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

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

#301

Post by rockskon »

shkkmo wrote: post #299
rockskon wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the stated use cases of the post I responded to was electric vehicles and mobile devices, my response was framed in terms of that. Consumer devices - especially phones - famously prioritize battery life.

They also prioritize price, especially at the low end. If sodium batteries are significantly cheaper, it will be used to produce low cost devices.

What?

Smart phones are famously high-margin devices. What do you mean "prioritize price"? Not for most smart phones.

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

#302

Post by some_furry »

chefkd wrote: post #297
some_furry wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At that point you have a choice: fail, or build out where labor is cheap, workers are disposable and regulators are just low-cost party agents, and use your position as US company to readily import your foreign made products. Why are any of us okay with humans being "disposable" anywhere on Earth?

I think is just the way of the world. Not saying it's right but it's just reality. I come from a place where people kill and do horrible things for 10 dollars a day to build the same battery with maybe a 10 percent drop in quality. I doubt anyone in the US would be willing to work for that comparative advantage or something at play. How would you ensure that doesn't happen? Making everyone equal via something like Ma…

Uplift labor and human rights movements everywhere so they can retain self-determination but still extinguish the hellscape of exploitation that we have currently.

We don't need anything top-down.

I understand there would be challenges with doing that, but I like to think a better world is possible and it starts with respecting others' humanity.

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

#303

Post by pornel »

silisili wrote: post #257
pornel wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current state of the art is somewhere in between with 18 minutes per ~3 hours. It even helps to split charging into shorter sessions (2x 9 minutes), because batteries charge fastest when they're about 25% full. Keep in mind that EVs charge unattended, so you only spend a minute plugging in, and can leave to get a coffee, etc.

How 'guaranteed' is that rate? I don't keep up with it like I probably should, but seem to often read that some chargers are outdated, and sometimes you have to 'share' if somebody else is charging nearby?

In the EU, there are Ionity and Fastned networks that can guarantee their chargers will be fast enough for this (>=250kW), and together they have a pretty decent coverage along major highways.

There are setups that have their max rated power per dispenser (“pump”), and halve it if two cars are plugged in to the same dispenser at the same time. Good chargers can do 300kW. If that splits to 150kW it’s not too bad - maybe 5 min slower, rather than double. That’s because the max speed the car can take is a curve, and that only flattens the peak.

However, for the 18-min charging the biggest gotcha is the temperature. In Hyundai/Kia it requires the battery to be at 20-25°C. That’s easy in the summer. In the winter the charging speed can drop as low as 80kW.

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

#304

Post by jtriangle »

eternityforest wrote: post #298
jtriangle wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly can, provided you have a truck, and a DOT certified fuel trailer, and a transfer pump. That system also allows you to participate in oil futures as an end user, not to mention it lets you keep your generator up and running for a very long time. Downside is, modern e10 gasoline tends to adsorb water from the air over time, so fuel isn't stable long term. Most guys doing this are running diesel cars/gense…

Is running a generator for long periods cost effective? If someone lived where the grid wasn't reliable, and could make the initial investment for all this fuel storage stuff, why not do solar?

Usually it's a backup thing, not a 24/7 thing. If you're really out in the sticks, solar/battery/genset is a very likely complete system. I know of a couple places way up north in Saskatchewan that have what amounts to a mining village running off a big portable genset backed up with batteries, and one of them I know was just on a very big genset, and they were able to pay for a battery bank by downsizing their generator significantly due to the disparity between peak load and average load. I'd share the article I read about it, but, in spite of my normally excellent google-fu, I've been unable to find it.

Either way, people forget about this, because if you have any sort of power generation, doesn't matter the method, if you go over capacity, you have brownouts/blackouts/grid failure/etc. What is deployed now, for the most part, is sufficient genset capacity to ramp into peak load, and most of it is under-utilized the majority of the time. Batteries eventually pay for themselves because of this, as they allow for peak load handling in addition to allowing generating capacity to stay online and remain profitable outside of peak load events. It really is revolutionary.

More or less, gridscale batteries are what dams/reservoirs were to water systems, and if you consider the impact of us as a species being able to save water for later use at-will, the promise we're looking at is going to really change the way we live.

