7 ms·

Lower capacity in the same form factor, but inputs are common and cheap as dirt and will be able to do the hard work of supporting grid scale battery storage. W

• hcarvalhoalves 3y ago
  Even if it isn't as high-capacity, a longer-lasting and safer battery over a thinner smartphone isn't a _bad_ trade-off, specially considering chips and screens get more efficient. This might have more market than stationary batteries.
  • rich_sasha 3y ago
    Are they safer? Sodium is also very highly reactive. Otherwise agreed, I'm very happy with form factor of 5-10 year old phones.
    • majoe 3y ago
      One of the claimed benefits of sodium based batteries, that I remember from the press statements of CATL, is that they don't burn, even when you but them in a fire. The also should work in a wider temperature range, which is especially interesting for cold regions. In the article it says, that they are using a "patented Prussian blue". Isn't CATL also using Prussian blue in their first generation sodium batteries?
    • demondemidi 3y ago
      NaCl is pretty safe. ;)
      • ash__ 3y ago
        [flagged]
      • tharkun__ 3y ago
        Depends on the quantity and who you ask what the safe level is ;)
      • strangattractor 3y ago
        My cardiologist doesn't think so :(
        • pkaye 3y ago
          Low NaCl in a human body is also really bad.
    • hcarvalhoalves 3y ago
      The battery made by the company mentioned uses an aqueous electrolyte construction which is theoretically safer from what I read, but I don't know if it can be made small for a portable. The fact it supports more cycles and tolerates a broader temperature range than Lithium counts points towards safety too. Lithium isn't happy above like 30 Celsius, which a fast charging portable device can _easily_ reach.
      • justinclift 3y ago
        > Lithium isn't happy above like 30 Celsius, which a fast charging portable device can _easily_ reach. Sounds pretty bad for people living in warmer climates then, as they tend to be above 30 celsius anyway. ;)
        • cesarb 3y ago
          > Sounds pretty bad for people living in warmer climates then, as they tend to be above 30 celsius anyway. ;) As a data point, the ambient temperature right now where I live is 33°C. I just walked home from a quick grocery trip a couple of blocks away. And that's not an atypical temperature (at least for the warmer months of the year; we're supposed to be in the colder months now, but the climate's been all wonky lately). If my phone's battery didn't like ambient temperatures above 30°C, it would have failed long ago. There's no air conditioning in the street.
          • hcarvalhoalves 3y ago
            It doesn't fail abruptly, but it doesn't achieve optimal performance either. It has pretty strict optimal temperature range, something like 10C to 30C.
    • troymc 3y ago
      Here's Natron's page about safety: https://natron.energy/our-technology/safety https://natron.energy/our-technology/safety I don't think the battery is a big block of pure sodium. That would be unsafe. The battery electrolyte contains sodium ions, but the same is true of salt water and Gatorade. I think the industrial source of their sodium is sodium hydoxide, a common industrial feedstock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • thejohnconway 3y ago
      For iPhones, at least, I believe that period was when they were thinnest (the iPhone 6 is the thinnest one, 2014).
    • rini17 3y ago
      Since na-ion cells are available on aliexpress, youtubers already did puncture tests, and indeed they did not catch fire. Seems like sodium is better "hidden" in the cathode/anode so it won't react witth the air so quickly as lithium when battery innards are exposed.
      • BenjiWiebe 3y ago
        Were they actually sodium batteries? Maybe they were fraudulently labeled Li-ion. Also it's my understanding that neither sodium batteries nor li-ion batteries have metallic sodium/lithium in them (besides small amounts which build up in heavily used li-ion cells or something).
        • rini17 3y ago
          They have specific discharge curve which would be too much effort to fake.
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      I believe sodium here is always in the oxidized +1 state, like the lithium in Li-ion batteries. It's not present as a metal. The things being oxidized/reduced are transition metals in one or more electrodes.
  • addaon 3y ago
    If customers were supportive of this trade-off, why would we not already see companies exploring it with LTO batteries?
  • GuB-42 3y ago
    But who wants a fat smartphone with lower battery life? Smartphones are where people want as much energy density as possible. Smartphones are also expensive devices with a relatively small battery, so it makes sense to add a few dollars for more energy density. Also most smartphone manufacturers are very much into planned obsolescence, so much that countries are starting to legislate, they don't really want long lasting batteries, especially not if it compromises the user experience. There could be a market for power tools, where having more batteries of lower capacity for the same price can be desirable. Also maybe for hybrid vehicles.
    • MrDrMcCoy 3y ago
      Personally, I wouldn't mind a fatter phone. It actually might be easier for me to hold. I've never seen the appeal of phones so thin I could shave with them.
      • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > never seen the appeal of phones so thin I could shave with them For people who wear slimmer-fitting clothing, this matters. Also, it’s more about the weight: you want a phone light enough that holding it up isn’t tedious.
        • MrDrMcCoy 3y ago
          I suppose. Then again, so long as it's not so heavy as to cause pain, I think there would be a least some market for such devices. I thought the Steam Deck would be prohibitively heavy to use for it's weight, but the ergonomics made up for much of that.
