I’m so desperate for home battery using sodium batteries. Safer and lower temperature it can operate at. Low energy density but I don’t care for home battery.
I want to have viable replacements for all the old school lithium ion battery packs so that I won't wonder when the day will come that one of the many we have will experience thermal runaway while nobody is around to deal with it. IMO a world where we no longer worry about spontaneous battery fires can't happen soon enough.
Battery voltages are dependent on chemistry, or, standard electrode potentials of metals used. It can't be configured like way past fractions of volts. And Li has about the highest potential among metals, which is kind of the point of using Li. Which means straight swapping NMC cells with any substitute will cause overcharging. Maybe there are cell configurations that could work in series packs, but it can't be simple swap-ins.
LFP batteries are quite a bit safer than the LMN or NMC batteries. The sodium batteries are more stable than LFP I think but I'm not sure how much longer and if that matters too much for home battery usage.
There will probably never be a battery that can power your home but can be used without any kind of worry.
The right thing is to place the battery in a way that you don't have to worry abut the fire, not to expect a high-density battery to be perfectly safe.
There is an aqueous variant of sodium ion batteries that are safer than lithium, but most sodium ion batteries are NOT that variant and are more dangerous than LiFePO4.
The ratio of the stored charge per mass is 23/7 = about 3.3 times higher for lithium than for sodium (7 and 23 are the atomic masses of lithium and sodium), and the voltage can be higher by around 10% for lithium, leading to an even higher energy per mass ratio.
Nonetheless, both sodium and lithium are only a small fraction of the mass of lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries, so the difference in stored energy per mass is much smaller than for the pure metals.
In practice that means that today LFP batteries and sodium-ion batteries have about the same energy per mass ratio (and similar prices), with both having a lower specific energy than the more expensive NMC lithium-ion batteries.
For now, sodium-ion batteries are very new, so they are still a little more expensive than LFP, but eventually they will be significantly cheaper.
Already now, they have important advantages, so there are applications for which they are preferable even when still more expensive, e.g. where it must be possible to charge them at very low temperatures or where it must be possible to discharge them completely.
Honestly, yes, re energy density. I hadn’t seen home batteries in-person until a couple of years ago. I was surprised by how small they could actually be (still with a decent capacity). I’d totally trade some of that for chemistry with a less… catastrophic failure mode, and I don’t even have a big house, even for non-US standards.
Not speaking one way or the other on sodium ion’s properties specifically. I see from sibling comments that it’s not straightforward.
I switched the 12v lead-acid batteries on my EV to the 12v Lithium from OHMMU. Best upgrade I've done. I recently saw that they now offer 12V Sodium, and their warranty now went up to 3 years on the sodium, from 1 year. They have new data on its robustness.
Why? What do you notice? I was told the 12v fail in a few years and it will be swapped out at the 3rd year service and every few years there after for about $100. I will probably never see it as it three big bolts under the passenger seats that I have no interest spending my Saturday removing. What does this upgrade get you?
I did this with a Polaris Ranger EV that had 8x12v Lead Acid in a 2x4 configuration that produces 48V. Instead of going with more 12V batteries, I switched to two 48v BigBattery LiFePO4. In doing so, I dropped the weight by about 600-700 lbs. I use it in very hilly terrain so that weight makes a huge difference to me.
Additionally, the original batteries were not sealed and required maintenance. Each battery has two ports which need to be filled individually. On top of those ports are supports/braces and wires in an already inconvenient space.
I'm so happy to not have to deal with refilling those batteries anymore. That alone made the conversion worth it to me. Also, lead-acid doesn't necessarily last longer. The new (LiFePO4) batteries have lasted about as long already and (knock on wood) seem to be doing fine. Maybe it's because I don't have to top them off with distilled water?
My guess: With all the telemetry and processing that continues to happen in modern cars, if you leave an EV parked for a longer time, the 12V battery will be discharged faster.
So having higher capacity 12V at the same size and only slightly more expensive might help?
> three big bolts under the passenger seats that I have no interest spending my Saturday removing.
I’m not familiar with BYD but yes you need some mechanical aptitude to change the 12v battery yourself.
Premature failure of 12V lead-acid batteries remains a persistent complaint among EV owners and is a recurring frustration. Just go to any EV forum. The traction battery will not top it off either when parked for extended periods.
Lithium batteries generally tolerate periods of inactivity better than lead-acid batteries. The OHMMU batteries are also “smart enabled”, see their website.
