Sodium-ion batteries in the USA. Beating China at their own game!
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- Опубліковано 18 тра 2024
- China has cornered the market in green energy transition technologies in recent years, and very effectively gained control of raw material supply chains so any other country has to go through them to get things done. There is one notable exception though. Sodium. It's so ubiquitous that even China can't monopolise it as a commodity. And that means European and US battery makers have spotted a chink in the Great Dragon's armour!
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There is a large Iron ore mine in the province where I live. The tailings left over after the iron ore pellets are processed contain Manganese in substantial quantities. There is also now a salt mine (i.e. NaCl) being mined not far from me (about 700 miles) so pretty much all the ingredients can be found in any place and in large quantities. There is also a potential 2200 MW hydro site nearby the iron ore mines. Sodium batteries seem to be a better fit for stationary grid storage than the industry seems to realize I think.
Stationary batteries also don't have as many weight concerns, and sodium would be far less dangerous than lithium in the event of a fire.
"Tailings": somewhat akin to Taconite? (grew up in Northern Minnesota, Mesabi Iron Range)
@@johnhopkins6260 Tailings are the remaining rocks after the ore has been removed. It generally gets put in big piles and buried.
Weren't the original issues with Sodium batteries that they lacked energy density, and instead of improving they found and developed lithium batteries that had more density from the get go?
@@arthurwintersight7868 I actually remember seeing a destruction test of some sodium batteries a bit ago where they drove a nail through the battery and nothing happened... also remember seeing one with lithium cells where it took far less to catch fire and then explode lol.
Amazing. This video looks like a news item, but it really is a 101 on battery chemistry and its applications. Thanks from Holland. We'll put this one on the recommended viewing list in the MSc program on the Materials & Energy Transition ❤
Wow. Thank you :-) I really appreciate that!
101?
@@preservedmoose one o one, an expression for "the most important" basic knowledge about a topic.
@@preservedmoose It's what the course titles at many universities have as a suffix for 1st year level undergraduate courses, in many subjects and disciplines, as in "Sartre for Beginners 101" in any Philosophy department you'd care to name (although they usually keep Sartre for later on: 3xx or 4xx.
At which university⁉️
UA-cam university?
We will believe it when we see it 👋👋
Sounds like a good option for hybrid vehicle batteries as well. Capable of fast and efficient charging and discharging, yet the extra weight of the battery is less of a concern as it need only be around 20% of the capacity of a fully electric vehicle battery.
ah yes, and how about for taking high-power braking energy...?
@@lawrence18uk Yes, this is another advantage.
Sodium-Ion IS the safe, less toxic battery chemistry we need to boost the energy transition away from fossil fuels. So it is great seeing these developments.
We don't need to move away from fossil fuels. Your indoctrination is showing.
Also less dependency on questionable regimes.
@@Lasstpak Fire fighters will love it.....
You are very unintelligent.
Well don't forget this battery technology was popular years ago in America and the company went bankrupt and the technology failed. There are thousands of homeowners in America that are super super pissed off right now with the sodium battery.
Possible use in ships and maybe trains. Sounds a lot more user friendly than most lithium batteries.
I wonder how many batteries you'd need to power a train. It might be the only vehicle where weight and space considerations don't matter, since you can always stick more engines on the front if you need more pulling power.
@@Kevin_StreetPossibly not that many batteries would be needed, too. If the batteries can charge very rapidly then short sections of third rail could be put in some areas that could charge the battery on the go. Potentially 1/20th of the track could be electrified and the train could never have to stop for charging and not need to carry batteries for the whole trip.
@@pneudmatic I can see plenty of teething troubles. Prussian blue electrodes are being researched for more than 50 years; they are not new. But there are many variants of prussian blue electrodes and the details do matter.
Train electrification is best suited.
Indian Railway Network has more than 8000 stations. Now we have to install 10MW battery in every station.
That will be 80,000 MW or 80GW. They can buy electricity at night. Now low speed regional train coaches can have Na-Cl batteries installed underneath and / or on roof. Charging at every stop, electrification done at fractional cost. Making it feasible on non-feasible routes.
Hybrid Propulsion ships are way to go.
@@Kevin_Street A much better way to power a train is overhead electric lines. Cos, batteries has to be carried, so a part of energy is always wasted on battery weight, which doesn't happen on overhead powerline. If you want to go further, there's always place for solar panel on the train top. But batteries doesn't seem to be the way.
Sounds good for home storage solutions to reduce grid load coupled with solar.
Sounds also good for city wide storage solutions.
@@bernhardschmalhofer855 distributed local area batteries would probably work well, like local substations on the power grid.
I would be much more comfortable with this battery in my home given it's less likely to burn the joint down.
Solar will reduce the grid load by an insignificant amount. Here's the correct solution: stop forcing people to live how you want them to.
That was done about 10 years ago and the technology was an absolute flop. The battery could not deliver current fast enough to handle a large inductive load such as an air conditioner or a deep well pump. There are thousands of homeowners in America who are super pissed off because they got burned.
Absolutely correct! Horses for courses, this specific technology absolutely aligns to static storage, removing hot sodium cells from the use equation.
Can't wait for the day instead of stories about how well they might work in a certain application but instead how fantastic they have been working and exceeding expectations 😍
I beg your pardon? He starts the video with the BYD Seagull.
