Though for static storage, only price/kwh matters.
Comment on World's largest sodium-ion battery goes into operation - Energy Storage
themurphy@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
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.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 4 months ago
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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).
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 4 months ago
Still only price and kw. 😤
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No, kw (power) is a fundamentally different unit from kwh (energy).
Energy is conserved, so that’s how we use it and pay for it, but power capacity is very important for infrastructure. A battery that can hold 1 GWh worth of energy, but can only output it at a rate of 10 MW, might have a ton of limitations to its usefulness.
JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
Addv4@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
Addv4@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 4 months ago
Why is a problem adding an electronical sock on your parking space?
Addv4@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Because I rent an apartment, thus can’t add a socket. I had a coworker trying to get them added our work parking lot, but to no avail.
GenosseFlosse@lemmy.nz 4 months ago
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 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:
- charging station can be used by someone else, or there is queue and each car will most likely charge for 30+ mins. Of course, sometimes some inconsiderate pricks will hog a spot untill their car is fully charged, even if it takes his frikkin tesla 2h
- charging stations close for repairs, sometimes for weeks
- some charging stations need an account or RFID-tag before you can use their (but not other) charging network
- other charging stations require you to bring your own cable
- some charging stations dont have the connector you need for your car
- some stations on the map are bogus, for example that one at my local volvo dealership that only exists to charge the showroom and customer cars, but is not accessible to the public.
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.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
A lot of households, like my own, have multiple cars. We have a commuter (50 miles round trip) and a family car. We use the commuter for most trips around town (only commutes 2x/week), and the family car for longer road trips.
I don’t need a car that can do both, I just need to replace the commuter since that’s where the vast majority of our driving is.
Don’t try to solve the hard problem of putting charging stations in the middle of nowhere, solve the easy problem of replacing that second car. For that, sodium-ion is more than sufficient. Focus infrastructure improvements on apartment complexes, workplaces, and shopping centers so people who don’t have a garage can charge.
JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I wrote elsewhere about the infrastructure problem, but I’ll sum up a couple things. There’s around 200,000 gas stations in the United States. If there were an equivalent number of chargers around, having a small battery would be fine. Eventually this will be the case, but you highlight an important factor: closed ecosystems. All these chargers should work for any make of EV car.
As it stands with now, the need for a subscription or specific car or unique payment method is ludicrous. All these chargers should be required to have card readers the same way you can pay at the pump in a gas station. Beyond this, they’d all need to adopt the same charging method so people don’t need a bunch of adapters in their trunk.
That said, there could be regulations established to require newly built housing, apartment buildings included, to have electric vehicle charging infrastructure - and more than just a few plugs. Grants could be made available for retrofitting existing buildings. If these things came to fruition, we wouldn’t need two hundred thousand charging stations all over the place. It’s not out of the question to install an overnight charging spot for every person that has an electric car - it just costs money.
Basically every argument I’ve seen against low range electric cars is founded in a charging infrastructure problem. Going to a bigger battery in a larger vehicle has significant and more costly ramifications on other infrastructure. It’s better to aim for smaller, lighter vehicles with infrastructure in mind.
badhops@lemmy.world 4 months ago
2015 Leaf owner here. I will agree with everything you said! If you know you know…and you my friend are spot phucking on
Chronographs@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Yeah I see these as the answer to the people who think solar energy is bad because the sun goes down.
sour@feddit.de 4 months ago
What other benefits do they have? Do they have less wear or are cheaper per Wh to produce?
Or at least, about to be when production ramps up further?
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
They are dirt cheap, don’t have the fire safety issues as some lithium chemistries (not all lithium chemistries do that), and sodium is abundant.
sour@feddit.de 4 months ago
Well, sounds great for any non mobile storage then. Don’t think anybody cares whether their 10kWh solar battery is twice the size and weight if it’s half the price.
Thank you :)
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
It’s also great for grocery getter cars where total range isn’t super important. Current EVs are ~250 miles range and top out around 300-400, which is insufficient as a gas replacement for road trips but overkill for a commute or around-town car.
There are a lot of use cases for something inexpensive but technically inferior.
Somethingcheezie@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Article says operating temperature range. -20 to 60 C
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
Lithium batteries are often -30 to 80C, but that’s just saying what’s possible to squeeze some kind of voltage out of them. Basic principle is that the colder it is, the harder it is for chemical reactions to happen, and thus this will affect all chemical batteries to some degree.
frezik@midwest.social 4 months ago
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.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.