A parallel worth bearing in mind is that LFP batteries became super popular over the last few years and are now 50% of all EV batteries worldwide, but are still rare in the US.
This is partly because the US is a richer market with higher end desires but it might mislead people in that geography into thinking that the battery mass manufacturing world moves slowly.
Meanwhile in the storage market it's gone to 90% LFP as the big deployments take advantage of the cost reductions available.
In fact the biggest impediment to sodium being rolled out was continuing reductions in LFP cost which made people less enhusiastic for alternatives.
It appears they've managed to drive costs down even further, prompting its graduation into mass scale manufacture.
I'd prefer LFP Batteries anyway. Much more stable chemistry in regards. Higher Cycle Life, Higher Temperature Stability and they are significantly less likely to blow up or catch fire in an accident. Their only disadvantage is energy density.
Sodium Ion is expected to be quite a bit better on cycle life in the end once its matured, they think it could go 20k or more cycles compared to LFPs 6k.
I was under the impression that lfp didn't work in cold temperatures, which is a problem if you want to keep it in a shed so it doesn't burn your house down.
Well, I have 15kwh of batteries in a shed (powering my internet connection and this computer, actually). The are mostly in a shed for convenience- I'm not too worried about a fire, personally.
You can charge them when freezing, but you can discharge them while freezing.
Discharging them causes their internal temperature to rise.
Last winter (I'm in the desert in CO at about 6k feet, with temps in the single digits at some points) my graphs say that they never failed to reach 40-something degrees and charge.
Maybe there are other issues I don't know about, but I certainly hope they work as well this winter as they did last winter.
LFP have a significantly more stable battery chemistry. Much more abuse tolerant and less likely to suffer thermal runaway. You'd get LFP cells so you won't have to store them in the shed due to fire safety. And while sodium ion batteries would be happy in a frozen shed they're supposed to be even more stable.
Anyway,sodium ion taking off explains the recurrent deep sales for LFP power stations. Which might still be overpriced if there developments hold up.
Most solar battery banks have moved on to LFP as of last year. They work to 10f if I'm not mistaken. Booting it up before the cold sets in will ensure it can run.
I do wonder if you could get away with abusing an LFP battery in a way you wouldn't with NMC. If you don't have to worry about running it down so much then perhaps that makes up for the lower capacity.
I see enough reports of Li battery related unpleasantness to be slightly concerned on this front, and for fixed location storage I'm less concerned with density and more so with maintenance and life span.
TFA talks about (favourable) temperature tolerance of Na, at least at the low end, I didn't see high end figures.
I can't stress enough how big a development this is in the process of making renewable energy not just the cheapest form of power, but one of the most reliable, something that will drive decarbonization in general, which will in turn drive world politics.
I hope it's on the way, but I don't think the Pioneer Na is yet a sign of this revolution. This detailed review didn't leave me in a hurry to go get one, anyway:
The idea with really cheap batteries is that they don't need good energy density. You just swap them every so often and put the one you aren't using in the charging rack. You could even carry your own reserve energy with you!
We used to have swappable batteries in virtually all of portable electronics. You could even get them in a rechargeable accumulator format. Virtually all of portable electronics has integrated batteries.
Chinese devices have standardized on taking 18650 "3.7V" cells for this purpose.
We might eventually get back there; maybe the EU will do for e.g. hand tool batteries what they have done for phone chargers and mandate an interchangeable standard.
Yeah but AAs suck, and the newer more advanced batteries all have different voltages and require different charge circuitries so it’s hard to create a new standard for them.
It’s all depends on device size and required capacity. AA is not a bad choice for many cases. And there are other replaceable batteries with higher capacity e.g. 18650.
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.
For me, this limitation applies only to my phone. I have plenty of other wireless devices and deliberately prefer devices that can use AA batteries. One reason is that I don't have to manage the multitudes of internal batteries as much and I need only 1 battery charger with batteries always ready to go. And obviously, battery going bad won't make my device useless (My DS4 controller's internal battery went bad in about a year. So I'm sticking with xbox controllers.)
A circuit that accepts the voltage range of lithium ion is probably 90-100% of the way to accepting a range of cell chemistries. And you can put in a half cent identifier chip to say what the charging voltage is.
I don't think the technical difficulties are the problem here.