@@michaelnurse9089 I unbeg your pardon.
Makes Goodsense!
you've missed it. the world moved on.
You need to learn how to spot vaporware before you even click on it.
Natron please go into home storage. The grid is old and overloaded.
Let's hope it is affordable
Do you not know what a UPS is?
Don't pedal fossil fuel misinformation. We've had electricity for over century, so obviously "the grid" is old, but equally obviously electric utilities have continuously upgraded generation, transmission, and distribution. If they're not keeping up in your area, that's a failure of their regulators.
@@skierpage, it's spelled peddle, not pedal.
Rach, exactly! I can’t afford to buy a vacation home in London, New York, or Osaka, or Paris. And I can’t afford a Rolls Royce. And I most certainly can’t afford to drop over $50,000 or $60,000 US for the four or five Powerwalls it would take to run an induction stove and heat pump air conditioner after sundown. Home and small business owners need affordable battery storage!!!!!!!
50k cycles - that blows me away!!! 🤩🤩🤩
That's longer than a lifetime, if you charge once a day.
I was wondering what EDLC (with 1 million cycles) stood for. Apparently if means "electrostatic double-layer capacitance"; or super capacitors (which do not provide voltage regulation).
Lithium ion = 800 cycles
LFP(Lithium phosphate) = 3,500 cycles
Sodium ion is the future
@@larryc1616
mate, where do you have your 800 cycles from?
@@ursodermatt8809 basic knowledge like your phone using older lithium ion. My solar generators are LFP which is 10 years of charging life if you charge/discharge everyday! Sodium ion will last more than a lifetime and super cheap!
*Summary of Just Have a Think's video on Natron Energy Sodium-ion batteries:*
*Why sodium-ion batteries? (**1:54**)*
* Material availability: Sodium is abundant, unlike lithium which is geographically limited.
* Price stability: sodium is less prone to price spikes.
* Full discharge: sodium-ion batteries can safely discharge to zero volts, unlike lithium-ion.
* Cost-effective materials: sodium-ion batteries can use aluminium instead of copper.
*Natron Energy's Innovation: (**6:17**)*
* Prussian Blue for BOTH electrodes: Unique use of modified Prussian Blue for both cathode and anode, creating the necessary potential difference.
* Fast charging: Full recharge in under 15 minutes.
* Longevity: Less degradation due to minimal expansion/contraction during charge cycles.
* Safety: Less heat generation means no need for extra cooling, minimizing fire risk.
*Target Market: (**8:54**)*
* Stationary energy storage: Ideal for applications where weight is not a concern, such as data centers, grid stability, and EV charging stations.
*Natron Energy's Progress: (**9:30**)*
* Received significant funding, including a US Department of Energy grant.
* Opened the first commercial-scale sodium-ion battery factory in North America.
* Aiming to expand to gigawatt-scale facilities in the future.
*Overall: (**10:39**)*
* Natron Energy is a promising player in the sodium-ion battery market, offering a compelling alternative to lithium-ion for specific applications.
* They demonstrate an innovative approach to confronting the energy transition challenge.
i summarized the transcript with gemini 1.5 pro
Thanks for your informative videos. There is a tremendous and immediate need for big, ugly, reliable and inexpensive home storage batteries. The average three bedroom home will need at least 50 kWh of storage to mostly go off grid. Hey young geniuses, please disrupt the corrupt and complacent utility cartels and give power to your friends, relatives and neighbors with an affordable home storage battery!
capitalism will find a way…no need for idealist wars. people vote with their money
50 KWH sounds like an overkill. I have a 10kwh, and last 24 hours without charging. Though I don't use electricity for cooking, use propane instead. Water heater also propane. Don't run AC, use fan instead. Hang laundry to dry istead of dryier, you can get by with 10 kwh for just lights, computers, internet, fridge.
Propane is what we are trying to get rid of. 50kwh battery on every home.
@@jpsion you are aware that companies have know about the need to move away from fossil fuels for literally longer than i've been alive, and have mostly spent that time lobbying to not do anything right?
@@jpsion Capitalism only works with free markets. The energy industry is far from free.
Thank you, another very educational program. It is always wonderful to receive factual opposed to fiction.
Thank you :-)
How do you know this is fact, not fiction? Becuz he sed it?
@@thisisnumber0 I read andcresearch.
Using these in place of lithium ion in all the other stationary applications would greatly reduce demand on lithium used and needed for BEVs. Good stuff.
How many “This battery changes everything “ videos can one man have a think about?
I know what you mean but this battery tech race is the game of the century so far. Alot of testing involved and evolving very quickly with all the applied science!
The Green New Deal Grift needs to be propped up and pumped up constantly by "The Next Huge Leap Forward!!!"
@@countryjoe3551 Maybe some day you may even get electricity in your neck of the woods!
@@countryjoe3551doesn’t really matter if the motivation is a grift or not. Lighting ancient plant juice on fire to make things go is just lazy and embarrassing. If aliens are watching we will never be invited to any galactic engineering conventions.
unless batteries get 4 orders of magnitude better, i don't understand how anyone can even care
I am the owner of a BYD Seagull (known as the Yuan 300 here in Colombia, where I live.) After import duties, it cost me the equivalent of US$30,000. Since there is practically no charging infrastructure in my country, I rely on my home charger, which takes 10 hours, or a trickle charger, which can be plugged in anywhere but takes 24 hours. Despite these shortcomings, I wouldn't change my BYD for any other car!!!!
