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posted by mrpg on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:45AM   Printer-friendly

As a warming world moves from fossil fuels toward renewable solar and wind energy, industrial forecasts predict an insatiable need for battery farms to store power and provide electricity when the sky is dark and the air is still. Against that backdrop, Stanford researchers have developed a sodium-based battery that can store the same amount of energy as a state-of-the-art lithium ion, at substantially lower cost.

Chemical engineer Zhenan Bao and her faculty collaborators, materials scientists Yi Cui and William Chueh, aren't the first researchers to design a sodium ion battery. But they believe the approach they describe in an Oct. 9 Nature Energy paper has the price and performance characteristics to create a sodium ion battery costing less than 80 percent of a lithium ion battery with the same storage capacity.

"Nothing may ever surpass lithium in performance," Bao said. "But lithium is so rare and costly that we need to develop high-performance but low-cost batteries based on abundant elements like sodium."

With materials constituting about one-quarter of a battery's price, the cost of lithium – about $15,000 a ton to mine and refine – looms large. That's why the Stanford team is basing its battery on widely available sodium-based electrode material that costs just $150 a ton.

Sodium batteries taste better, too.


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 12 2017, @03:12PM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 12 2017, @03:12PM (#581162) Journal

    Thanks.

    Something is wrong thought. A $200/kWh for consumer batteries is too low. I looked over the weekend and could not find anything lower than AUD1000/kWh. Granted, retail price.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:39PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:39PM (#581208) Journal
    Glancing around, it appears to depend on the role of the battery. Automotive batteries tend to be more expensive (though I see estimates for $273 [thinkprogress.org] and $227 [electrek.co] per kwh in 2016). Other battery types were already well below $200 [teslamotorsclub.com] per kwh (for laptop batteries).
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:41PM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:41PM (#581209) Journal
      This is also the cost not price for buying in bulk.
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 12 2017, @05:07PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 12 2017, @05:07PM (#581218) Journal

        Ah, the cost. That explains.

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