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America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Gigafactory Announced. Cost: $1.4 Billion (msn.com) 152

Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries — and they're also more environmentally friendly. And "In the past few years, sodium-ion battery production has increased in the United States," reports the Washington Post, with a new factory planned to manufacture them "in the same way as lithium-ion batteries, just with different ingredients. Instead of using expensive materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt, these will be made of sodium, iron and manganese..." Last month, sodium-ion battery manufacturer Natron Energy announced it would open a "gigafactory" in North Carolina that would produce 24 gigawatt hours of batteries annually, enough energy to charge 24,000 electric vehicles. But sodium-ion batteries are still early in their development compared with lithium-ion, and they have yet to hit the market on a massive scale.

"It's unlikely sodium-ion could displace lithium-ion anytime soon," said Keith Beers, polymer science and materials chemistry principal engineer at technical consultancy firm Exponent... The biggest limitation of sodium-ion batteries is their weight. Sodium weighs nearly three times as much as lithium, and it cannot store the same amount of energy. As a result, sodium-ion batteries tend to be larger. Jens Peters, an economics professor at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, said the energy density could be improved over time in sodium-ion batteries. But, he added, "what we found out so far in our assessments is that it is not a game changer."

Sodium-ion batteries are touted to be the environmentally friendly alternative to their lithium-ion counterparts, thanks to their raw materials. Sodium, iron and manganese are all abundant elements on the planet, so they require less energy to extract and cost less... Sodium-ion batteries also last longer than lithium-ion ones because they can withstand more charge cycles, said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron Energy. "Our product can have millions of cycles," said Brooks, "where lithium-ion would have three to five thousand cycles and wear out a lot faster...." Sodium-ion batteries aren't the best fit for smartphones or electric vehicles, which need to store lots of energy. However, one advantage is their low cost. And they could be a good candidate in situations where the size of the battery isn't a concern, like energy storage. "When something is built out to support grid or backup storage, it doesn't need to be very dense. It's staying put," Beers said.

Natron will invest nearly $1.4 billion in the factory "to meet the rapidly expanding demand for critical power, industrial and grid energy storage solutions," according to their announcement.

"Natron's high-performance sodium-ion batteries outperform lithium-ion batteries in power density and recharging speed, do not require lithium, cobalt, copper, or nickel, and are non-flammable... Natron's batteries are the only UL-listed sodium-ion batteries on the market today, and will be delivered to a wide range of customer end markets in the industrial power space, including data centers, mobility, EV fast charging, microgrids, and telecom, among others."

America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Gigafactory Announced. Cost: $1.4 Billion

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  • by rta ( 559125 ) on Sunday November 10, 2024 @03:52AM (#64934515)

    it would open a "gigafactory" in North Carolina that would produce 24 gigawatt hours of batteries annually, enough energy to charge 24,000 electric vehicles

    swing... and a miss. by the author/editor.
    The units match up, but this sentence really got away from them.

    In any case, i guess these would be nice for home storage

    • Agreed, but the units don't even line up. If you think of this as - we'll put the batteries at supercharger stations so we can charge cars from solar power when it's dark -, then 24GWh is enough to charge 240,000 cars where a car is 100KWh (most are smaller but some are getting there and that number makes the calculation easy...)

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Home storage, and grid scale storage. But you need to get solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing ramped up as well, and develop deep water turbines.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Yes. Or remote/rural areas. Remote african tribes or Afghanistan tribal areas. Since the ingredients are so abundant they can be made closer to the deployment than having to ship li-ion halfway around the world. Have a log cabin up in the mountains? Solar power and one of these just might do the trick. Maybe a small windmill tower that doubles as your communication tower.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It's not clear how tricky those batteries are to make. It may well NOT be possible to export the manufacture to low-tech areas. (That's actually the way I'd bet.) And for mobile or portable uses Lithium batteries are probably better.