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

#305

Post by ianai »

some_furry wrote: post #302
chefkd wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think is just the way of the world. Not saying it's right but it's just reality. I come from a place where people kill and do horrible things for 10 dollars a day to build the same battery with maybe a 10 percent drop in quality. I doubt anyone in the US would be willing to work for that comparative advantage or something at play. How would you ensure that doesn't happen? Making everyone equal via something like Ma…

Uplift labor and human rights movements everywhere so they can retain self-determination but still extinguish the hellscape of exploitation that we have currently. We don't need anything top-down. I understand there would be challenges with doing that, but I like to think a better world is possible and it starts with respecting others' humanity.

The no further regulation option is people looking for the “made in …” on goods and not buying from certain countries. Then invoke Milton freedman.

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

#306

Post by IntelMiner »

rockskon wrote: post #301
shkkmo wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also prioritize price, especially at the low end. If sodium batteries are significantly cheaper, it will be used to produce low cost devices.

What? Smart phones are famously high-margin devices. What do you mean "prioritize price"? Not for most smart phones.

There's a few billion people who can't afford the latest model iPhone or Google Pixel device each year

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

#307

Post by ekianjo »

rockskon wrote: post #301
shkkmo wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also prioritize price, especially at the low end. If sodium batteries are significantly cheaper, it will be used to produce low cost devices.

What? Smart phones are famously high-margin devices. What do you mean "prioritize price"? Not for most smart phones.

there are a lot of smartphones sold for low end markets like India and China. most of the worlds phones, actually.

not everyone lives in California and makes a million a year

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

#308

Post by theendisney »

elihu wrote: post #265
alemanek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article it claims charge speed 10x that of lithium and 50,000 cycle lifetime. I don’t know about you but a EV that can go 150 miles and charge to 80% again in 2min would be super compelling to me. Solid commuter car but not too annoying on the rare roadtrip. But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time.

Fast charge speeds make electrified highways a more viable option. There are some projects in Europe using overhead lines (for trucks) or power rails embedded in slots in the road surface (usable by cars or trucks) so that vehicles can recharge while moving. Building a network of electrified highways is expensive though. One way to reduce initial costs is not to electrify the whole length but to have, say, one mile o…

imagine this!

Have short charging strips at traffic lights then prioritize lanes with cars that dont need much charge.

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

#309

Post by tedd4u »

karmajunkie wrote: post #248
brnt wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybrids get a bad rep. It makes for such a difference: knowing that you don't need to worry about that 1%.

The argument against hybrids that's always resonated with me is that you get the maintenance costs of a gasoline engine with the upfront costs of a battery. I've owned a Leaf and found it relatively trouble-free but never a hybrid. Am I just buying into FUD there?

It's easy to like plug-in hybrids (I do), but it does feel transitional. As you pointed out, you have the potential for higher maintenance costs, _plus_ during electric operation, you carry the weight of ICE, fuel, fancy transmission, etc. which makes electric operation less efficient. And vice versa, during ICE operation you have a big battery and motor to carry around, reducing fossil fuel efficiency. I guess you could add a boiler and coal hopper for tri-modal steam operation.

One caveat is, depending on your workload, you might put only 25% of the time on the ICE per mile driven (since most short trips would be electric). I.e. if an ICE car runs the engine for 2,500 hours per 100,000 miles, a plug-in hybrid might only have run the engine 500-600 hours at 100k miles.

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

#310

Post by creeble »

ForOldHack wrote: post #192
fwungy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOE puts out comparison papers at times, but I haven't looked in a while.

"The energy density of sodium ion batteries is low.It is only 100-150Wh/kg, while the energy density of lithium energy is 120-180Wh/kg. This means that for batteries of the same size, sodium-ion batteries can store much less energy than lithium-ion batteries.Jan 2, 2024" https://www.dnkpower.com/will-sodium-batteries-replace-lithi...

Depends on where you get your numbers:

“The density of sodium batteries is still relatively low, between 140 Wh/Kg and 160 Wh/kg, compared to lithium-ion battery’s 180 Wh/Kg–250 Wh/Kg.”

https://www.flashbattery.tech/en/sodium-batteries/

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