It is always the case that custom configurations have advantages over other configurations. But standards give a good trade off between performance vs having a large ecosystem. Integrated batteries just add to the e-waste problem.
Why do you think AA suck ? It’s the chemistry, not the standard size, voltage or swappability right? 18650 and 21700 also have those assets. Some modern devices let you swap 18650.
Every chemistry outputs a different voltage and requires different charge controllers. So sure we could have created a standard lithium size but it would have just locked us in to one chemistry again which will eventually be obsolete. 18650s are also too bulky for most applications. Usually you want flat rectangles. Another benefit of the proprietary batteries is they can completely fill the space available rather than being constrained by the standard.
Swappable proprietaries are still better than not swappable at all. For my previous phone I managed to order an external charger and several replacement batteries.
My understanding is that it's a poor form factor for lithium ion - which operates at higher voltages, and thus needs an extra voltage regulator to step them down to 1.5V if you're packing them into the AA format (adding cost, reducing capacity, & introducing conversion losses.)
Li-ion cells are available in AA- and AAA-scaled sizes, e.g. 14500, 10440, plus fractional sizes that can be shorter or longer for the same diameter. If we wanted to not glue batteries into devices, we very well could, but that would make it harder to force purchase of a new device when the consumable component inside it fails.
I think very few manufacturers are optimizing for that. The move to integrated batteries for most portable electronics happened when the price of the battery plus charging ICs became lower than putting in a battery holder. Doing battery holder is currently simply more expensive, design is more complex putting it together is more complex. The cost are not intuitive, you can get 10+ microcontrollers for a price of a single physical on-off switch.
The idea is not that Na-Ion batteries are better than LFPs, they are not. The main goal is to make them dirt cheap.
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.
Na-Ion batteries are better than LFPs when considered the temperature range between 0C and 0f. In this [0] review, prof hobo demonstrates this is the only reason to by Na-Ion (right now).
I knew what 0°C is in °F since I know the °C to °F conversion rate, but my European self isn't able to assign any actual reference to that, which made it kinda useless to me :)
Sodium ion batteries are typically safer than lithium ion batteries. They operate safely over a wider range of temperatures, and have reduced risk of self-combustion.
Most boosters never provide lifecycle & toxicity statistics b/c it tends to run counter to their utopian narratives. What is the typical lifecycle & toxicity profile for these batteries?
Most contrarians fail to compare their detractions against alternatives such as "maintaining the status quo". Maybe batteries with hazardous chemicals in solid state form inside solid housings aren't particularly net-negative by comparison to most existing casual energy storage alternatives such as internal combustion, at least to most laypeople?
You make a claim without a source and refuse to back it up when asked, yet you are doubling down on your confidence in the initial statement. There's an interesting discussion to be had, but this is not it.
There are several factors to be considered: the actual risk of older and newer systems, the impact, how to mitigate a fire and avoid the worst consequences, and weighing against the alternatives. Especially the latter is somehow always absent in denialist narratives. However, when the alternative is basically heating the planet into a dystopian hellscape, we may accept some negatives of any kind of technology that doesn't put our whole existence at risk.
We need to be real about the downsides yes, but let's also be real and accept we don't have any choice but push forward.
Here is my 1 minute AI powered 'research' btw:
"The fire risk for battery plant storage is not a single, universally agreed-upon percentage, but available data suggests a low and decreasing risk, especially for properly maintained and installed systems. For example, one study found the 2023 risk for home battery systems to be \(0.0049\%\), while another source reports a \(97\%\) drop in large-scale system failures between 2018 and 2023. The risk is influenced by factors like manufacturing quality, installation, and maintenance."
I like that you made a post complaining about people not sourcing their claims and then eight minutes later made a post declining to source your particular claim
I don't really do research for random internet strangers but let me know when you get a few installed in your own backyard. I'd be interested in the lifecycle statistics b/c I'm sure proponents such as yourself would be more than willing to keep track of the relevant data.
I said I don't do free work for strangers on the internet but like I said, let me know when you do your own research. It will be a much better use of time than wasting more keystrokes in this thread.
This whole conversation with measurablefunc has been like seeing somebody get asked for a dollar, loudly yelling “And get a job?!” and then spending an hour trying to convince everyone in the room that they’re Bruce Wayne. I love this website.
