India has a "made in India" mandate which is hilarious. >80% of solar panel (polysilicon, ingots, and silicon wafers) is from China. Situation is worse with batteries and EVs. Tata, which has been making vehicles for quite some time doesn't have any clue how to make EVs and is building an entire plant with a Chinese company (Chery).
Of course, everything will be labeled "made in ....".
In any country, the super rich have a simple algorithm:
1) Get it manufactured in China, slap your label and sell. Free trade is good for you, thousands of economists reports, blah, blah.
2) When its impossible to compete: China is security threat, we can't allow them. But we'll import most of it (80 - 90% of components) and still put our label.
Its easy to manipulate Govts, lobby or buy (Musk).
Why would that be a reason to switch, given the LFP batteries typically have better operational parameters in everything except cold-weather charging?
Lithium makes up 0.002% of the Earth's crust, meanwhile sodium is 2.36%, and there's quite a lot of it in the ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
The main downside is power density, which for grid storage is not as big a deal as it is for vehicles. But it will still be some years of research on sodium batteries for the cost advantage and manufacturing scale to materialize.
This makes financing a large grid scale storage plant look way better to the bean counters because the investment continues to work and make money, after the 5 year amortization, typical of a corporate investment. This will be the kicker IMHO.
I have 15kwh of lifepo, and even if it weren't hooked to 4kw of solar I could still run my fridge, charge my phone, and run the fan in my fireplace for 4-6 days... longer if I dump the fridge.
It's 6U of deep 19" rack space.
So 2 x that isn't an entire shed-sized battery.
Though I'd happily have a shed-sized battery... I suspect that delivering and covering something that size would cost more than the batteries I already have, though.
If the GP commenter is typing in from the UK .. that's a not uncommon garden tool shed size.
By contrast modern Australian farm sheds have clouds forming within them and host birds that seasonally migrate from one side to the other.
If this battery plus some solar panels could get us free power for the next 20+ years, that's easily worth $15-$20k or so.
I live in middle of nowhere so I just built out a system myself. I am about 8k into it. It's not the biggest system (6kw inverter, 4kw panels, 15kwh storage) but it's fine for one old man living a 2kM in the high desert.
Doesn't matter for cars, but I think that's pretty good/important for grid storage.
> The batteries are showing a round-trip efficiency of 96 percent, a significant 2 to 3 percent better than LFP. (“Round trip” refers to the amount of energy a battery discharges, relative to the amount used to charge it).
I think for cars, the efficiency probably doesn't matter that much. If it costs $1.03 per kwh instead of $1.00 per kwh, or 103 miles vs 100 miles, no car owner will care.
But grid storage is all about efficiency.
Anyone have a good idea when these will be available for consumers?
Na-Ion cells are great for grid-scale storage because they potentially can go down to something like $20 per kWh. But bulk LFP cells are already at ~$60 per kWh, so their cost is not really a deciding factor anymore.
Na is basically Li times 30. This is good in that they make really effective batteries. This is bad in that when the battery malfunctions, the energy is released at 30x the rate. So remember when that Telsa caught fire and the driver walked away very scared but ok. If those were Na-ion, they wouldn't be ok...or alive...or recognizable as human. Basically, these are far too dangerous for consumer use. And any grid scale battery will need about a mile of gravel around them to prevent any fires or deaths from explosions.
Sodium ion batteries are less energy dense than lithium ion and are not prone to dendrite formation. They are also more thermally stable and less likely to do thermal run away reactions.
Also, since they are less energy dense they don’t store the same potential energy.
You are probably thinking of metallic sodium batteries which are completely different.
Got a study you can link about that?
This company got sold for scrap.
Like, that's not an unreasonable size of loan for a regional expansion for medium-sized businesses; there should be some sort of lender interested in doing that for them.
So really just assembly and sales then. I suppose it's a good start and maybe if business takes off they can figure out their own cells.
Is GM testing Peak's cells or some Chinese company's cells?
In a car it’s worth paying more for higher volumetric and gravitational density. For aircraft even more so.
For grid storage, physical space is usually not the largest issue. Cost of deployment, stability, and cycle life are bigger factors.
QuantumScape is a good example as it entered into agreements with opertors for their battery tech.
Good article on solid state for the grid: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2025/ph240/mann2/
https://electrek.co/2026/02/05/first-sodium-ion-battery-ev-d...
Sodium ion batteries are safer than Lithium ion or LFP batteries and also perform better in very cold temperatures.