        OTOH, containerized systems that charge themselves and supply power for use should be quite possible. Home scale systems should be possible. Small business scale systems should be possible. (Though it depends on what your business is. Probably not for something really ener

  • Not quite right (Score:4, Informative)

    by shilly ( 142940 ) on Sunday November 10, 2024 @03:56AM (#64934517)

    24GWh of annual capacity. Typical EV uses maybe 2000kWh. So that would be 12 million EVs, not 24,000. Except Na ion doesn’t work well for most EVs yet

    • 24GWh/2k kWh = 12k, not 12 million. k to M to G

      24 GWh/year implies enough batteries to produce 24 GW for 1 hour made in 1 year, not that that is the amount of energy you can feed through the batteries in a year.
      Given that typical battery capacity of EVs is around 100kWh, I'm getting 240k EVs worth of production per year.
      They are expected to charge EVs though in the sense of not being installed in cars (more like 60kWh limited range EVs in that case, due to the lower energy density), but being installed near

      • They clearly stated that the sodium batteries are not meant for the EV market.

        "they could be a good candidate in situations where the size of the battery isn't a concern, like energy storage".

        • Didn't I have like three sentences saying that? Like 'not installed in cars', 'installed near EV chargers'.

      • by shilly ( 142940 )

        You're quite right that the article (well, press release) talks about GW not GWh. That's a weird way to talk about annual battery capacity prodcution, if you ask me. I also agree that your approach to the calculation of saying how many EV batteries' worth of production is this makes more sense. Although I think your 100kWh figure as the typical battery size is way off. I think it's much closer to 60.

        But if it's GW and not GWh, the maths is really simple: if you have 24GW of power available at any second, al

        • Searching, it says 83 kWh in the USA today, and trending up. More importantly, back of napkin calculating, 100kWh doesn't require me to bust out a calculator.

          And a range of two orders of magnitude for EV charging makes using that as an estimate wierd/hard as well.

          About the only EV capable of 1MW charging would be the Tesla Semi.

          • by shilly ( 142940 )

            83kWh as an average for new cars is nuts. US addiction to giant vehicles is so out of control.

            Agree on the rest of what you say. I could have made it look even sillier if I'd have included super slow charging, ie off typical domestic US circuits of 15A or 20A 120V.

    • Re:Not quite right (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday November 10, 2024 @05:09AM (#64934593)

      Typical EV uses maybe 2000kWh.

      My EV uses 80kWh to fully charge from 0 to 100%.

      People typically drive about 40 miles/day. At 0.25 kWh/mile, that's 10 kWh needed for an overnight charge.

      24GWh is enough capacity to charge 2.4 million EVs daily.

      2000 kWh may be what an EV uses in a year, but comparing that number to the storage capacity of the annual production of batteries is meaningless. EVs charge every day, not once per year.

      • OK, an extended range EV has an 80 KWh battery pack that is good for 350 miles, per Tesla.

        If the average owner drives 20K miles/year, that means such an EV would go thru 57 full charge cycles, or 57 x 75KWh or 4,275 KWh in a year (4 megawatts, give or take).

        24 Gigawatts divided by 4 Megawatts is 6,000 cars per year.

        I think my math is correct, but please check my numbers.

        • If the average owner drives 20K miles/year, that means such an EV would go thru 57 full charge cycles, or 57 x 75KWh or 4,275 KWh in a year (4 megawatts, give or take).
          24 Gigawatts divided by 4 Megawatts is 6,000 cars per year.
          I think my math is correct, but please check my numbers

          Found my typo - I went from 80 KWh battery capacity to 75 KWh battery capacity.

          57 charge cycles times 80 KWh is close to 4,500 KWh, making the number of car/years tge batteries can charge 24,000 MWh divided by 4.5 MWh, or 5,333 car/years.

          I knew my mistake as soon as I hit submit, apologies.

          • You are assuming each battery is charged and discharged once per year.

            In reality, they would be charged with solar energy during the daytime and supply power at night.

            So, 5,333 * 365 = 2 million EVs.

            That's how many EVs can be charged daily after one year of battery production.

            After ten years, the factory will have produced enough batteries to charge 20 million EVs.

            This is assuming 20k miles/year. In reality, the average American drives about 13k miles/year.

    • > Na ion doesnâ(TM)t work well for most EVs

      You'll likely never use a sodium ion battery in your EV due to the mass penalty... except maybe for cheap NEVs that are more or less souped-up golf carts. Unnecessary mass is a great way to kill your range and reduce vehicle performance.

      What you might do with them if they're inexpensive enough is have a large one installed on your property as storage, connected to the grid, solar, wind, or whatever so you can use more power from unreliable sources and mini

      • You won't see these in any application that involves transporting the batteries under battery power - they weigh more than Sealed Lead Acid batteries and have less capacity than Lithium batteries.