Edit: or like seeing somebody get asked for a cookie and then saying “And go to the store? And buy sugar? And eggs? And flour? And drive home and bake them?! Hell no!” and then saying “obviously that meant I have a ton of cookies in my house right now”
Probably the questions about all the batteries you claim are burning. The ones that you read earlier and then said that you can answer.
“I would have to do research to find a list of batteries that burned and the percentage of the batteries that burned and I do not want to do that research”
“I already did the research and have a list of burned batteries and know the percentage of them that burn but I will not share it until you research it and give your findings to me”
“With all this talk of ‘what batteries burned’ and ‘the percentage of the batteries that burned’ I have completely lost track of what anyone wants to know re: my statements about all of the batteries that I claimed are burning”
Actually came across this video independently a couple of days ago, and having never come across this gentleman before it was enough to convince me that his analysis is of negligible value of the "beg the conclusion" variety.
To wit, in his review he-
-dismisses environmental concerns with Li
-dismisses safety concerns with Li
-dismissed geopolitical concerns with Li availability. Something something "environmentalists!" (shakes fist at clouds) like with the environmental concerns.
-dismisses economic advances of Na
And then the overwhelming focus of his review is that if you deep freeze the battery, it charges slowly. This becomes the foundation of his criticism. Only firstly it's a self solving issue -- the battery warms as it charges -- but in most situations the battery will be in a heated (or will be self-heating) scenario and at an ideal temperature.
I'm no Na booster, and it seems like an incremental improvement in various dimensions for certain scenarios, but that video adds extraordinarily little value to the space.
I disagree with your conclusion about the video even as I think Na is an incremental improvement. I think the video hits solidly on why the Bluetti Na Pro product is not yet a good overall product. I still think it's promising (and I think the reviewer does too). I can see why you think he's dismissing environmental/safety/geopolitical concerns. But I don't think so; I think he's simply taking the perspective of what's the best product for someone who needs to live with this as a primary power pack that they use. Obviously, someone could weigh the concerns that you mention higher than the functionality of the power pack. But reviewing it in the context of performance doesn't equate to a dismissal of those, IMO.
Cold climate isn't the interesting niche for the beginnings of grid scale Na batteries - hot climates are.
If you put LFP batteries packed into a cargo container next to a solar farm in California or Nevada, a significant portion of that container will be piping (to every cell) and compressors for a beefy AC system. LFP cells don't like to work hot.
This cooling system will take up a significant portion of space, power, and worst of all, of the total maintenance cost of the entire battery system.
An identical system made of Na batteries will take 2 containers, but need no cooling power and basically no maintenance - no moving parts, unlike the compressors and fans of the LFP pack.
I don't think cold climates will be that different here. grid scale storage doesn't care about outside temp because heating/cooling a warehouse is pretty cheap
A lot of BESS enclosures (sub grid scale, and grid scale) are much more primitive than a warehouse. If you don’t need to pay for HVAC, it’s free money for the operator.
You can also put internal heaters within the battery compartment itself, as with current EV batteries, and have the batteries manage their own temperature automatically.
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.
Thanks for this. 10$/kWh would be insane as an aspirational number but are these manufacturer costs or grid scale buyer costs or retail costs for end user in EVs/homes? To make it more specific, what % drop in per-kwh costs for grid scale storage should energy developers expect to see over the next 2-3 years due to sodium ion? Trying to nail down a best-guess percentage drop to get a feel for how big this is going to be.
That is very very variable. In the last five years, raw lithium carbonate world market prices have been swinging from $10/kg to >$70/kg and back. So right now LiFePo is getting cheaper, but if lithium explodes in price again, battery prices will rise too.
IMO, for large scale, nothing beats pumped water storage if you have the right conditions for the required lake. No risk of a bad cell causing a fire, no chemical degradation, no cooling or heating required and zero to full power within seconds just like a battery.
I should have been more clear. I'm saying sodium ion will be chosen when litium ion otherwise would have. We have a large battery at Moss Landing CA where I live. When those batteries need replacing, I'd bet they'll use sodium ion.