ALL the money that flew into "Fossil & Co" throughout the last, lets say, 50 or 60 years, including all implicit fundings, like state-building-streets or universities-masters-engineering-focus-ICE, all the money for lobbying, all the money for all the (counter)campaigns (from ALL sides), and all that money....
...WHAT IF we would have spent all of this money instead on Battery Research and all this Renewable Energy stuff?
We would probably be dramatically farther behind in the Materials Research conducted by the chemical companies underlying the fossil fuels industry, which has itself been necessary to the improvements in battery & semiconductor technologies we are now enjoying. Polyimides don’t invent themselves!
“What If?” history is fun, but there are always Tradeoffs.
I'd love to see a 'manhattan project' to get off of oil, in any way possible eg batteries or algae-produced diesel, whatever works, for geopolitical purposes.
In a very concrete way China has basically been running it. It's given us EVs, a massive PV cost reduction, cheap hydropower, cheap wind power, lots of battery cost reductions, and perhaps even enhanced competitiveness in the nuclear market. Also modern high speed rail which is readily fueled by non-ICE methods.
Ungodly amount of money was spent on battery research since 1945, at least $100-150B since 2000 alone. Every combination of anode, cathode and electrolyte was tried, tested and evaluated. We got silver-zinc, Ni-Cd, NiMH and finally Li-Ion batteries as the result.
We would have inefficient and polluting engines, leaded gasoline, steam engines burning coal, no high performance plastics, and probably more even wars around oil and gas and slower economy leading to less resource to fund battery research...
I mean, batteries and solar panels are cool, but thinking about the future doesn't mean we should forget the present. The advance we could have gotten by diverting funding away from fossil fuels and towards renewables and batteries is to balance with the damage caused by using outdated fossil fuel technology before the transition.
Cities are breathable now thanks to all the progresses modern engines have made. They will be even more breathable with zero emission cars, but I prefer to wait a bit more in these conditions than waiting a bit less in a smog filled city.
We might have shaven off ~10 years from the current timeline.
Batteries are only a part of the equation. Practical EVs were enabled not just by Li-ion batteries but by IGBTs. And semiconductor development moved about as fast as possible.
And then there's a gulf between lead-acid batteries and Li-ions. I think only NiMH batteries would have been a reasonable midpoint, and even they would have been impractical for full EVs.
That was fast. CATL is only now ramping up Naxtra production and it's already approaching price parity with LFP. This is early validation of the cost curve predictions for this chemistry.
Most of this is destined for stationary storage that would likely have used lithium-based chemistry instead, or not been built-out at all. Every GWh of capacity sodium offsets is a GWh that isn't supplied by lithium, so demand for higher-value battery chemistry should be lower, and take prices with it. Good news all around.
I've probably drunk too much kool-aid somewhere else, have always assumed sodium-ion batteries are already cheap and it's just trying to beat LFP in terms of energy density...
CATL sodium and ProLogium solid state are the only legit "safe" batteries made.
LFP and NMC are, sadly: ubiquitous, dangerous, and normalized. LFP entering thermal runaway produce hydrogen gas that requires continuous igniters to burn off and burns/smolders for days to weeks.
You make it sound like battery fires are very common. This just isn't the case. Especially LFP battery fires are pretty rare. They are considered very safe at this point. And the flip side of things burning slowly is that the energy gets released over a long time. People walk away from most EV fires. Annoying for the fire men to deal with but mostly just because it involves a lot of waiting. A petrol car fire is over by the time they get there mostly. Once the petrol tank catches fire, it' not going to take long.
Just remember, the most frequent cause (by far) for fire trucks to get called out is vehicle fires. Whatever you may think of battery safety, if you are fine with being in or around a fuel bomb on wheels and still worry about battery fires, you might be a bit confused about risk assessment. EV fires make the news. Petrol cars on fire generally don't because it's such a common event.
Most modern LFP batteries are actually pretty hard to set fire to. It's something battery makers exploit by subjecting their batteries to all sorts of abuse (shooting them, hammering nails through them, throwing them off buildings, etc.) to demonstrate how safe they are. Whereas a petrol car fires can (and frequently do) result in people dying. Combustible fuel just isn't designed to not combust.
Cars burning is a popular plot point in movies. Probably not that realistic but they burn so pretty. A slowly smoldering Tesla is a lot less exciting. In general, EVs are underused in action movies even though they'd be a lot better performing in a car chase. Petrol cars are much more dramatic. They make noise. They explode. They struggle to start when they need to or when it is cold. Or they run out of fuel and stutter to a halt. Or you set them on fire to dispose of a body. Easy success for a director. Realism in movies is of course not a thing. But exploding Teslas is a bit of a hard sell.