That's cool. What about build quality? My casually racist mind thinks of Chinese cars as lower quality. It's a subconscious hurdle I need to work on getting over.
@@user72974 Shortly after WO2 everything coming out of Germany had to be labled Made in Germany as a scare tactic. It soon became a quality mark, if it had that label it meant it was quality stuff you could trust. A couple of decades later the same happened for Japanese goods: started as inferior imitations and soon became best you can get. Do you see the pattern already?
@@user72974 The US and Europe are already hitting them with 100% tariffs because they're good enough to compete unless the prices are artificially raised by tariffs.
Really? I smell s😅mething
@@user72974 given most of what you buy today was produced in China I think it's pretty safe to say quality is whatever you're willing to pay for
I’d love to know which companies, start up or established, is actually focusing on domestic home storage battery development. It seem that this sector of the market get overlooked in favor of the more commercially attractive sectors. I kind of get why but believe the potential market is much larger going forward than some think it is.
Yea but that would lead to the average person being less reliant on big energy producers and that's a problem for them.
There are things called web search engines. Besides Tesla, Blue Planet Energy, Enphase, Generac, HomeGrid, SolarEdge, ... all claim to sell home battery systems.
Agree and to date the massive EV contracts have secured the battery supplies. However the world led by China is starting to go mass production on batteries and they are talking a factory gate cell price of USD $ 50 / KWH which will soon spill over into house batteries. I agree the market is massive and its just price which determines it. I expect Home Battery prices to halve over the next 3 years. Lets see ......
@@TimMountjoy-zy2fd I certainly hope so. Here in South Africa battery pack prices for domestic are still increasing. I think that’s more to do with high demand and profit opportunities being taken by the suppliers in light of lower cell prices. Demand is high here as the main grid supplier can’t keep the lights on.
You can just use your car as home storage if it has VTL capability.
If you have a small car that just does small journeys then sodium batteries are fine. Even if you have the odd long trip then a few charges along the way isn’t going to be too much of a pain. Then you have the life cycle of the thing which is even more convenient. I’m sure there is a place for them.
Especially if the recharge time is only 15 minutes
When I first heard of lithium batteries being used fir grid storage I just remember thinking it is such a waste of a relatively scare resource... Buildings generally don't need to be lightweight and as compact as possible like portable electronics...
It's not a waste, it's an economically advantageous use otherwise companies wouldn't buy lithium batteries for grid storage. They provide frequency stabilization, peak shaving, extend the hours when solar and wind can provide power, and increase utilization of transmission lines, all beneficial. So far none of the alternatives (flow batteries, iron batteries, thermal storage, compressed air storage, hydrogen storage, and now sodium-ion batteries) have proven to be better in actual wide-scale use.
@@skierpage I think by 'waste' he is referring to the storage of data, which by, and large is unnecessary, as the use of it is more about controlling people who managed fine without it before 'cloud/computer/AI'.
I agree with you, flow battery systems in stationary situations would have been a better use of resourses
Love that comment on the end. Upping your game is a go go, not whining about the world being unfair :)
It was ignorant. Inventing new things is not the problem. Problem is you cannot import it into China. You need to build it there. With joint venture. Then they just take your idea.
Sounds like something a landlord would say.
Sime kind of exploiter no doubt.
There's a difference between whining and speaking the truth. Just have a Think about that.
Very encouraging. Wonder about home storage
I think sodium ion battery tech is also well suited to home storage. Basically every non-mobile use case. It would be a wonderful way to reduce demand on lithium ion so that it becomes cheaper for cars and electronic devices.
@@user72974 yea also it means charging stations would stop being the bottleneck for charging. As the cars improve the charging speed would improve as they're still behind the max of sodium ion.
Well, except LFP calls that have already solved all of those problems, including temperature and charging speed. are already in mass production.
They seem well suited for home use. The main apparent downside is that are bulkier for the same amount of energy storage. So you may want to put the battery system outside of the house, rather than in the garage, for example.
Yes, the only safe battery you want in your home.
One huge result of this would be a reduction in the need for Lithium. Every sodium based battery utilized means that much less lithium is needed. Supply and demand tells us that will reduce the price of lithium in the market place or at the very least, slow the rise in price.
As an engineer I really enjoy the quality of content on this channel. 👍
Mining salt, way more eco-friendly than lithium. How lithium and "green" ended up in the same sentence is beyond me.
Lithium IS a salt and co occurs with salt
So you're trying to say that CONSTANTLY pumping black oil from the ground or bottom of the oceans or tearing up mountains for coal is? They key word there being CONSTANTLY, as they're burned up and lost as soon as they're used as fuels. Unlike lithum which can be recycled over and over again once mined.
And anywhere sodium exists, so those Lithium. They're a brethen of each other. The oceans have hundreds of billions of tons of Lithium in its water alone.
fumes.
@@junehanzawa5165 Lithium is not an energy source. That might be the key to the puzzle of your question.
@8BitNaptime What you're trying to say is that Lithium is not a fuel. A fuel is burned up in order to provide energy. Intead, a Lithium ion has a very loose outer electron, which, in a battery, is used as an electrical force to provide electrical energy. The electron is never destroyed, it simply goes back and forth from one side to the other in recharging and discharging.