People are over excited about sodium-ion batteries. They are at least years away from price parity. The super-low numbers floating around are absolute fantasy until production is in the tens of gigawatt hours at least. Their real value is being a hedge on lithium prices. If large battery manufacturer can trivially reconfigure their lines to make sodium-ion batteries, that will be a giant check on large lithium price spikes.
Not until they actually make them "in volume". They could be ramping up volumes for years and years until they hit that price. When they start producing them, I would bet anything the initial run will not be $19/kWh.
Fair enough, I think that price is a while in the future but from another article:
>In the meantime, CATL’s rival BYD said that its sodium-ion batteries have made progress in reducing cost and are already on track to be on par with lithium iron phosphate battery cost next year and even 70% less in the long run. The Chinese battery maker broke ground on a 30 GWh sodium-ion battery factory earlier this year.
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.
Haven't watched the episode but the comment about price seems incorrect - CATL announced its pricing at $40 per kwh and said $19 is their target in future, which compares with $65 per kwh today for their li-ion
They also announced that CATL is starting mass production this December. The long term cost target might be closer to 10$/kwh. That's an unconfirmed rumor that has been circulating that is plausible based on material cost and other factors.
The bottom line is, mass production is starting soon at cost levels that are probably undercutting LFP from day 1. CATL is explicitly targeting use for low end EVs. IMHO this chemistry is also a good match for things like trucks given the long battery lifetime and good enough energy density. Perfect for frequent rapid charging and intensive use in long range trucks.
The video is demonstrably wrong if CATL is releasing what I just outlined in 2 months as they announced. You shouldn't believe anything you see on Youtube. There's a lot of anti EV nonsense floating around.
> $10 figure is completely made up and hyped up by hype influencers
I'm pretty sure there's more to that and do note the caveats I added. CATL is one of the largest battery producers in the world and they are basically calling BS on this in a big way that's hard to argue with (i.e. planning to ship product at scale in 2 months).
Also, second generation product. They already have sodium ion based battery powered EVs in the market with their first generation. Apparently quite cheap and competitive with LFP. This is their v2.
I looked up the source of $10 and as far as I can tell CATL said the raw material costs were $10 and then 'influencers' who were basically Matt Ferrell got it mixed up and said that was the price.
I presume the actual price will be set by what the market will pay, probably starting more like $50 and falling over time.
The crashing prices of LFP batteries has been Sodium-ions nemesis the past few years since their entire gambit is using cheaper raw materials while performing good enough for certain applications.
$10/kWh for sodium ion batteries using cheaper raw materials are definitely in reach as given by recent LFP prices.
I bought 18650 sodium-ion batteries last year.
Price is about the same as lithium-ion in small quantities, capacity is about half.
But this is currently small batches backyard production, so I expect the prices to go down. Also, the materials are available practically everywhere, so even 3rd world countries should be able to make them.
If sodium batteries are so much cheaper, why is the emphasis of this article on batteries for trucks and not grid-scale storage? Isn't the latter much more impactful?
Also naively I would expect sodium batteries to be heavier that lithium, which would make them worse for transportation but still fine for energy storage.
I haven't seen any inverters for grid purposes for the wide Voltage range that Sodium produces. It may be the inverter organisations haven't got their yet and are waiting for the batteries to be available and cheap before it makes sense.
I think a lot of households will choose Sodium just because of how cheap it will be but not until there is the basic inverter equipment to make use of it from the usual manufacturers.
They haven't produced many yet. And when they do they'll probably sell them for applications where they can charge most and make profits. The Pioneer Na(sodium) portable power station thing in the article isn't cheap. The grid storage will come when production ramps up.
Are there any better sources we should read for how and why sodium-ion batteries are better than lithium-ion batteries?
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 important bit is that sodium is much cheaper than lithium, and that translates into the batteries being less expensive per watt-hour. They're larger and heavier for the same capacity, but the lower price makes up for it, especially in grid-scale storage (where size/weight is nearly irrelevant).
Lower cost, safer, longer cycle times, better operating temperature ranges, etc. They are better in many ways. People obsess about energy density but that's not the only thing that is important. On that front the lower energy density is offset by the reduced need for costly and weighty cooling and safety mitigation.