Likely includes the whole system (pack, BMS, inverter, cabinet, installation) rather than only the cells. In any case, sodium will take a few years until the scale is large enough to offer any cost advantage over fairly optimized and cheap LFP these days.
Yeah I call BS on this. It’s of course will get cheaper, but only so much - ingredients that are cheaper is like 30% of the battery. All while LFP is mature tech that’s also getting cheaper.
It doesn’t even add up on pack cost. Tesla’s NCM packs are like $14k brand new which adds up to $186 per kwh.
I think submitted article isn’t from a legitimate news source. The overall headline about what CATL said about cost parity is valid, but someone ran an LLM over the original source and embellished it into a long article with a bunch of made up numbers.
I’m so desperate for home battery using sodium batteries. Safer and lower temperature it can operate at. Low energy density but I don’t care for home battery.
I want to have viable replacements for all the old school lithium ion battery packs so that I won't wonder when the day will come that one of the many we have will experience thermal runaway while nobody is around to deal with it. IMO a world where we no longer worry about spontaneous battery fires can't happen soon enough.
Battery voltages are dependent on chemistry, or, standard electrode potentials of metals used. It can't be configured like way past fractions of volts. And Li has about the highest potential among metals, which is kind of the point of using Li. Which means straight swapping NMC cells with any substitute will cause overcharging. Maybe there are cell configurations that could work in series packs, but it can't be simple swap-ins.
LFP batteries are quite a bit safer than the LMN or NMC batteries. The sodium batteries are more stable than LFP I think but I'm not sure how much longer and if that matters too much for home battery usage.
There will probably never be a battery that can power your home but can be used without any kind of worry.
The right thing is to place the battery in a way that you don't have to worry abut the fire, not to expect a high-density battery to be perfectly safe.
7 replies →
Standard sodium batteries are much more explosive than LiFE
2 replies →
There is an aqueous variant of sodium ion batteries that are safer than lithium, but most sodium ion batteries are NOT that variant and are more dangerous than LiFePO4.
Wait what? All data I see about sodium ion is safer than LFP. I’m by no means an expert and would love to see why it’s the other way around
6 replies →
Sodium batteries will only continue to get cheaper. Cost parity now, but probably closer to 1/2 the price in a few years as production ramps up.
I thought the main advantage in comparison with LFP is the lower price(long term) and better sub-zero performance?
Nope. Almost all batteries I see for LFP have heaters for them at too low temps (around freezing 0C/32F). Where as sodium ion can discharge at -25C
7 replies →
Aren't sodium higher density (at least in terms of energy per weight) than LiFe?
Maybe you're right in terms of energy per volume. Sodium are very light weight in my experience.
No.
The ratio of the stored charge per mass is 23/7 = about 3.3 times higher for lithium than for sodium (7 and 23 are the atomic masses of lithium and sodium), and the voltage can be higher by around 10% for lithium, leading to an even higher energy per mass ratio.
Nonetheless, both sodium and lithium are only a small fraction of the mass of lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries, so the difference in stored energy per mass is much smaller than for the pure metals.
In practice that means that today LFP batteries and sodium-ion batteries have about the same energy per mass ratio (and similar prices), with both having a lower specific energy than the more expensive NMC lithium-ion batteries.
For now, sodium-ion batteries are very new, so they are still a little more expensive than LFP, but eventually they will be significantly cheaper.
Already now, they have important advantages, so there are applications for which they are preferable even when still more expensive, e.g. where it must be possible to charge them at very low temperatures or where it must be possible to discharge them completely.
No, sodium batteries are less energy dense.
Honestly, yes, re energy density. I hadn’t seen home batteries in-person until a couple of years ago. I was surprised by how small they could actually be (still with a decent capacity). I’d totally trade some of that for chemistry with a less… catastrophic failure mode, and I don’t even have a big house, even for non-US standards.
Not speaking one way or the other on sodium ion’s properties specifically. I see from sibling comments that it’s not straightforward.
yeah, I am waiting to replace my home battery for the safer sodium option whenever it becomes possible. I keep hoping.
Are you in the US?
Yup
1 reply →
I switched the 12v lead-acid batteries on my EV to the 12v Lithium from OHMMU. Best upgrade I've done. I recently saw that they now offer 12V Sodium, and their warranty now went up to 3 years on the sodium, from 1 year. They have new data on its robustness.