Seems like a great battery for buses. The power density is good enough for the 50km range from end to end of the line and very fast charging allows for a ten minute turn around. All this at very limited cost and excellent longevity which should make for a great tco. Silent buses without local emissions could hugely benefit urban communities all around the world.
City diesel buses are bad news for noxious fumes. BYD makes nice electric buses.
One of the best explanations of the Hows & Whys of Sodium Ion battery chemistry & the technology behind it.
Natron will win the game for the electrical infrastructure market, where the mass of the battery isn't so important. They might also win in the market for container ships with hybrid drive systems. No big deal if the a ship's storage batteries take the place of the ballast...
as always, excellent material ❤
Thank you! Cheers!
"Annual battery production of 600MW worth"
That little " h " in MWh means so much to some of us....
What an amazing life you must have!
One of my pet peeves, Watt means nothing without time in this context.
@@Krydolph It's not like education takes away people's ability to enjoy life. So yes, he might very well have an amazing life.
@@Krydolph I find not mixing up power & energy helps make it less confusing. Sometimes when people ask me what the range of my EV is I say 155mph just to see if they get confused.
@@flatfootYou can infer from context what he meant! There must seriously be bigger problems in your life?
Gotta be really careful here, there are a lot of moving parts. On sodium itself, the fast pace of the R&D makes it difficult to scale-up production. This is great in that in a few years we will have significantly better sodium batteries than we do now, but not so great because the lack of maturity makes it difficult to create products using them, or production scale for those products, or for sodium products to be able to compete with the far more mature LFP products.
An even bigger problem for sodium is LiFePO4 (LFP)... there seems to be this perception on social media that Lithium is somehow difficult to scale, bad, or otherwise limited in some manner but the reality is that it isn't. The non-lithium/non-sodium components for both chemistries are almost the same. Literally almost the same, and the technology and R&D curve necessary to improve both chemistries is also almost the same.
That could put sodium into "poor stepchild" type of situation where manufacturers have to reduce the price so much relative to LFP that they can't actually make any money producing sodium batteries.
Both chemistries require approximately the same levels of complexity to further improve anodes and cathodes, and much of that is going to be structural rather than chemical. But LFP has far better operational characteristics than sodium. Far, far better. And likely always will because they are born from properties of the base chemistry itself.
I can't predict that sodium will be able to make it through this gauntlet without gaining some sort of killer feature (being able to discharge to 0V is not a killer feature, by the way). The cycle life and calendar aging characteristics are a huge unknown for sodium. The voltage range for sodium is extremely wide (which is bad) compared to LFPs very flat charge and discharge curves, and it is unclear how big of an impact the cheaper sodium (element) vs lithium will be on the cost of the whole cells moving into the future. Sodium simply might not be cheap *enough* to radically alter adoption rates.
-Matt
thanks for your contribution. i absolutely agree with you.
the way the chinese do "research" is marketing their battery cells and then see how the customer goes. like with charging specs and temperature.
absolutely.. the price of lithium already dropped by 85% since 2022 peak and is expected to drop further all the way through 2030, which would make sodium far less attractive.
Here's a question. What percent of a Power Wall or a LiFePO4 battery is the cost of Lithium ?
@@ursodermatt8809 ahhh so thats why every 3rd card is catching fire over there. got it.
@@TimMountjoy-zy2fd it's all about supply-and-demand. It's probably something under 5% now, but I recall that during the 2022 peak, it was as much as 20%, which is why the industry started seriously looking at other minerals. You can't have that kind of price fluctuation in mass-volume commodity goods.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
My pleasure!
You didn’t mention the 50,000 charging cycles! A lithium home battery in the UK typically has around 6000 charge cycles giving them a lifespan of around 15 years. 50,000 cycles in theory means over 100 years!!
Or Virtual Power Plant, since some home battery makers won't warranty VPP use
That is ridiculous and highly speculative because nothing will last that long. The plastics and the electric wiring and everything else would fail.
another claim but in a working environment likely much less.
look up LTO cells made by YinLong they been around for years super safe and rated for 30.000 recharge cycles with very fast charge and high discharge
they are used manly in buses but are really big right now in the car audio world
I love the way solutions are always just over the horizon, when you've just bought the last solution which turned out to be not the solution.
Sodium is getting there, the problem when using it for ESS like an off gird system is the voltage range of the cells, inverters will have to be modified to handle this wide voltage range. Wheras LIFEP4 is 2.5v to 3.65v per cell, Sodium is 1.5 to 4.3.
As always very interesting. Love these videos!!!
Sounds great for replacing DIeselcomutertrains or helping thirdrail trains to reduce the max contnious current use, when those systems are limited in that regard (Berlin has a 4kA limit per Train)
Also to upgrade the batteries in diesel-electric trains
I wonder if one day there be a solid state sodium iron battery.
Industry insiders are saying true solid state batteries are impossible. Semi-solid state are near ready - Tesla used a dry electrode in the Cybertruck.
Fascinating overview of a new approach to battery manufacturing. 👏👏
Awesome as always. Thank you.
I wonder if the Inflation Reduction Act in the US has helped in the development costs of sodium ion batteries, which is also a state subsidy to renewable technologies?
