A fascinating analysis of why sodium-ion batteries are only now coming into widespread use. Dr Ben Miles discusses the chemistries of lithium- and sodium-ion and how they developed, and why hybrid batteries with lithium-ion and sodium-ion cells might make sense.
Also, note this: CATL (who developed the new sodium-ion batteries) has just received a 60 GWh order for new sodium-ion batteries, equal to 50% of its lithium-ion battery sales last year. Remember that LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) batteries cost $55-$70/kWh, while sodium-ion are heading for $19/kWh. And that's not the end of the likely price decline: CATL thinks they can over time cut the cost to $10/kWh. Sodium-ion batteries also support 10,000 cycles. In other words, even if you fully charged and discharged it every day, it would still last 27 years.
And all this has happened in one year, going from laboratory to mass production!
Implication: as solar prices continue to decline, gas and oil is (again) proved to be volatile and unreliable, and storage costs fall precipitously, wind, solar and storage will be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that they will rapidly replace them. Only the US won't join in this bounty of dirt-cheap energy. The rest of the world will receive a huge boost to economic growth as electricity costs plunge.
No comments:
Post a Comment