Why? What do you notice? I was told the 12v fail in a few years and it will be swapped out at the 3rd year service and every few years there after for about $100. I will probably never see it as it three big bolts under the passenger seats that I have no interest spending my Saturday removing. What does this upgrade get you?
Byd dolphin, Thailand prices for above
I did this with a Polaris Ranger EV that had 8x12v Lead Acid in a 2x4 configuration that produces 48V. Instead of going with more 12V batteries, I switched to two 48v BigBattery LiFePO4. In doing so, I dropped the weight by about 600-700 lbs. I use it in very hilly terrain so that weight makes a huge difference to me.
Additionally, the original batteries were not sealed and required maintenance. Each battery has two ports which need to be filled individually. On top of those ports are supports/braces and wires in an already inconvenient space.
I'm so happy to not have to deal with refilling those batteries anymore. That alone made the conversion worth it to me. Also, lead-acid doesn't necessarily last longer. The new (LiFePO4) batteries have lasted about as long already and (knock on wood) seem to be doing fine. Maybe it's because I don't have to top them off with distilled water?
3 replies →
My guess: With all the telemetry and processing that continues to happen in modern cars, if you leave an EV parked for a longer time, the 12V battery will be discharged faster.
So having higher capacity 12V at the same size and only slightly more expensive might help?
1 reply →
> three big bolts under the passenger seats that I have no interest spending my Saturday removing.
I’m not familiar with BYD but yes you need some mechanical aptitude to change the 12v battery yourself.
Premature failure of 12V lead-acid batteries remains a persistent complaint among EV owners and is a recurring frustration. Just go to any EV forum. The traction battery will not top it off either when parked for extended periods.
Lithium batteries generally tolerate periods of inactivity better than lead-acid batteries. The OHMMU batteries are also “smart enabled”, see their website.
Just imagine:
ALL the money that flew into "Fossil & Co" throughout the last, lets say, 50 or 60 years, including all implicit fundings, like state-building-streets or universities-masters-engineering-focus-ICE, all the money for lobbying, all the money for all the (counter)campaigns (from ALL sides), and all that money....
...WHAT IF we would have spent all of this money instead on Battery Research and all this Renewable Energy stuff?
Where would we be today on techdev curve? ;-) ;-)
We would probably be dramatically farther behind in the Materials Research conducted by the chemical companies underlying the fossil fuels industry, which has itself been necessary to the improvements in battery & semiconductor technologies we are now enjoying. Polyimides don’t invent themselves!
“What If?” history is fun, but there are always Tradeoffs.
So, Material Science research progress wouldnt have been possible without burning all the stuff for decades in all types of combustion engines? :-D
1 reply →
Is the oil industry the secret benefactor of more breakthroughs? That’s some steelmanning.
4 replies →
Hard to imagine being farther behind than a static page with no services.
I'd love to see a 'manhattan project' to get off of oil, in any way possible eg batteries or algae-produced diesel, whatever works, for geopolitical purposes.
This was the original mission of the Department of Energy…
In a very concrete way China has basically been running it. It's given us EVs, a massive PV cost reduction, cheap hydropower, cheap wind power, lots of battery cost reductions, and perhaps even enhanced competitiveness in the nuclear market. Also modern high speed rail which is readily fueled by non-ICE methods.
Algae diesel would be amazing.
1 reply →
Well we could just use the original manhattan project. Nuclear works, it is just expensive.
Exactly the same as today.
Ungodly amount of money was spent on battery research since 1945, at least $100-150B since 2000 alone. Every combination of anode, cathode and electrolyte was tried, tested and evaluated. We got silver-zinc, Ni-Cd, NiMH and finally Li-Ion batteries as the result.
Do you have some links or stats here?
1 reply →
We would have inefficient and polluting engines, leaded gasoline, steam engines burning coal, no high performance plastics, and probably more even wars around oil and gas and slower economy leading to less resource to fund battery research...
I mean, batteries and solar panels are cool, but thinking about the future doesn't mean we should forget the present. The advance we could have gotten by diverting funding away from fossil fuels and towards renewables and batteries is to balance with the damage caused by using outdated fossil fuel technology before the transition.
Cities are breathable now thanks to all the progresses modern engines have made. They will be even more breathable with zero emission cars, but I prefer to wait a bit more in these conditions than waiting a bit less in a smog filled city.
So progress is in burning fossils because otherwise we cant >get it<?
