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GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

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Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#81

Post by kotaKat »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #41

Surely this will just be Chinese hardware with a "made in America" label slapped on it. I can't fathom why anyone would allow GM of all companies to get any contracts

I thought they were too busy with a hardon for hydrogen power for the future. When'd GM suddenly decide they wanted to get into the salt battery game too?

It's all a game of desperation for a failing automaker once again desperate for bailouts in new, fun ways.

First they run over a few kids with Cruise, then they decide they wanna get into the H-bomb game, now it's... molden salt?

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#82

Post by tim333 »

hgomersall wrote: post #78

I've been pondering the question of what happens if you change the design requirements to say, 20 charge/discharge cycles in total, then use it over seasonal timescales. Can you get the price so low that you can scale up enough battery storage to buffer a whole season?

I don't think anyone's cracked that yet. There was a YC startup trying to do stuff with iron oxide. (https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/gigantic-form...)

And proposals using aluminium but again not in action.

Also zinc air https://inc42.com/startups/sthyr-energy-aims-to-tame-169-bn-...

the trouble is it's easy enough to propose such things but hard to be economically competitive with existing solutions. My guess is sodium ion will get cheap because the ingredients are cheap and there's a lot of money going into mass production which will bring the cost of that down over time.

There's an ancient non electrical seasonal solar storage practiced in Austria and such places where they grow tree and then chop them into logs for the winter but it's a bit labour intensive.

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#83

Post by someothherguyy »

xbmcuser wrote: post #32
wlesieutre wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert, but from what I read the expectation is for sodium ion batteries to get substantially cheaper than lithium, mainly due to material cost. 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 i…

AT grid scale, sodium quickly closes the gap on lithium. The safety overhead, active cooling, and physical spacing needed to control lithium’s thermal runaway risk eat away most of its energy density advantage. Plus, CATL is hitting cost parity between full sodium BESS and LFP BESS systems.

SIBs have TR risks as well, no?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24058...

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#84

Post by tim333 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #44
lebuffon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other big reason is the longevity. LFP life span gives you about 2000-5000 cycles depending on where your application can't tolerate the capacity reduction. Sodium Ion can go to 10,000 cycles (27 years) with a 70% capacity reduction at that life. 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 amor…

Does it really look more favorable? My understanding was that such far future returns had minimal Net Present Value

I saw an interview with I think the CATL ceo and he was saying it's quite a headache ensuring the batteries last that long. Grid storage companies want 25 or 30 year guarantees. It sounds like sodium may have the advantage there.

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#85

Post by reacharavindh »

wlesieutre wrote: post #11
TwiztidK wrote: post #4

My company operates two Jupiter Power owned LFP batteries in the MISO market. Each of them draws .5 - 2MW constantly for the HVAC system. If the cost for sodium batteries is similar to LFP, that alone would be a reason to switch.

Not an expert, but from what I read the expectation is for sodium ion batteries to get substantially cheaper than lithium, mainly due to material cost. 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 i…

A dystopian possibly impractical dream.. imagine a pyramid like structure in every neighborhood, made from blocks of such cheap sodium ion batteries, the outside of the pyramid is covered in soil and greens, the top which could even be a windmill. The green space is for walking around, kids playing, a few bike trails, whatever fun. The whole neighborhood is power buffered through this pyramid. The national power grid only needs to supply these pyramids.. with renewable energy. The houses, parking lots etc have solar panels that feed into the pyramid.

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#86

Post by aitchnyu »

m463 wrote: post #45

> a round-trip efficiency of 96 percent Doesn't matter for cars, but I think that's pretty good/important for grid storage.

Series hybrid cars which do fuel->electricity->motion are unacceptably inefficient and flopped at sales. Will sodium make them viable? My reckless googling says LFP batteries in vehicles has roundtrip efficiency of 80% and sodium has 95%.

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#87

Post by formerly_proven »

cyberax wrote: post #15
petcat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your comment would be more interesting if you actually provided any details at all

Sorry, I accidentally cut off the last paragraph when posting. The company was Natron Energy: https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/05/natrons-liquidation-shows-...

Germany is currently liquidating their high-performance lithium-ion battery maker.

Western industrial policy is indistinguishable from malicious interference.

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#88

Post by janderson215 »

wiml wrote: post #72
antisthenes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the cost for sodium batteries is similar to LFP, that alone would be a reason to switch. Why would that be a reason to switch, given the LFP batteries typically have better operational parameters in everything except cold-weather charging?

My interpretation of TwiztidK's comment is that they could save the cost of that .5–2 MW power draw by switching to a battery chemistry with looser temperature requirements.

Thank you, I was confused as well. This makes sense. Similar fixed cost and much lower/negligible variable cost.

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#89

Post by xbmcuser »

someothherguyy wrote: post #83
xbmcuser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT grid scale, sodium quickly closes the gap on lithium. The safety overhead, active cooling, and physical spacing needed to control lithium’s thermal runaway risk eat away most of its energy density advantage. Plus, CATL is hitting cost parity between full sodium BESS and LFP BESS systems.

SIBs have TR risks as well, no? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24058...

[dead]

Re: GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

#90

Post by adrian_b »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #77

from what I've heard, the problem with moving sodium from lab to manufacturing is that all the industrial processes and machinery have been setup for lithium and the factories are reluctant to invest in entire new sodium setup for not much benefit for them ; lithium works perfectly well and is in fact the superior product, why switch? Lithium prices have faced a massive crash, so there is no cost penalty for them any…

In TFA it said that the US company that was shut down (Natron) pursued a solution quite different from lithium batteries (with an organo-metallic electrode), which may have been a reason for their failure.

On the other hand the 2 Chinese companies that now make sodium batteries "rely on sodium iron pyrophosphate (NFPP) cathodes, which are chemically and structurally similar to lithium-iron phosphate in an LFP battery".

This similarity probably enabled them to reuse much of their existing fabrication lines for LFP batteries.

It is unavoidable that in the long term the cost of sodium batteries will be much lower than of any lithium batteries.

That would have been enough for their adoption for stationary uses, but their much greater temperature range (which allows operation and charging at -40 degrees, both Celsius and Fahrenheit) and their longer lifetime are enough to make them replace lithium batteries in certain applications even without the price advantage.

Lithium batteries will always be used in mobile applications, because they will continue to have a better energy per weight ratio, but for high energy stationary uses and for vehicles in cold climates it is likely that they will be mostly completely replaced by sodium batteries.

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