For example NMC and LFP usually require complex cooling solutions with cooling liquids, heat pumps, hoses, etc. Peak Energy is planning to deploy a passively cooled battery in deserts. No protection from the elements. Freezing cold at night. Blazing sun during the day. Cooling solutions with all their mechanical components are the single most likely thing to fail and cause issues for storage solutions. Skipping that is a big reliability win and it reduces cost as well.
Cheaper and longer lifespan is certainly better for some applications. Less charge density by weight and volume is not better, but may be an acceptable tradeoff.
Yeah but it depends on what is setting the price. The manufacturing process is similar for lithium or sodium so if that is maxed out you may as well use lithium. If there's spare capacity sodium may make more sense due to material costs, or for specialist low temperature uses.
Where are all the commenters about how China can't innovate and they can only steal technology now...
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?
I fear caution won't make one safe from stupidity anyway. They'll find a post about transgenic mice or something and then it's goodbye Archibald Buttle. :/
The anti-China story on Sodium batteries used to be that the evil Chinese had monopolised all the lithium that the rest of the world mines and then ships to them for processing and turning into batteries.
So American companies would develop sodium instead and break this market wide open.
China has by this point large advantages in industrial ecosystems and modest cost labor, and that the state is willing to make large long-term bets on technologies it sees as important in the future.
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.
I think it's pretty peak neoliberalism to discover and double down on collecting rents and trading make believe financial instruments in air conditioned offices than do dirty work making commodity widgets. Peak neolibralism seems like optmizing for spreadsheet competitiveness longterm and we're rapidly finding out that is not the right kind of competitiveness.
And workers rights, minimum wage and immigration restrictions. This trifecta of anti-neoliberal policies destroyed manufacturing competitiveness. But the term "neoliberal" has become a slur which is defined as "subset of the status quo that I don't like", and it will endlessly shapeshift so that it can be blamed for whatever is being discussed.
> And workers rights, minimum wage and immigration restrictions. This trifecta of anti-neoliberal policies destroyed manufacturing competitiveness.
The thing is, 996 works in China because China is a dictatorship where workers have no rights and for a lot of them 996 is better than the utter poverty they came from.
But we? We cannot compete with 996, not if we don't devolve to outright slavery, to conditions of the 1800s.
Sure, we don't have to be competitive with China on manufacturing, but that is hardly the fault of neoliberalism, which was the subject of discussion. It's quite squarely the "fault" of anti-neoliberal policies like immigration restrictions and minimum wage. We could have had Chinese workers on Chinese wages on Western soil making widgets for Western firms, basically a neoliberal wet dream, but that was prevented by anti-neoliberal policies.
It's not really the innovation part. The Chinese actually put research into mass production.
At some point when Americans were still denying climate change the CCP looked at the massive environmental destruction around them and decided to do something about it.
The sodium ion battery was invented over 200 years ago. No one needs to steal the technology, and manufacturing is basically the same.
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.
I skimmed through the article. It talks a lot about sodium ion batteries and how major vehicle and transportation companies are getting into making and using these batteries. It also talks about the cost aspect, with sodium ion being cheaper than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
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.
Phone and laptop batteries probably make up a tiny fraction of the battery market. My EV battery is almost 5000 times the size of my iphone.
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
Since their energy density is still lower, it will probably take a while for them to be adapted in EVs.
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.
I bet we (well, China, at least) will see some lower range but cheaper EVs using sodium batteries pretty much right away. A lot of people would be fine with having something that can only do 100 miles as their daily commute vehicle as long as it was cheap, especially in 2 vehicle families.
As another comment mentioned, sodium ion batteries compete very poorly against lithium when portability is paramount.
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.
You may see a mixture of sodium and lithium batteries in grid storage; one for providing very short-term grid stabilization of the order of seconds to minutes, the other for long-term large-scale storage, which is by far the largest application. Possibly both within the same battery farm.
I doubt that could happen. The price is so low that it doesn't make a difference unless your sodium costs negative dollars.
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.
On the other hand the bill of materials of many gadgets is really low while having tight margins. If there are two $100 tablets on the market and the other can advertise a 30% longer runtime weighing 15% more at the same cost, it could be a differentiator.
Increased usage of Sodium batteries for static applications (home storage) could reduce demand for Li based batteries. This could reduce the cost of Laptop batteries.
