- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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Sodium? Like, salt sodium?
Yes, that very sodium. The one that combines with chlorine to give you table salt.
Super abundant, incredibly cheap, much more environmentally friendly.
Salt is sodium chloride. Sodium is a metal, and it is right below Lithium on the periodic table (behaves and reacts similarly).
Lower power density, higher cycle life, safer. Sounds good for stationary power storage.
Higher cycle life might also make it good for hybrids, since they cycle their batteries a fair bit.
For sure. They would likely use a lower capacity battery due to these being much less energy dense, though. Hybrids have been using bigger batteries and only using around a 30% zone of charge state in order to greatly prolong battery degradation. I’d imagine auto makers would try to keep the batteries around the same size, but start using more like a 60 or 70% zone, though. So they’ll take advantage of that higher cycle life.
You won’t get an automaker to care about making a battery that lasts much beyond 10 years.
And commuter cars probably. I’d love something I can drive to work and back, and then later upcycle into home energy storage.
CATL showed a 160 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery in 2021 and has plans to increase that density over 200 Wh/kg to better meet the needs of electric vehicles.
Hopefully that happens in a reasonable timeframe. I don’t need high range, I just need cheap to repair or long life for a commuter. Maybe we’ll get something similar for buses and light rail first before getting it for regular cars.
Yes, absolutely. For a regular daily commute to a job that allows you to afford 2 vehicles, having one of the two with a shorter range with more charge cycles makes a lot of sense.
Yup. I’m married with kids, so we need two cars regardless. The commuter just needs to reliably go ~50 miles between charges even during the winter, while the family car needs to fit my wife and kids and go at least 400 miles between charges (we like road trips).
Unfortunately, I haven’t found the right fit since EVs are either too expensive, don’t have enough winter range (e.g. old Leafs), or have too many safety advisories (e.g. batteries catching fire don’t mesh with garage storage). Likewise for family cars. Most current EVs are in the awkward middle: too much range for a commute, and not enough for a road trip.
But if there was an economy car with ~150 miles range and inexpensive batteries, I’d probably buy it.
The Volt was really good for this - 50 miles electric and 430 miles gas on a 7 gallon tank.
Unfortunately, PHEVs fell out of fashion in 2018 and are only just coming back into style. I think the Prius is the only comparable car on the market that manages this. The Kia Niro is also looking reasonably good with a 34 mile EV range.
But if there was an economy car with ~150 miles range and inexpensive batteries, I’d probably buy it.
Both are in the $30-$40k range new. You can find a 2017 Chevy Volt for $16k (and I seriously can’t recommend it enough).
I have a non-plugin Prius, and it works really well as a commuter. I got it for $10k like 10 years ago, and it has needed very little maintenance and still gets 45-ish MPG (highway speeds here are 70mph, and I usually go a few mph over).
Ideally, I’d go pure electric for the next one so I’d never need to go to the gas station again. A PHEV means I still need to use some gas since I highly doubt I’d get 50 miles range on our high speed highways, especially if the car is older.
But yeah, seeing the prices going down is good news. The EV discount for used EVs is doing a lot of work.
Ev discount for used ev’s?
US tax credit.
batteries catching fire don’t mesh with garage storage
Your gas powered car is more likely to burst into flames than your electric car.
The problems with EV fires are:
- they can easily reignite, and traditional firefighting methods don’t work
- they can happen with a simple puncture, or during charging
- there’s pretty much no warning sign
Whereas with ICE vehicles:
- generally caused by poor maintenance
- overheating (major cause) has warning sensors and can generally be avoided
- are fairly easy for fire departments to deal with
I was considering getting a Chevy Bolt, but the company’s response to charging issues (i.e. don’t charge in your garage) killed my enthusiasm for it. Pretty much everything else either costs too much or doesn’t have enough range. I’d really rather not spend much more than $20k on a car, but the used market has been bonkers.
I think we still need more time/data to get the whole picture. EVs are still in their early stages.
It would be interesting to look at fire rates for vehicles at rest. These types of fires have the potential to become quite serious, as they are often not immediately noticed, especially if the vehicle is parked in a garage or remote area. This additional time allows the fire to spread and intensify.