I'm sure it has.
Definitely, that was it's goal and information so far indicates it is working amazingly well.
The presentation is so refreshing not only for its clarity but also for its civility. It is refreshing balm from our crass Republican normality.
@10:40, in my humble opinion, there is a rare but absolutely commendable piece of advice for everyone, including here in Europe too.
Good solid stuff. Thanks as ever and all the best for Harrogate All Things Electric shows
The lessons of supply chain logistics during covid shut downs taught us the importance of self sufficiency, as families, and all levels of government. We must have reliable, efficient, and innovative industries being born, nurtured, and supported with federal and state, and philanthropic sources of money.
For that effort to be successful, new businesses must sell the product at a price high enough to yield a profit.
That is the purpose of tariffs, to maintain prices high enough within the domestic market to stimulate domestic production, and growth of these new industries here in America.
Take a look at Korea, and the investment they made into chip manufacturing early on.
Very much not the point of tariffs and hasn't been how they've been used in reality.
"It gives them a competitive edge over the rest of the pack."
I see what you did there, Dave.
I don't. Little help?
@TheGreatAtario (battery)pack
Dave has managed to revive hope! Good on you, mate! 😊
Thanks, Dave. Always enjoy your well presented videos. Make’s me think.
As a biologist, I'd like to say that the claim "there's plenty of lithium so don't worry about it", is oversimplifying things. We're finding that a lot of lithium deposits are in places that will cause enormous environmental damage if we dig them up, and there are fights between mining companies and scientists, conservationists & local communities. Areas that contain endangered habitats and species, sometimes they're national parks etc. So there may be enough lithium but accessibility is a problem if we don't want to sacrifice habitat and species. If we're trying to switch to renewables for sustainability reasons we must also consider the permanent damage we may do when we pursuing such resources.
I really wish this was higher up. THIS is the huge problem with lithium.
Salton Sea looks promising. Not sure of the negatives, though.
OK. But _none_ of the habitats will exist at 5°C.
So what you're saying is we can't destroy some small ecosystem to save a planet.
I keep hearing this and get a good laugh every time.
When the oceans rise 30 ft. let me know if that small ecosystem is still above the ocean level OK?
I'm not saying humans should be irresponsible about making a shift away from fossil fuels, but we don't need to be stupid idiots either. Go talk to the tens of millions of people who've already had to leave their countries because THEIR environment is totally screwed, because global warming is a very uneven thing around the world. I mean, are Europeans going to keep letting in blacks from Africa as they keep losing farmlands because it's too hot? Are Americans going to let in.......... no they aren't even now without HUGE fights even though the US needs the labor force for manual labor to install the very infrastructure needed to deal with this.
So, be a biologist. A REAL one.
@@Hansengineering Right? So how high did ocean levels go to bury that ecosystem under the oceans?
These are all the idiot comments that keep showing up.
Hi I'm a biologist that works for Exxon-Mobil.
Never understood why sodium ion hasn't been a consideration! Shows you how much the lithium market is cornered through recourse and distribution! C'mon AMBRI get it to work! YT get this man a checkmark already!
Battery density is lower, so less range, however it can charge much faster
Didn't you check the video? It's good for stationary storage. Not cars.
The main problem for all applications is the wide (discharge) operating voltage range for sodium chemistry cells. Roughly 1.5V to 3.6V (call it 90% DOD). Whereas LFP goes from 3.0V to roughly 3.4V over the same DOD. Actually more like 3.0V to 3.35V over a 90% DOD. LFP has a far, far, far better operational voltage range for equipment designs to target.
Very little of the cost of a lithium ion battery is from the lithium. If you need to make twice as many batteries to store the same amount of energy with sodium, it will be much cheaper to just use lithium.
@@faroncobb6040 except that gap is closing and closing fast, especially as you can charge sodium faster because there's no chance of thermal run away
Top notch reasoning. My respect and gratitude brother
Great content as always. Wish I couldake the Everything Electric event! Hope the weather is good! Harrogate is lovely wish I hadn't moved away 😅
ha, good timing. a couple of weeks ago i heard some guys in my road cycle club moaning about evs. their issue was "the lithium is running out" and "china has all the lithium". i begged to differ, having remembered that chile actually has most lithium from your previous video (thank you) and also your previous video about sodium batteries (and shazzam byd now have a sodium ion car!)
it's nice to be proved right but much better if these guys didn't get their science from the daily mail. hohum.
Glad to help. Keep banging the drum :-)
12v 100ah sodium battery available on Ebay for about $300. If you paired 3 of these with a 100 watt solar cell, with inverters and charge controllers, (total investment $1500) with the weather in central Texas, and charged the batteries all day, then sold the power between 7 and 9 pm, your return on investment is 3%. Not terrible. Better is coming.
Over what time period?
So glad to hear the good ol' U.S.A. having some positive news, thank you sir!
Dear Dave, so great to finally meet you and shake your hand at the everything electric show. The discussions you hosted today were excellent. Fully recomend to anyone who has the chance to get there this weekend. Keep up the good work .
The best channel known to man
That's very kind! Thank you :-)
Disagree. It's not yet known by everyone. We should work on changing that.
There are a lot of cool things happening in the energy storage market now. I think the transition to a 100% renewable energy system will be much faster than anyone expects.
