Hell yeah
I can't wait to see this headline again but about a bigger battery somewhere else
Nice. This seems to be the future that solves a lot of problems. Right now in Australia, we’re seriously entertaining building nuclear power plants for the first time ever, to provide base load power that renewables allegedly can’t. Large sodium batteries could help us avoid that.
It's not just base load, turbines also provide grid stability. All the quick fluctuations as people turn things on and off are hard to load balance with solar, wind, or battery. A big spinning turbine has a lot of inertia. That helps keep thr grid at a constant frequency. As solar gets bigger and bigger we might need big solar powdered flywheel generators just to stabilize the grid.
Inverters could also provide "virtual inertia" which help to stabilize the grid frequency. However most of today's inverters don't have it, or it's disabled.
This means we don't need solar powered flywheels, which are inherently inefficient, we just need software (edit: and batteries of course) more or less.
Partially. Inverters providing virtual inertia is good but has the problem of still being active and reactive. It helps and is cheaper and more efficient than flywheels.
Flywheels and turbines however provide a very sticky frequency. They help out a lot with stability and give inverters time to respond.
Think balancing a stick on your hand vs anchoring it in clay.
If we take enough turbines off line we are still probably going to need some mechanical power stabilization no matter how inefficient.
But yeah I think we are going to see a blend using as much electrical and as little mechanical as possible.
The LNP doesn't have a legitimate interest in transitioning to nuclear power or they would've begun over the last decade or so that they were in power.
Instead they've proposed - now that they're in opposition - a technology which is banned at the Federal level and individually at the state level, because they know that gives them years of lead time before they ever have to begin the project.
On top of that, all of the proposed sites are owned by companies who've already begun transitioning to renewable generation or renewable storage, and most of them are in states in which the state Premiers have publicly stated that they will not consider overturning their bans on nuclear power.
The draw-back with sodium batteries needs to be known, because they won't replace lithium anytime soon.
The density is lower, which is a great problem in EVs.
Not trying to be negative, but for an EV, or anything handheld, you get more weight for less power. Which is essential in a car, that uses more power the heavier it is.
What sodium IS the best at, are use cases where weight and size doesn't matter. Like with battery farms.
In this case they are much better than lithium.
While you're not wrong, sodium batteries coming on the market have 200 Wh/kg. This is comparable to where LFP batteries were a few years ago. That means the newer sodium batteries are about as good as what's in lots of EVs right now.
The ceiling is going to be lower than with lithium. Sodium ions themselves weigh about 3 times more than lithium, for the same +1 charge. So it's not just that sodium is a certain number of years behind lithium. It's that it'll likely plateau at a point permanently behind where lithium will likely be.
Sodium could easily replace lithium in EV applications if people would acknowledge that only 2% of trips are more than 50 miles. Though it's probably moreso the auto industry's fault that people have this assumption they need to prepare for a three hundred mile journey on a moments notice.
If manufacturers were putting out cars that had four figure price tags with double digit ranges, they would become the best selling vehicles within a decade and no one would care if it was sodium, lithium, or sawdust. Of course, there is less profit to be made from smaller vehicles and so the corporations won't bother.
That's assuming you don't have issues charging at where you live, which is a pretty big if for a lot of people. A 300 Mi charge would mean if you can't charge daily, you would be able to go a couple of days without having to do so.
A 300 Mi charge would mean if you can't charge daily, you would be able to go a couple of days without having to do so.
Given most trips are less than 3 miles, if you had a 300 mile range vehicle, that's about three months of average driving, not a couple of days. My point was that people don't go on long drives the vast majority of time and don't more than fifty or so miles of range.
I'll use Tesla as the example here only because it's the prominent electric car brand. Directly from them:
A 120 volt outlet will supply 2 to 3 miles of range per hour of charge. If you charge overnight and drive less than 30 to 40 miles per day, this option should meet your typical charging needs.
They go one to say you can get a 10x improvement on the miles per hour when charging from a 240v outlet. Even accounting for installation of a new outlet to the garage or side of the house, this would be far cheaper than buying a vehicle with hundreds of miles of range and using a supercharger every other week.
I live about 5 miles from work. I usually drive about 20 miles a day, so about 140 a week. I also rent an apt where there are no options for a charger. I considered a mini Cooper se and even a fiat 500e for a bit (it's really cheap when you can find it), but once I looked my driving, I was only going to be comfortable with a 200 mile range for the occasional (once or twice a month) trips that are 100 miles one way. While chargers along the trip might be available, most times I've seen them they are clearly broken (provided it isn't tesla, which seems to repair them). I do live in a city, but even then the 100 miles range would be tough to accommodate. Not saying impossible (I've seen electric mustangs and electric Chevrolets in my apartment), but a range of 100 miles is a lot less feasible for most than I think the data suggests, although that might also be fine if charging was faster.
EV owner here. 50 miles is not practical, beacuse then I need another for the other 2% of trips that are longer than that. This also ignores detours or traffic jams, when google will try to reroute me over a longer, but faster route. Plus, the "50 miles" readout you get is always just an estimate and the real range depends on temperature, driving speed, start-stops and how much elevation you need to cover. Some 30km trips here cost me 50+ EV km because its all uphill in one direction. I usually add 30km to my trip as required charge, because when the battery reaches 25km the car starts to complain with a nervously blinking battery readout and a "Charge now!" message on the dashboard.
"But then you just charge during the trip!" - Well this only work if i go somewhere where i know where to find RELIABLE chargers. I am well aware that there are good apps that show me charging locations, but getting a charging spot I can actually use is a different story:
Not saying EVs are bad, but the charging infrastructure still needs some work to be reliable and accessible. Petrol stations always have some large, obnoxious signs on the side of the road that you cant miss; Charging stations are sometimes just a tiny grey box on a wall and a 5-space parking lot, or behind a building and you never notice it when driving by.
But for static storage, only price/kw matters.
Price per kw and price per kwh stored. And price per kwh over the expected lifetime of the battery itself (longevity and reliability and safety and disposal will have to be factored into total cost of ownership).
Yeah I see these as the answer to the people who think solar energy is bad because the sun goes down.
the power station can be charged and discharged more than 300 times a year. A single charge can store up to 100,000 kWh of electricity and release electricity during the peak period of the power grid. It can meet the daily power needs of around 12,000 households and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 13,000 tons annually.
Nice
That’s pretty neat.
According to Datang Group, the power station can be charged and discharged more than 300 times a year.
Well, nice, but "more than 300 times a year" is definitely a weird goal to define or a weird metric to brag about, right?
I mean, what in it's desig could be so critical that they wouldn't just say 'once daily' or something.
Does it require maintenance days when no cells are operational?
Doesn't California have some insane battery too?
Yes, but that is Lithium-ion. These batteries are Sodium-ion which are better for the environment and can potentially be made a lot cheaper.. It's still pretty new technology so it's not really in any consumer products yet.
Sodium batteries are already in electric cars many months ago
Also you could buy individual cells on AliExpress
I love how these look like Lego pieces snapped onto a green base.
Even if all that is painted cement or something it is also just really refreshing to see architecture, especially the sort of necessity eyesore that tech architecture/engineering requires, also being mindfully the environment it will exist in to some degree. Even if it is only visual.
Hopefully we can soon get one as home batteries to extend the use of solar panels. Because I don't feel great about having a lithium battery that large in my house
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
