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A Staggering 19x Energy Jump in Capacitors May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries
(www.popularmechanics.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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I had a little discussion with a guy complaining about sodium batteries and how you keep hearing these wild claims and then nothing. I did a quick search and saw an article about a $2 billion partnership agreement to work on a pilot plant for sodium batteries. He claimed it was yet another sensational headline and doubted anything would happen from it. Less than a week later I saw an article about a plant in America being announced.
This stuff is hard. It's not like Master of Orion where you throw money at a specific research and get access upon completion. Different groups around the world are researching a multitude of different ideas, some related, and after a while a bunch of these ideas are combined and associated and researched, and all of a sudden you have a new product that's significantly different from what was available before. And then you see incremental improvements for decades, not unlike the internal combustion engine or rechargeable lithium batteries.
It's the same with many infrastructure problems. You hear about some interesting infrastructure project that's going to transform regional travel, improve transit, make biking/walking safer, or prepare for future natural disasters. Then it takes forever for them to go into place because it takes a long time to plan, do the legal work, and build. But then the infrastructure goes into place and no one thinks twice about the long process behind it.
And we should also consider the longevity of these infrastructures. Cities that built their subways in the 19th century are still running them today and are vastly superior in terms of transit abilities than car cities. The population densities of today are unimaginable without central sewers and water infrastructure. Having continent spanning electricity grids are gigantic achievements. All these have shaped our lives for decades and sometimes centuries already and they are set to do so for centuries to come.
I have an item that costs me 40 to buy. I sell you the item for 200. I get a hundred now and a hundred when you get the item. If I fill the order now I get my 100. However if I wait a year I get an interest free loan on the 40 bucks. Maybe I push you off for 10 years. I not only get the 100 you owe me I also doubled that 40. If I am a big company I can pull this off, if I am a one man operation I can't. Guess who gets hired for these projects. Hint it isnt Jeff's gutter repair.
And that is just fixed priced contracts. You can imagine the horrorshow of open ended ones.
Sodium batteries look great. They also can use the same manufacturing equipment as lithium batteries. Reducing the capital costs for the product.