Amazing what mankind can do when we apply ourselves.
Thank you for this excellent instructive bit.
This is one of the few channels that give me hope for the future, what other channels do other viewers watch for the same reason?
The sodium ion battery technology sounds like a winner. However, I keep hearing stories about how larger and larger amounts of renewable energy, battery technology and grid improvements are going to support data centers. I hate the idea that my state is now off-track to meet its emissions goals because of data center development. We need to give serious thought about letting new energy-gobbling technologies run amok. There's a serious time frame element to the climate problem, which many tech-heads don't seem to grasp.
A lot of us grasp it just fine... we just aren't organized enough to anything about it.
time frame? you scientist? u assume, or u hear from them who ASSUME? >Earth does not even know we are here, just because everyone says it, does not mean it's true; but is is HIGH THIEVERY for sure
Yes, watching the energy equivalent of whole countries worth of domestic usage going into nothing but heat generation (the byproduct of all computing), for the sake of crypto currency mining/bookkeeping and training generative AI, can be somewhat distressing.
@@josepeixoto3384 This isn't really about what "earth knows". The Earth is ambivalent to our existence. It has survived much bigger catastrophes than humans. It'll be here long after we're gone with a new batch of actors (plus plastic). When people talk about "saving the planet" that's really code for "saving a comfortable place for humans to live on this planet". Every indication at this point is that we are well down the road of making a significant percentages of this planet uninhabitable for humans, and it appears to be happening within the span of only a couple human lifespans.
And on the off chance that the problem is real despite you not believing it, the depressing bit is that if you can't believe humans are capable of having caused it, then you can't really believe that it's possible for humans to geoengineer their way out of it either. That we're incapable of playing a meaningful role in our own survival on this planet should something go wrong.
@@daemn42 would be the ultimate in human stupidity where we all fry ourselves trying to produce more Bitcoins. It could happen though cos we are certainly stupid enough as a species.
I see JHAT video, I press thumbs up, I am simple man.
Thank you for your support. Much appreciated :-)
Thanks for sharing, Dave.
Thanks for real info with a kindly presentation. Subscribed today! Cheers
So, what about the Seagull? Sodium ion technology is successful in this small EV despite low energy density?
I assume the Seagull is just generally small and efficient, but also the 305km range is not that impressive by modern EV standards. That said, for long trips charge time is more important than range, to a point. So if it actually charges much faster than equivalently priced lithium battery cars it might actually still win out for travel times on longer trips, assuming it's in a place with good charging infrastructure.
As others have pointed out, the Seagull version with a sodium-ion battery hasn't actually shipped yet. BYD is building the factory in a joint venture.
I agree with your final remark. US, the bastion of free commerce places 100% tarifs on Chinese EVs? So what are the consequences? No incentive for US car makers to produce cheaper EVs. No incentive to produce any EVs. Carry on with ICE business as usual. For consumers who have been waiting on cheap EVs? Keep on waiting.
Kind of sums it up really.
Great vid!
I've been keeping up with Natron for the past 8-9 mths.
Fascinating company!!
This material is scientifically complex to me so I must thank you for going at a pace where I can grasp the concepts.
Very interesting stuff.
In fact, because lithium resources are in easy-to-use places such as South America and Australia, and the Chinese navy is still relatively weak and cannot guarantee waterways, China started research and development of sodium-ion batteries 15 years ago and has started to develop them in the past five years. Pilot test, and recently started large-scale mass production. As for American factories, I am not optimistic about the scale of mass production.
Times are changing. Biden is bringing manufacturing of electronic devices and clean energy technology back to the US.
What a strange comment. China has benefited tremendously. From the USA, keeping the world’s waterways safe, for everyone.
Guangxi: my country's first large-capacity sodium-ion battery energy storage power station put into operation - UA-cam
ua-cam.com/video/OTNChIfTuIs/v-deo.html
中国最大的钠离子电池储能站投产 - UA-cam
ua-cam.com/video/QyeIk6bBfNE/v-deo.html
@@billpetersen298 Pls stop taking undue credit for the USA. Whose military fleet has been patrolling the Gulf of Aden to ward off the Somalian pirates? Show basic respect to facts and truth.
If I remember correctly, the sodium-ion battery is also extensively researched by Chinese battery manufacturers, but it's unsuitable for EVs because its energy density is relatively weak, thus requiring a much bigger pack to drive a car. Therefore it is more suitable for scenarios of energy storage as a complement to emerging new energies such as solar power and wind power plants. As for EVs, the lithium-ion battery is so far the best choice in the foreseeable future.
thank you for your extensive research! I love to have a think 😅
Great video
Please contact Argonne National Lab to record a video on their lithium-air battery? Their battery specs published 17 months ago were: 1000 Wh/kg and 1000 cycles. That's more than 5 X the energy density of this sodium ion battery! With that density, our FPVs could reach Vladivostok.
17 years ago. So either it was
A) bullshit
B) impossible to scale. Works well miniscule quantities, but can't make a battery pack.
C) Can't be productionised. Works well in lab, but just won't scale to be made in large quantities.
D) has a safety or environmental issue that makes it not viable for every day use
E) has a limitation that makes efficiency gains not worth it. Like short cycle lifespan, ot need to refill or dispose of some by product
@@davescott7680 So how did 17 months turn into 17 years? Did you read any of the articles or are you just too lazy to do a Google search? Please disclose your corporate affiliation. Is it Tesla, CATL or oil companies?
