New sodium-ion battery skips mechanical cooling with 97.9% efficiency
I’ve been hearing about these for a few years now. Huge if they work out at a large scale.
interestingengineering.com/energy/unigrid-sodium-ion-battery-tech
Interesting EngineeringNew sodium-ion battery skips mechanical cooling with 97.9% efficiencySyntropic Power and UNIGRID have entered a partnership to commercialize UNIGRID’s sodium chromium oxide battery chemistry in North America.
Replying to @Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world
according to their product page, the charge rate for a single cell seems to max out at 3C, which could be a pretty big obstacle to grid-scale deployment. unless that’s a problem that can be fixed with a different arrangement; i’m not too up on how to build batteries.
which could be a pretty big obstacle to grid-scale deployment.
Well, on a grid scale if you’ve got a 100MWh battery and you want to charge it at 3C, then you’re looking to find a spare 300MW out on the grid somewhere for 20 minutes.
That’s not impossible, but you’ll buy that 100MWh a lot cheaper if you’re willing to get it over the course of a few hours. For example, buying power in the middle of the day when there’s excess solar, to then drop it back into the grid in a one hour burst during peak times in the evening for 10 times the price.
That kind of thing is where the battery will make the most profit, so slow charge rates don’t really matter.
Replying to @dgriffith@aussie.zone
Ambri had a massive molten salt battery that was cheap for grid storage. They went broke. Sadoway gave a great lecture on how actual solutions are fighting corruption and old money.