1 reply →
We might have shaven off ~10 years from the current timeline.
Batteries are only a part of the equation. Practical EVs were enabled not just by Li-ion batteries but by IGBTs. And semiconductor development moved about as fast as possible.
And then there's a gulf between lead-acid batteries and Li-ions. I think only NiMH batteries would have been a reasonable midpoint, and even they would have been impractical for full EVs.
That was fast. CATL is only now ramping up Naxtra production and it's already approaching price parity with LFP. This is early validation of the cost curve predictions for this chemistry.
Most of this is destined for stationary storage that would likely have used lithium-based chemistry instead, or not been built-out at all. Every GWh of capacity sodium offsets is a GWh that isn't supplied by lithium, so demand for higher-value battery chemistry should be lower, and take prices with it. Good news all around.
I've probably drunk too much kool-aid somewhere else, have always assumed sodium-ion batteries are already cheap and it's just trying to beat LFP in terms of energy density...
mere cost parity seems kind of disappointing. I thought the main selling point (other than low temp) was supposed to be that it was cheaper.
Its Moorelike curve has just started.
CATL sodium and ProLogium solid state are the only legit "safe" batteries made.
LFP and NMC are, sadly: ubiquitous, dangerous, and normalized. LFP entering thermal runaway produce hydrogen gas that requires continuous igniters to burn off and burns/smolders for days to weeks.
You make it sound like battery fires are very common. This just isn't the case. Especially LFP battery fires are pretty rare. They are considered very safe at this point. And the flip side of things burning slowly is that the energy gets released over a long time. People walk away from most EV fires. Annoying for the fire men to deal with but mostly just because it involves a lot of waiting. A petrol car fire is over by the time they get there mostly. Once the petrol tank catches fire, it' not going to take long.
Just remember, the most frequent cause (by far) for fire trucks to get called out is vehicle fires. Whatever you may think of battery safety, if you are fine with being in or around a fuel bomb on wheels and still worry about battery fires, you might be a bit confused about risk assessment. EV fires make the news. Petrol cars on fire generally don't because it's such a common event.
Most modern LFP batteries are actually pretty hard to set fire to. It's something battery makers exploit by subjecting their batteries to all sorts of abuse (shooting them, hammering nails through them, throwing them off buildings, etc.) to demonstrate how safe they are. Whereas a petrol car fires can (and frequently do) result in people dying. Combustible fuel just isn't designed to not combust.
Cars burning is a popular plot point in movies. Probably not that realistic but they burn so pretty. A slowly smoldering Tesla is a lot less exciting. In general, EVs are underused in action movies even though they'd be a lot better performing in a car chase. Petrol cars are much more dramatic. They make noise. They explode. They struggle to start when they need to or when it is cold. Or they run out of fuel and stutter to a halt. Or you set them on fire to dispose of a body. Easy success for a director. Realism in movies is of course not a thing. But exploding Teslas is a bit of a hard sell.
Every day, there's another news story about it... Just let me know when we can actually buy it. It's getting boring already.
https://www.bluettipower.com/products/sodium-ion-battery-pio...
https://aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-sodium-ion-battery.html
Weren't they supposed to be cheaper?
"error establishing a database connection"
Sodium powered data center
You sound a bit salty.
2 replies →
> approximately $200/kWh for LFP batteries
Huh?
Automotive grade are like 50 and storage ones are like 30.
Can someone confirm these prices because sounds a whole lot of BS or article not saying something (i.e. dancing around TCO).
Likely includes the whole system (pack, BMS, inverter, cabinet, installation) rather than only the cells. In any case, sodium will take a few years until the scale is large enough to offer any cost advantage over fairly optimized and cheap LFP these days.
Yeah I call BS on this. It’s of course will get cheaper, but only so much - ingredients that are cheaper is like 30% of the battery. All while LFP is mature tech that’s also getting cheaper.
It doesn’t even add up on pack cost. Tesla’s NCM packs are like $14k brand new which adds up to $186 per kwh.
Alternative site which is still up
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/11/06/sodium-ion-batteries-...
I think submitted article isn’t from a legitimate news source. The overall headline about what CATL said about cost parity is valid, but someone ran an LLM over the original source and embellished it into a long article with a bunch of made up numbers.
Ok, we've changed to that from https://ievchina.com/energy-storage/catl-sodium-battery-cost... above. Thanks!
[flagged]
https://web.archive.org/web/20261106230147/https://ievchina....
Main site seems to be down. This archive link still works