More likely to do the opposite as economies of scale decrease for lithium - though rapidly advancing battery technology and scale in general means I'd be shocked if it ever managed to do the opposite enough to increase prices and not just slow the decline in prices.
the point of sodium batteries is that for stationary applications (e.g. ups/house backup), we've been using scaled up cell phone batteries for the last decade because the tech space was doing all the r&d. now that we know how good batteries can be, every important niche is getting it's own billions of dollars spent to find the perfect battery for that application
> for stationary applications (e.g. ups/house backup), we've been using scaled up cell phone batteries for the last decade
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.
that's fair. in the past 5 years or so, we've been using scaled up car batteries instead of scaled up cell phone batteries which is a lot better, but still imperfect
Opportunity is for (stationary) appliances, rather than devices.
For instance startup Channing Street Copper's battery powered induction stove. Their battery is large enough to also power your refrigerator for 3 days (IIRC).
In effect, a combination Powerwall and stove. Without requiring a panel upgrade. Apartment dwellers can cost effectively electrify All The Things. It greatly improves resiliency. Unlocks distributed grid power generation and storage (IIRC something like "VPP" for "virtual power plant").
"Induction stoves with batteries built in, and why they matter" [2022]
For my EV, which I charge about once a week on average, with 4,000 cycles that means about 77 years!! That's a huge deal. CATL quoted 10k cycle battery too. Wow. Very cool. Yeah energy density and operating profile and all that. But color me impressed.
It’s not only about longevity in time but also in terms of miles.
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).
If you look through second-hand car listings in Europe, >400,000km is not that usual to see. In places where cars are relatively expensive, folks keep them running forever...
That said, a million miles is probably enough for anyone :D
In the US you see a lot of cars with many miles on them because distances are bigger there, especially on the west coast.
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
Very interesting. I've been thinking for the past few years that new battery technology is really what will be the catalyst for the next generation of technology across all industries. I'm curious about their use in smaller consumer electronics, or if lithium will still be the standard for many more years to come.
Ideally they will be used in personal electronics as sodium chloride solid state (SCSS) batteries are far safer and not going to explode or cause a run-away fire.
They also don't need some "critical" minerals such as graphite, cobalt and nickel.
I guess it depends on your perspective. If you're Chinese, graphite is abundant and available as 98% of processing currently occurs in China. Lithium, not so much which is why it is Chinese firms leading development of sodium ion battery technology.
As with the rare earth minerals, the supply of graphite, cobalt and nickel is vulnerable hence the designation as critical minerals by Western Governments.
That the worlds largest battery manufacturers have gone ahead with building gigawatt production plants
is basicly the wake up call. They have done this based on real world deploymemt of electric cars in multiple markets over the last 3 years and of course for the main use as storage and buffering batteries, which will then allow for the full electrification of the transport sector, without putting undue strain on the,(thier) grid.
this has further impact as energy costs will drop significantly, while noise and pollution also decrease dramaticaly,while increasing saftey and reiability.
any country holding back is seriously fucked.
Your personal use is drop in the ocean with how much power AI will require (10GW of datacenters already planned, multiply this by 100-1000x for next 100 yrs)
Just curious, what's your background in batteries? From my understanding, sodium based batteries are safer than lithium, but I would defer to anyone with real expertise in the subject.
Replace your Sodium Or Lithium by petrol or gas, and your comment would have been typical in the beginning of the 20 century.
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.
Vapor. Which is convenient for fire fighting in all sorts of ways. Just because you put the fire out does not mean you've discharged all the stored energy and re-ignitions are a serious concern in lithium battery systems, whereas with fuel, you actually can make the fuel inert and then you can remove it, separately from the vehicle.
This is partly because the US is a richer market with higher end desires but it might mislead people in that geography into thinking that the battery mass manufacturing world moves slowly.
Meanwhile in the storage market it's gone to 90% LFP as the big deployments take advantage of the cost reductions available.
In fact the biggest impediment to sodium being rolled out was continuing reductions in LFP cost which made people less enhusiastic for alternatives.
It appears they've managed to drive costs down even further, prompting its graduation into mass scale manufacture.
“One day kids, this stationary storage facility will all be yours.”
You can charge them when freezing, but you can discharge them while freezing.
Discharging them causes their internal temperature to rise.