        In every practical measure (capacity, weight), current battery tech is superior, the difference is less rare earth metals are used in production.

        • > they weigh more than Sealed Lead Acid batteries

          They do not. That is an incorrect conclusion you confused yourself into.

          > the difference is less rare earth metals are used in production

          It's hard to be less than zero, because there are zero rare earth metals in either lithium or sodium ion batteries.
          =Smidge=

        • Why do you think sodium electrolyte weighs more than lead?

      • Unlike Li-Ion, Na-Ion batteries can be discharged well below 20% without damage, so 1 kWh of Na-Ion is worth 1.25 kWh of Li-Ion. This reduces the energy density gap between Li-Ion and Na-Ion.

        And Na-Ion can be charged in seconds [cleantechnica.com] like a supercapacitor instead of minutes like Li-Ion.

        I think that plus the significantly greater number of charge/discharge cycles with Na-Ion offer a very reasonable compromise in exchange for less energy density, even for cars.

        I could even see a mixture of both chemistries in the s

        • Are we sure that article wasn't AI written? It transitions from talking about NaIon batteries to supercapacitors not involving sodium at all, and doesn't bring it back.

          Having separate battery chemistries isn't really necessary, as LiIon in amounts for useful ranges already have the necessary power capacity.

          Instead, if NaIon is truly capable of supercapacitor level performance, it could instead be used for things like regenerative braking to reduce cycles on LiIon cells. But given that we're hearing about

    • Except Na ion doesnâ(TM)t work well for most EVs yet

      You could do a combo storage with Na-Ion and Li-Ion or supercapacitors (and maybe even just normal capacitors too, though each additional storage stage increases the control system cost.) Or if you are building high-range models, you can make a broader bank that better delivers and receives current. And since the batteries are cheaper, that's more feasible. Not every EV needs to be capable of sub 3 second 0-60 times, either.

  • by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Sunday November 10, 2024 @11:03AM (#64934901) Homepage

    Reporters are completely unable to clarify GW vs GWh. I don't know if the factory is going to produce "24 GW" of batteries that can put out 24 GW of power flow for however long a sodium reaction takes to discharge (they don't say, though it's really an important spec), or if it can produce 24 GWh worth of storage in a year.

    I'm just so tired of reporters that are innumerate; physics-free, unable to distinguish between "Energy" and "Power".

  • Last month, sodium-ion battery manufacturer Natron Energy announced it would open a "gigafactory" in North Carolina that would produce 24 gigawatt hours of batteries annually, enough energy to charge 24,000 electric vehicles. But sodium-ion batteries are still early in their development compared with lithium-ion, and they have yet to hit the market on a massive scale.

    The word "charging" shouldn't have been used at all here. It implies that the factory is going to be producing energy when instead it's going to produce energy storage devices.
    It's like confusing petrol with jerrycans.

    The Tesla model S battery pack is 60-100kWh (depending on option chosen, YMMV)
    24gigawatt hours == 24,000,000 kWh.
    24,000,000 kWh / 60 kWh = 400,000
    24,000,000 kWh / 100 kWh = 240,000

    It's unclear from the "article" but it seems that the factory is currently in the planning stage, and is expected

  • I came here to announce my new Tera Factory.
    Also, I need 10 Peta dollars to build it.
    It's so innovative.
  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Sunday November 10, 2024 @01:24PM (#64935091)

    I'm not seeing any mention of price per kwh, but surely it is competitive with lithium or they wouldn't invest in a plant to build them. For stationary use cases like home or industrial power backup it doesn't matter how heavy or large they are. If they charge/discharge reasonably fast, have more recharge cycles, are safer, and cost less it could be a strong competitor alongside Tesla Powerwall and Megapack.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Sodium ion batteries are in the early development stages. Their current capacity per 18650 cell is on par with a LiFePO4 by volume.

      Sodium batteries might not be suitable for EVs, we have to realize that Lithium has atomic number 3 atomic weight of just under 6. Sodium has atomic number 11, and weight of nearly 23.

      That means each sodium ion is nearly 5 times as heavy as a lithium ion, and the whole cell relies on the ions moving back and forth.

      However, sodium is miles cheaper to obtain - we are dealing with

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