this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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219
China's new iron battery hits 99.4 percent efficiency over 6000 cycles (interestingengineering.com)
submitted 1 week ago by Gsus4@mander.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Machiavelli2@lemmy.world 34 points 6 days ago

The title is misleading.

"Throughout this period, the system remained free of harmful by-products or sediment while achieving a 99.4 percent leak-proof efficiency. Even at high power outputs, it retained 78.5 percent of its energy efficiency, proving that the design is both reliable and durable."

99.4% leak proof against material transitioning within the membranes.

78.5% energy output efficiency.

And as others have said no useful metrics tbh.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 61 points 1 week ago (10 children)

The battery prototype demonstrated endurance, maintaining a stable structure and perfect reversibility over 6,000 cycles — equivalent to more than 16 years of daily operation — with zero loss in storage capacity.

WTF!? If this battery is just half as good as they claim, it could be a game changer for storing power for solar and wind!

[–] blackbeans@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago

There's always a catch, details matter.

Some chemistries can only work if heated up to a certain temperature.
Some cannot supply high currents. Some perform badly at lower temperatures. Some are expensive to produce. Some have a very low energy density per weight or volume. Some are hard to create consistently and require a lot of balancing. Some cannot be scaled up easily. Some are prone to aging regardless of cycles. Some even require manual maintenance.

It's hard to make a cell that does everything right. Cycle life is only one out of a huge list of parameters.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Those are not the metrics that are important for storing wind and solar. Cost per MWh is the important one.

It is great to see, and isn't an unreasonable jump from lifepo4. They already do 4-6k charge cycles with something like 20% degradation. This is a bigger deal for electronics and vehicles as it would make battery replacements unnecessary.

[–] Pelicanen@fedia.io 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

But cycle life is a central parameter for the cost of a battery, the longer it lasts the more rarely you have to replace it. In the longer term, a battery that lasts twice as long can be practically half as expensive.

[–] willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Assuming the manufacturing costs (materials + utilities + other fees + labor + profit extraction) for the two types of batteries are equal, yes.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

No? Even if the new battery is 3x more expensive to build, and has 50 % of the capacity of a Li-ion battery, it can still have an advantage in large scale storage if it lasts for 10x as many cycles without degrading. At the end of the day, it's a combination of parameters that determine which is the best for a given application, and high resistance to degradation can outweigh other parameters in many scenarios.

[–] gian@lemmy.grys.it 43 points 1 week ago (21 children)

The problem is that 6000 cycles in laboratory are not the same than 6000 cycles in real life scenarios.

It would be interesting to put that battery out in the field and to see how it perform in real life conditions (assuming that they are cheap enough to be produced in large volumes)

If they are really that good you are right, but there are always a lot of revolutionary advance in lab that never leave it.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago

I've seen some incredible innovations in batteries performing really well in cold temperatures. So the idea of these becoming battle tested seems more feasible today than it did even a couple years ago.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

It really depends on the charge/discharge conditions that the particular test is using. You can do testing in the lab that is way harsher than typical usage or you can make it easier. In terms of this cycle testing for Li-ion I would say that typically the lab testing would be harsher than real world primarily because lab testing is done between 0% and 100% depth of discharge constantly where most people are charging their batteries much before then and only cycling them at high rates periodically.

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