Thank you for the commentary.
This is good news.
Recently the US imposed tariffs on Chinese made EV's of 100%.
The prime reason in the US for the slow uptake of EVs has been cost.
The Chinese EVs would have been priced between 12 and 20 thousand dollars. Placing more in the market of lower income Americans.
Tesla's and other EVs are too expensive for the majority of people.
Especially when adding in the cost of a dedicated home charging station.
The very companies who want us to experience Free Market Capitalism have successfully lobbied the government for protection.
This is effectively a tax instead of a tax credit for consumers.
On a different topic.
Oil companies in PA have found that fracking waste water that is pumped back into the ground has a lot of lithium.
Although I highly disagree with the process of fracking in general.
The reclamation of this source of lithium could provide up to 30 percent of US needs for the foreseeable future.
Petroleum and fracking are not going away tomorrow should we not use this resource while it is available?
> Petroleum and fracking are not going away tomorrow should we not use this resource while it is available?
If we can do so without negative consequences, sure. We could burn the fuel we have access to, but then what about the CO2 we'd be adding to the atmosphere? What about the warming that would occur because of that, and the trillions of $ of damage that would be caused by that warming?
We could burn the fuel while capturing the carbon of course, but what if doing things that way costs more money than just using stuff like wind, solar, and sodium-ion batteries? If that were the case, shouldn't we just leave the fuel in the ground and move on?
These are the factors we need to take into account and the numbers we need to crunch.
Great news. I'm wondering if it would be good for home storage and able to run major appliances and how much room it would take to have storage for 3 days to a week. The video just really talked about industraial storage solutions, so any information would help. Thanks!
Great information, thank you!
I've been driving EVs for 13 years now, and they just keep getting better and better. These developments are another step in the right direction. No way I'd ever go back to driving on gasoline! I just wish that Tesla would get rid of its pathological CEO, for he is doing real harm to the EV market. Firing the company's Supercharger senior director, and practically all her team, was an appallingly stupid decision!
I agree. BTW - well done you for leading the way on EVs :-)
I second that. If Elon left Tesla, I might consider buying one (maybe). At this point, he's in the way of me - and many others - of buying an EV. Hopefully in about 2 years, there will be equivalent (or even better) options.
@@mm-qd1hoI'm no Musk fan, but it would be good if you could include at least a little reasoning. Some of the most horrendous people in history have progressed society immensely, and it can be argued that they were quite comfortable playing that role because they had a vision. Again, I'm not a fan of Elon.
All you see are what the media want you to see, you will know little about him, unless you have a personal acquaintance, otherwise its speculation.
@@YUDNSAY Really? Who knew? 🤪
I will also point out that part of the reason BYD manages to keeps its prices low is because the CCP subsidizes it through currency manipulation and various other methods, including payment to the manufacturer on a per unit basis. It remains unclear how long that will continue because the CCP is increasingly in dire financial straits.
Why many European and American companies have also getting the Chinese to make their cars. Lincoln, Buick, mini....
Are you not going to mention the subsidies the West provides to its fossil fuel industry?
You'll have to explain how this is different from US and EU manipulations and methods for ICEs?
Looking at financials is moot. The vast majority of production means and capacity is in Asia. That is ultimately all that matters, financials are just numbers in a computer.
So much misinformation. I mean the part about subsidies isn't technically incorrect but misleading and the latter part about China's economy is the same false narrative that has been going for more than a decade.
Thanks for helping me understand something 👍🏻
I’ve been thinking for a long time that LiOn needed to not be in grid storage and other stationary uses, but mostly small devices and cars where weight matters. Sodium, and flow batteries for that matter where weight is not a big deal. Batteries on a large scaly are needed to support renewals at a large scale.
I’m delighted to see this progress.
I’m a Patrean here for a reason, join me.
"BYD" and "good quality" cannot go together without the word "relatively" mediating them. In China they are known increasingly for battery fires and collapsed suspensions. The CCP does its best to censor all that, and I am sure the Sodium Ion batteries will help, but word does get round.
byd is excellent quality
But of course you know though don't you! 🤡
Doesn't make sense, why would chinese govt censor mess made by private companies.
@@basfinnis dont bother, just another of those idiots on the internet
The world is still buying all its batteries from China. 😂
The environment is an important issue, but so is national security and adhering to actually free market principles. My guess is that his whining comment is because of US tariffs. However, tariffs are hardly protectionist when China is not competing in a traditional free market sense. The Chinese offer better prices not because they are more efficient, but because the CCP manipulates its currency to make exports more competitive (transferring wealth from importers which is usually the household sector to exporters), sets the interest rate of deposits and loans artificially low (transferring wealth from savers to borrowers), and a whole of host of direct and indirect (e.g., subsided land prices, no environmental protection, little to no workers rights, absent social safety net, etc.) subsidies. The CCP is NOT competing in the traditional free-market sense; it wants to export its way to wealth by impoverishing and weakening the West in the long-run. Thankfully, BOTH Trump and Biden realize this, and are trying to level the playing field to prevent another hallowing out of the US's industrial base, leading to more unemployment. Once the CCP decides to play by the rules of a market economy, then we can have an honest discussion about competition.