Last winter (I'm in the desert in CO at about 6k feet, with temps in the single digits at some points) my graphs say that they never failed to reach 40-something degrees and charge.
Maybe there are other issues I don't know about, but I certainly hope they work as well this winter as they did last winter.
Anyway,sodium ion taking off explains the recurrent deep sales for LFP power stations. Which might still be overpriced if there developments hold up.
I see enough reports of Li battery related unpleasantness to be slightly concerned on this front, and for fixed location storage I'm less concerned with density and more so with maintenance and life span.
TFA talks about (favourable) temperature tolerance of Na, at least at the low end, I didn't see high end figures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZ_g_MShTw
We might eventually get back there; maybe the EU will do for e.g. hand tool batteries what they have done for phone chargers and mandate an interchangeable standard.
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.
I don't think the technical difficulties are the problem here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKYF1CXZPng
But please don't exactly match AA/AAA sizes. That will cause much more harm than good.
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.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZ_g_MShTw
-18°C to 0°C
0°F to 32°F
That still leaves an Additional overhead due to power electronics and assembly but all in all it's a pretty impressive development.
There are several factors to be considered: the actual risk of older and newer systems, the impact, how to mitigate a fire and avoid the worst consequences, and weighing against the alternatives. Especially the latter is somehow always absent in denialist narratives. However, when the alternative is basically heating the planet into a dystopian hellscape, we may accept some negatives of any kind of technology that doesn't put our whole existence at risk.
We need to be real about the downsides yes, but let's also be real and accept we don't have any choice but push forward.
Here is my 1 minute AI powered 'research' btw:
"The fire risk for battery plant storage is not a single, universally agreed-upon percentage, but available data suggests a low and decreasing risk, especially for properly maintained and installed systems. For example, one study found the 2023 risk for home battery systems to be \(0.0049\%\), while another source reports a \(97\%\) drop in large-scale system failures between 2018 and 2023. The risk is influenced by factors like manufacturing quality, installation, and maintenance."
Doesn't seem all that alarming yet.
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.
Edit: or like seeing somebody get asked for a cookie and then saying “And go to the store? And buy sugar? And eggs? And flour? And drive home and bake them?! Hell no!” and then saying “obviously that meant I have a ton of cookies in my house right now”
Probably the questions about all the batteries you claim are burning. The ones that you read earlier and then said that you can answer.
“I would have to do research to find a list of batteries that burned and the percentage of the batteries that burned and I do not want to do that research”
“I already did the research and have a list of burned batteries and know the percentage of them that burn but I will not share it until you research it and give your findings to me”
“With all this talk of ‘what batteries burned’ and ‘the percentage of the batteries that burned’ I have completely lost track of what anyone wants to know re: my statements about all of the batteries that I claimed are burning”
¹https://newenergyrisk.com/battery-fires/
I’m not sure what your point is? All batteries are bad? Oil is good? What?
To wit, in his review he-
-dismisses environmental concerns with Li
-dismisses safety concerns with Li
-dismissed geopolitical concerns with Li availability. Something something "environmentalists!" (shakes fist at clouds) like with the environmental concerns.
-dismisses economic advances of Na
And then the overwhelming focus of his review is that if you deep freeze the battery, it charges slowly. This becomes the foundation of his criticism. Only firstly it's a self solving issue -- the battery warms as it charges -- but in most situations the battery will be in a heated (or will be self-heating) scenario and at an ideal temperature.
I'm no Na booster, and it seems like an incremental improvement in various dimensions for certain scenarios, but that video adds extraordinarily little value to the space.
If you put LFP batteries packed into a cargo container next to a solar farm in California or Nevada, a significant portion of that container will be piping (to every cell) and compressors for a beefy AC system. LFP cells don't like to work hot.
This cooling system will take up a significant portion of space, power, and worst of all, of the total maintenance cost of the entire battery system.
An identical system made of Na batteries will take 2 containers, but need no cooling power and basically no maintenance - no moving parts, unlike the compressors and fans of the LFP pack.
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.
https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering...
Isn’t lithium only about 15% of the cost of an LFP cell to begin with?
Yes, but you don't. Those conditions are really scarce. And in the UK they're all either nature reserves or already used for this purpose.
If a sodium battery is heavy and bigger but used for gridscale then that'll work fine.
https://cmpesglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Us-Eic-Co... page 31
Sounds price competitive already?
