Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production

mox@lemmy.sdf.org to Technology@lemmy.world – 859 points –
Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
newatlas.com
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50,000 cycles

Wow, a lifetime of 137 years at one cycle per day. This could make off-grid systems mainstream.

Long-time offgridder here. Would love to have a reasonable alternative to lead-acid or lithium. Opted for lead-acid again on the last battery swap around 5 years ago. Squeezed about 12 years out of the last set -though they were pretty degraded by that time. This bank is depreciating faster, probably because of increased use.

Lead acid batteries seem to be less and less reliable lately. The warranties are shorter and shorter as well, which is the best supporting evidence I have beyond needing batteries more often for the 4-5 vehicles I maintain.

For real. It will take up a lot more space than lithium, but if it lasts way longer and should end up being cheaper, it would definitely be the winning choice. Solar array on the roof and a huge outdoor battery in a shed against the house and no more electric bill, ever.

Build your walls out of batteries and tile your roof with solar panels

Make firefighter's jobs a lot easier. Hell you don't even need a firetruck to tell the people outside "Yeah, it's fucked, nobody's coming out of there"

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Batteries degrade with age too. It would probably have to be cycled 10 times a day to get that many cycles.

I could see that happening if these are used in gas hybrid cars, or ev taxis, or maybe grid scale energy buffering

They may work for non plug in hybrids, which have quite small batteries that cycle a lot, but the energy density is far too low for full EV vehicles.

Not likely, these are big and heavy and will likely be industrial.

... Sodium Ion are already being sold in EVs.

I had thought this maker had lower energy to weight density than the JAC, but I stand corrected.

The shitty thing right now is grid connection is required by pretty much any building code, and the utilities are getting wise to solar. They're moving a lot of the fees from power use to connection and line maintenance. My family was looking at solar, but since 2/3 of their power bill is just to be connected to the grid it wouldn't save enough to make economic sense.

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