Yes, the CCP is also doing the same with Chinese property market, food market, transportation market, health care, education. Great for us Chinese citizens with affordable living.
We cannot help it if Americans want higher costs of living. 😂
" the CCP manipulates its currency to make exports more competitive " - repeating what I wrote to someone else: The US takes advantage of the fact that the US dollar is the reserve currency for much of the world, allowing the US to run with very large debts. And every time the Fed moves the interest rates the effects are not just in the US but worldwide. All of which makes the US the main manipulator on this planet.
@@TheDanEdwards Two important points:
1) The United States did not become the world reserve currency through some nefarious unilateral scheme by the US. A number of foreign countries and institutions independently decided to denominate and settle transactions in US dollars. This was the system that became known as the Eurodollar system. This was in part because of the fact that the US dollar has incredible liquidity given the size of its economy, open capital markets, a fair legal system, stable governance, respect for ownership and the Rule of Law, and a willingness to run large trade deficits. Foreigners want to place their excessive savings generated through trade surplus somewhere. The United States is primarily the location where that excessive saving goes, leading to a capital count surplus, which by definition means that the United States has to run a current account deficit, which can be done through either higher unemployment as that leads to a negative savings in the United States or through running fiscal deficits. The United States decides to do the latter. Therefore, in part, the fiscal deficits that the United States runs are forced onto it by the excessive savings that are funneled into the United States economy because of its open capital markets.
2) As for the interest rate changes by the Fed, having an impact on the world economy, that is true. However, the United States has not forced other countries to denominate their debts in US dollars (they did so of their own volition to get lower interest rates on the debt that they issued) and the United States is not obligated to consider the economic impacts of the entire world for its monetary policy. While the United States does consider to some extent the impact of its rate hikes on the rest of the world, its primary concern and duty is to its domestic market just like with any other central bank. If countries find the system unfair, they are capable of trying to change the system themselves; however, there are not many countries on the planet that can frankly serve the role of the US dollar. The Chinese certainly don’t want to have an open capital market that would force them to run the current account deficits that the United States currently has to do. In fact, the Chinese are doubling down on their export and trade surplus-driven model.
Seeing Americans/people in the West extol the principles of a free market, fairness, competition, etc. is really rich. Invoking cheap geopolitical fearmongering talking points like "national security" is icing on the cake. We're talking about fucking batteries and cars here. You can complain about what China's policies are doing to America, but at least it's not under threat of regime change, a coup, an invasion, etc.
One thing people don't talk about is power equipment. Something such as a forklift has thousands of pounds of counter weights on the back of them to keep it from tipping over. If you can use these less energy dense as some of that weight, while at the same time being able to charge an entire forklift in 5-10 minutes that would be revolutionary. I know a lot of forklifts are battery powered already but this could be much better than lead acid and there's still millions of forklifts out there that are propane or Diesel. There's also stuff such as gravel road graders and big heavy rollers that are needed for paving roads. These heavier batteries would actually be a benefit . And because they charge in 5 minutes this is also a no brainer for many types of industrial equipment
Another quality video. TY
Excellent, as always!
I have sodium batteries in my home in Liverpool since February's . They run via normal Growatt inverter
yep, very excited about sodium ion for home or stationary storage.
I live in Los Angeles, and there are companies who are working on harvesting fresh water from the ocean. The problem they have is what to do with the salt brine after the purified water is removed. Right now, they dispose of it right into the ocean. And, although it's "clean", it raises the salt concentration in the surrounding area, which marine life doesn't like too much. This may give those plants a market for selling their salt brine to battery manufacturers!! Ah... closed-loop economy may solve the problem again!!
Brilliant & helpfully informative for a not particularly techy person like me 😂 thanks a mill...😊
They seem to have a metric that they made up. "Total power per energy W/W/h" what the watt? Watt does that even mean?
Cool development, hope I can get one as a home battery or at least one of them. Mixing solutions for energy storage and harvesting.
I want a Natron replacement battery for my 2014 Nissan Leaf. But seriously, this is a brilliant way to eliminate the dendtrite problem.
These batteries would also be useful for small utility vehicles/trikes for deliveries in cities or personal use for light duty errands. They don't need 300 mile range per charge mostly, and can be parked in smaller spaces with a charge cable at each station.
I was telling my supervisor about them and was surprised to see they were already in systems integration. I knew they were being sold Q4 last year, but I'm surprised by how fast they are moving.
Nice one Dave. Seems like Sodium is on the list for the future. I'd love to see the stats on that car to see what compromises they've made to get round the energy density question.
When the promo shows 300km range that's Chinese mileage, maybe 200 real world kms, about 130 miles.
so, this type of cell seems very well-suited to home energy storage from solar, wind, or, and, in many places that have extended power outages in the winter (Texas, Midwest, Maritime Canada), where they could provide UPS kind of capacities for several days, or, in smaller sizes, provide peak load demand from smaller gas/diesel/propane-powered generators, allowing smaller generators that can be quieter, possibly more fuel-efficient when run at peak efficiency, maybe even stop/start operation... all good!
good artical with well reasioned thoughts
Adding my thanks to the chorus
Just wondering, how is your track record on the companies and technologies you describe actually becoming commercially viable? Thanks.
Thanks for this awesome video