Since EV fires are typically more intense than ICE vehicles, we should expect EV fires to cause more damage to the surroundings and to spread faster. Though, this danger could be offset if EVs have a lower probability of self ignition.
We should also look at fires while refueling/charging. Lithium cells are most dangerous when charging and discharging. While an overfilled gas tank is easy to spot and may catch fire, a continually overcharged battery is invisible and will catch fire. Also, because of the long charge time of batteries, many EV owners leave the vehicle unattended while charging and would not immediately notice a fire if one were to occur. In addition, EVs are often charged at home, in close proximity to residences and other vehicles, and often within garages. These residential locations do not have the same fire safety requirements and suppression systems as gas stations, so a vehicle fire at home is already much more dangerous and has the potential to severely damage your home.
We have had a century to figure out ICE, but it’s still very early days for EVs, so only time will tell.
Yeah, a car that started out with 150 miles of range, has degraded to about 80 miles of range, and is known to be safe would be ideal.
Yup, especially since my workplace has been talking about installing chargers. I don’t know when that’ll happen, but I’m willing to gamble if I won’t need them for a couple years (I might move to another company by then anyway).
Amazing how far we’re progressing in battery technology in such a short amount of time.
And all it took was $100/BBL gas to get people off their asses. A shame we weren’t pioneering this kind of research 40 years ago.
Short time? We’ve been kind of stuck for decades on the same tech and working to try and find something else.
Probably would have if we didn’t pull out all the stops to subsidize it all to hell and back. 40 years ago was a great time for increasing fuel efficiency and smaller, lighter cars specifically because of gas shortages, and when that got a temporary reprieve we just acted like it could never happen again
I remember NiCad batteries still being used in power wheels toys as a kid. For all I know they may still be, but the battery advancements have been particularly amazing.
Sodium batteries are in development for over 30 years. We were pioneering this kind of research almost 40 years ago and that’s how much time, effort and financial investment this stuff takes. It will be 10 more years to get them everywhere. Technology is not as fast as you think.
Sodium batteries are in development for over 30 years.
Closer to a century. But the investment in the last decade has risen with the price of fossil fuel as well as the sharp fall in short-term available renewable electricity. International investment - particularly in states like China, India, and Germany - have spiked considerably during this time as well. That’s why we’re seeing so many productive discoveries outside the US.
It will be 10 more years to get them everywhere.
HiNA Battery Technology Company began producing EV-ready sodium batteries last year.
TÜV Rheinland approved Pylontech to begin mass producing bulk energy storage systems in March of 2023.
Rollout is occurring at the speed of domestic investment. And while US companies continue to drag their heels, countries with higher electricity demand and fewer fossil fuel subsidies are not waiting around.
…that’s why the article says it.
Listen, if he came to that conclusion in a vacuum without reading the article, that’s kind of neat on its own.
Namaste.
I couldn’t find much in the chemistry but this seems exciting.
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.
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
Heck you can have big windows too!
Batteries degrade with age too. It would probably have to be cycled 10 times a day to get that many cycles.
Good video going over practical pros and cons currently:
Nuclear bros hate this one simple trick.
Won’t nuclear techy bros use the nuclear energy bits and put them into the sodium thingies to keep them juiced up?
Yeah, I’m not sure why this would be an argument against nuclear power. Does the person above think these batteries are self-charging?
Probably it’s one of those people who didn’t do much in school aside from looking cool
I love nuclear but this new battery tech has me super excited
It increases the viability of renewable energy sources (especially solar) which makes me hella happy
I love nuclear
I’m not trying to be a dick but could you explain why?
Not who you asked but look at France’s energy mix compared to the US.
Imagine where the US could be today regarding emissions if we had kept up with nuclear this whole time.
I totally get that but that ship has sailed with renewables being way cheaper now.
Perhaps a bad example because most people undermine them, but China has still decided to move forward with 4 different nuclear facilities this year despite having an ABUNDANCE of solar manufacturing. If they found that decision worthwhile I would think the opposite, assuming most of the reasoning is current battery tech can’t sustain dark periods at a massive scale, but I’m not an expert.