          • craftkiller 3y ago
            If I use the steam deck for more than a couple of hours then I feel it in my wrists the next day. I still love the steam deck but it could go on a diet. (There are lighter alternatives, but I bought the steam deck specifically to financially support Valve's Linux gaming efforts)
  • barfingclouds 3y ago
    Well I think for as amazing as this technology is, we probably don’t need it in a cellphone.
• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Not only that: > Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles. So you take up more space, but the storage system is better in every other way (agility, conflict mineral free, longevity, cost). Feels like this puts a nail in the coffin of fossil generation. Edit: Assuming 1 cycle per day, that is a lifetime of ~137 years. More aggressive cycling is still very favorable.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • addaon 3y ago
    The challenge with interpreting statements like this is that there isn't just one lithium battery chemistry in widespread use, and even within a single chemistry the detailed structure of the anode and cathode can greatly change both achievable charge/discharge rates and longevity. For example, compared to the most commonly available energy-storage-optimized NMC cylindrical cells, LTO cylindrical cells charge and discharge at rates up to 10x faster, and have an estimated lifetime of tens of thousands of cycles... in exchange for have half or less of the energy density. Which is to say, depending on the exact details of the sodium cells being discussed, it's extremely likely that their entire performance envelope is achievable today with some combination of NMC, LFP, and LTO cells; although they may yet prove to have a cost advantage.
  • idontwantthis 3y ago
    > Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles. From everything I've read about existing Lithuum battery storage, this is already their strongpoint. Is it helpful to be 10x faster that the current speed?
    • 3y ago
• nightowl_games 3y ago
  Hopefully we can continue to lower the power requirements of our every day items and the lower capacity of these batteries will become less of an issue.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Lowering the power we use, is the only realistic goal. I wear an Apple Watch. On my wrist, is a small, Lithium-ion battery, that contains a great deal of power. That power is trickled out, over time. If it were to all release at once, I'd no longer have a left hand. Packing all that energy into smaller and smaller form factors, increases the risk; no matter what tech we use. Energy is energy. When it comes out quickly, we call those "explosions."
    • AustinDev 3y ago
      One little point I want to clarify is that if your Apple Watch battery did indeed short and none of the protections against shorts worked, you'd likely just have a burn on your wrist. 309mAH isn't all that much energy assuming a full charge. I once bridged a ~2,500mAH 18650 battery that was in my bag when my keys created a circuit between the anode and the cathode. The result was a small fire inside my bag that was quickly stamped out. Now, if I'm carrying batteries capable of dumping a lot of current quickly, I use cases. What excites me most about this new battery tech is home and commercial backup energy storage that's much 'greener' and cheaper than lithium. There is a lot of space in rural and grid settings, so the density of Li-Ion isn't really needed.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
        Well, shorting out is a fairly realistic scenario, as opposed to a flash-boom, but it is still a relatively slow release. I was really talking about how much energy potential is stored in batteries. In batteries, the energy is generally stored as potential chemical reactions, so it isn't realistic to have a flash-boom. Supercapacitors, on the other hand, may have more of a boom potential.
      • 3y ago
• api 3y ago
  Grid storage is dominated by $/kWh. For land and sea transport it's mostly volume/kWh. For electric aircraft it's kg/kWh.
• londons_explore 3y ago
  > cheap as dirt There are lots of things left to make grid battery storage cheap. As well as the cells needing to be engineered to be cheaper, there are lots of changes to the battery packs that can be made, together with changes to inverters. For batteries, I'd like to see research into less consistent manufacturing and higher failure rates. Current packs the entire pack is unusable if just one cell fails in a way that leads to lots of heat production. If pack balancing circuits had the ability to take a cell or a parallel group of cells 'out of circuit' while still using the rest of the pack, then battery lifespans could be dramatically increased and it would be possible to manufacture cells far cheaper. For inverters, we should go for a direct-to-10kV inverter process. No transformers. At 10kV, currents are far lower and therefore wires can be far thinner (and cheaper). Consider making batteries ~15kV too - that reduces by ~30% the amount of expensive silicon needed, together with big reductions in copper costs, at the expense of extra design effort for much higher voltage batteries. At these higher voltages, you'd either use oil cooling, or you'd have ~10 separate coolant loops, one at each ~1500 volts of potential.
  • garbageman 3y ago
    While it would be neat to build batteries that handle manufacturing defects akin to a CPU with 4 cores but 3 useable, I suspect the additional complexity, wiring, and circuitry is limiting. Batteries today are almost (or actually?) a commodity. Detecting and simply replacing the entire battery is probably cheaper and easier at grid scale.
    • londons_explore 3y ago
      The wiring and complexity isn't very much - you simply need a contactor that can 'short' the offending set of cells. It only needs to close once, so can simply be made from a spring and meltable material. And you need ~100 of these per 400 volt battery. Beyond that, all the complexity is in software. Software needs to monitor cell voltages and currents to detect a self-heating cell. Software then needs to stop balancing that cell up (ie. let it discharge). At the moment the cell voltage hits zero, software needs to close the 'short' across the cell, permanently taking it out of the circuit. This design might occasionally prevent charging the entire battery for a few minutes during this process. Specifically, when a cell is midway through being taken out of circuit, it can only be discharged, and would be dangerous to recharge. But a few minutes of downtime per year seems acceptable to me.
• moffkalast 3y ago
  It'll be a good day when we can finally ditch lead acid.