>In the meantime, CATL’s rival BYD said that its sodium-ion batteries have made progress in reducing cost and are already on track to be on par with lithium iron phosphate battery cost next year and even 70% less in the long run. The Chinese battery maker broke ground on a 30 GWh sodium-ion battery factory earlier this year.
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.
The bottom line is, mass production is starting soon at cost levels that are probably undercutting LFP from day 1. CATL is explicitly targeting use for low end EVs. IMHO this chemistry is also a good match for things like trucks given the long battery lifetime and good enough energy density. Perfect for frequent rapid charging and intensive use in long range trucks.
$10 figure is completely made up and hyped up by hype influencers .
> $10 figure is completely made up and hyped up by hype influencers
I'm pretty sure there's more to that and do note the caveats I added. CATL is one of the largest battery producers in the world and they are basically calling BS on this in a big way that's hard to argue with (i.e. planning to ship product at scale in 2 months).
Also, second generation product. They already have sodium ion based battery powered EVs in the market with their first generation. Apparently quite cheap and competitive with LFP. This is their v2.
You shouldn't believe everything on Youtube.
I presume the actual price will be set by what the market will pay, probably starting more like $50 and falling over time.
https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering...
The crashing prices of LFP batteries has been Sodium-ions nemesis the past few years since their entire gambit is using cheaper raw materials while performing good enough for certain applications.
$10/kWh for sodium ion batteries using cheaper raw materials are definitely in reach as given by recent LFP prices.
But this is currently small batches backyard production, so I expect the prices to go down. Also, the materials are available practically everywhere, so even 3rd world countries should be able to make them.
Also naively I would expect sodium batteries to be heavier that lithium, which would make them worse for transportation but still fine for energy storage.
I think a lot of households will choose Sodium just because of how cheap it will be but not until there is the basic inverter equipment to make use of it from the usual manufacturers.
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.
So yes, the battery will be heavier because sodium's heavier, but it's so much cheaper that you can afford the extra footprint.
The allure is cheaper input materials, potentially very long lifespans and creating a hedge against the boom and bust cycle of the lithium market.
For example NMC and LFP usually require complex cooling solutions with cooling liquids, heat pumps, hoses, etc. Peak Energy is planning to deploy a passively cooled battery in deserts. No protection from the elements. Freezing cold at night. Blazing sun during the day. Cooling solutions with all their mechanical components are the single most likely thing to fail and cause issues for storage solutions. Skipping that is a big reliability win and it reduces cost as well.
> The allure is cheaper ...
When it comes to grid energy storage, cheaper (while also safe and performant) is better, don't you think?
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?
I have heard that the USA has abandoned that strategy recently, but I think it is too early to see any impact.
So American companies would develop sodium instead and break this market wide open.
But the Chinese appear to have beat them to it.
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.
The thing is, 996 works in China because China is a dictatorship where workers have no rights and for a lot of them 996 is better than the utter poverty they came from.
But we? We cannot compete with 996, not if we don't devolve to outright slavery, to conditions of the 1800s.
At some point when Americans were still denying climate change the CCP looked at the massive environmental destruction around them and decided to do something about it.
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.
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.
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.
Phones and laptops are weight/volume sensitive, and sodium ions are a lot larger than lithium ions, thus the battery energy density is lower.
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.
For instance startup Channing Street Copper's battery powered induction stove. Their battery is large enough to also power your refrigerator for 3 days (IIRC).
In effect, a combination Powerwall and stove. Without requiring a panel upgrade. Apartment dwellers can cost effectively electrify All The Things. It greatly improves resiliency. Unlocks distributed grid power generation and storage (IIRC something like "VPP" for "virtual power plant").
"Induction stoves with batteries built in, and why they matter" [2022]
https://www.volts.wtf/p/induction-stoves-with-batteries-buil...
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).
That said, a million miles is probably enough for anyone :D
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
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.
my 95 mx-5 has nearly 360,000 mi. on it
They also don't need some "critical" minerals such as graphite, cobalt and nickel.
As with the rare earth minerals, the supply of graphite, cobalt and nickel is vulnerable hence the designation as critical minerals by Western Governments.
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.
https://xkcd.com/651/
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.