Also just saw you mentioned nuclear costs in another comment, I suggest you look at South Korea and China’s cost per facility compared to the US, they’re able to build and maintain facilities at about half the US does.
Literally every source I’ve come across has nuclear being massively more expensive than renewables + storage, at least in the West.
The market decides what to invest in in a capitalist economy and they will tend to go for the thing that makes them the most money in the shortest time possible and that’s why new nuclear isn’t happening much.
If you’re advocating for public ownership of utilities so there’s central planning and long term thinking instead of profit chasing, that’s an interesting debate to have.
@IchNichtenLichten
Not OP, but why not love it? It’s one of the cleanest, greenest, safest, and efficient power sources we have.
@GormadtThis is exactly why I love nuclear
And who can forget the classic, “Where is the waste from fossil fuels? Take a deep breath, it’s in your lungs. Where is the waste from nuclear power? Where we store it.”
Yes their have been disasters but the waste from those are tracked, in a specific location, and can be cleaned up. The default state of fossil fuels hits every living breathing thing on Earth.
And even factoring in the impact from disasters nuclear is still the safest. And we have even safer designs for reactors nowadays then the reactors that had those disasters.
And now we’re in an age of nuclear fusion. My kid or grandkids may live in a world powered by even cleaner reactors. Which is great because they will probably have to live entirely indoors.
Eh, I feel like we’ve been in an age of nuclear fusion for decades, it’s always just around the corner…
But maybe this latest set of breakthroughs will be it. I’ll believe it when I see a production scale plant.
It has value in terms of research but I’ve seen no evidence that we’re even remotely close to hooking a fusion reactor up to a grid.
Sure, I get that. My priorities are clean energy that is as cheap as possible and nuclear just can’t compete on cost.
@IchNichtenLichten
It might have a higher initial upfront cost, but the return on investment over a plant’s whole lifetime makes it one of the cheapest. And even then, they don’t take long to break even.This isn’t true but I’m happy to be proved wrong.
@IchNichtenLichten
I’ve found this reference that seems good:https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power
There’s certainly more, but I’m not nuclear powered and don’t have the mental energy for online debate 😁
How about we regulate all the other power sources as heavily as we regulate nuclear?
This is an extremely unfair comparison, because nuclear has to do things (Even leaving aside the Nuclear part of it) that no other energy source does.
You know any coal supply chains that have to track each atom that they ever dig up?
And even leaving aside cost, what about other benefits?
How about we regulate all the other power sources as heavily as we regulate nuclear?
I can’t believe I even have to mention this but you realize that nuclear power has safety issues that wind and solar do not? Hence the regulation.
And even leaving aside cost, what about other benefits?
Such as?
Only thing I’ve seen that has worried me about them is how they seem to have turned a fire hazard into an explosive hazard in terms of battery safety.
explosive hazard
Can you elaborate on that? I was just reading the data sheet for these batteries, and these are tested with a ballistic penetration test, resulting in no fire.
I’m presuming this concern is from watching videos of elemental sodium reacting with water, which stands to reason, but I’ve not heard of exploding batteries
No fire could have occured during the penetration test because the resulting explosion removed all oxygen from the surrounding environment. -s
Just my impression on seeing videos of these tests on videos, which seem to result in the battery exploding violently and essentially escaping any attempt at confinement instead of catching fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ya_ls1zkA
Interesting. I wonder how that compares to a similar Li-ion cell. Also it’s a shame there wasn’t a close-up on the markings of the battery in that video to know what it is exactly. I don’t imagine all cells are equal.
The battery packs from the article, for instance, are not constructed from cylindrical cells, but from large thin and flat square cells. The cathode material appears to be unique as well, as far as I can tell; who knows what’s in those blue cylindrical cells.
That’s way less extreme than I would’ve expected.
What were you expecting? It’s literally an explosion. Add a few thousand of them in row in EV battery style if you want a bigger explosion.
Sodium batteries are already in electric cars many months ago
I don’t think the article was trying to imply that they weren’t already in use in electric cars, just that they would be better for them.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CCVPZL78 these have been in my shopping cart for a few months.
