-ion batteries. On the contrary, it is very likely that sodium-ion batteries are safer, e.g. for not having a flammable electrolyte.
The shorting which causes failure is internal, from manufacturing defects. Yes, it's rare. No, it's not something the end user can detect or short protection can stop. This is pretty basic knowledge...hence my questioning (and you totally wooshing on the foil shorting demonstration I pointed out...batteries internally use foil, the foil is what gets hot).
So you have to decide if you want your possible but very rare event to be a small fire or a hydrogen cyanide gas leak.
Also SIBs are a new tech, so who knows what the failure rate will actually look like. Or if CN will even be a concern, the chemistry for mainstream cells might be different.
Thank you for the reasonable chuckle I got from this understatement of the day.
Burning the battery is something that I define as not normal conditions.
Many plastics produce toxic fumes when burnt and many such plastics may be used in a car. Burning the battery is not the greatest risk of toxic fumes during a fire. If the fire is intense enough, any released cyanide might also be burned.
A battery of any kind can overheat with the output shorted or during excessive overcharging, but normally whenever a battery is used in a device there are protective devices that prevent such events.
If there are no protections, the designer is guilty, not the battery. Moreover, such risks are greater for Li-ion batteries, which have flammable electrolyte.
Na-ion batteries will replace Li-ion only in certain applications, like stationary energy storage, cars for cold climates and cheaper cars, while Li-ion will remain the choice for maximum energy per kilogram.
But it is weird to be concerned about the safety of Na-ion when that is certainly not worse than for Li-ion and most likely it is better.
Also, I think HCN can be scrubbed by adding a special absorptive cap onto the battery.
Cyanide could be released only at high temperatures, e.g. if the battery is opened and burned, not during normal operation, even if overcharging is not prevented, as it should.
The sulfuric acid from the traditional lead-acid car batteries is more dangerous than this.
Very much not an equal comparison.
Cyanide could be released only at high temperatures over 300 Celsius degrees.
During a fire, there are many other things in a car that can release toxic fumes easier than a sealed battery.
It has the same LD50 dose as HCN. It literally _is_ just as bad. It routinely kills people on oil rigs because in lethal concentrations it immediately shuts off your nose.
How often do you hear about people getting poisoned by it from lead-acid batteries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide - 107 ppm (human, 10 min)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide - 600 ppm (human, 30 min)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide - 4000 ppm (human, 30 min)
These are "LCLo" values from the databoxes on those pages. More easily comparable numbers may be around somewhere.
Fast charging a car/chemical weapon in your garage isn't terribly appealing.
During charge-recharge cycles, a metallic electrode is likely to be degraded quickly.
So it is more likely that the reduced sodium atoms are intercalated in some porous electrode, e.g. of carbon, while at the other electrode the sodium ions are intercalated in some substance similar to Prussian blue.
The volatility of sodium does not matter, because it is not in contact with air or another gas, but only with electrolyte.
The substances similar with Prussian blue are very stable. During charge and discharge, the ionic charge of iron ions varies between +2 and +3 and the structure of the electrode has spaces that are empty when the charge of the iron ions is +3 and they are filled with sodium ions when the charge of the iron ions is +2.
Both states of the electrode are very stable, being neutral salts. The composition of the electrolyte does not vary depending on the state of charge of the battery and it is also stable.
The only part of the battery that can be unstable is the other electrode, which stores neutral atoms of sodium intercalated in some porous material. If you take a fully charged battery, you cut it and you extract the electrode with sodium atoms, that electrode would react with water, but at a lower speed than pure sodium, so it is not clear how dangerous such an electrode would be in comparison with the similar lithium electrodes.
In both cells the electrode that stores alkaline metal atoms has high reactivity, but in both cases the reactivity is much smaller than for a compact piece of metal, so the reaction with substances like water would proceed much more slowly than in the movies when someone throws an alkaline metal in water.
If you pierce the cell, but the electrode does not come in contact with something like water or like your hand, nothing much happens, the air would oxidize the metal, but that cannot lead to explosions or other violent reactions.
The electrolyte of lithium-ion batteries is an organic solvent that is very easily flammable if you pierce the battery. The electrolyte of sodium-ion batteries is likely to be water-based, which is safer, because such an electrolyte is not flammable. It would be caustic, but the same is true for any alkaline or acid battery, which have already been used for a couple of centuries without problems.
Overall, sodium-ion batteries should be safer than lithium-ion batteries, so safety is certainly something that cannot be hold against them.