Sodium Sulfur Batteries Improving - Can we do this for home storage?

[Ceefiveceefive]

Greetings!

Just ran across this article. It is about how researchers have been improving the Sodium Sulfur battery technology. They point to improved carbon electrodes making them 4 times better.

Sodium sulfur batteries have been around for a while. Has anyone used them before?

Is this improved battery good for home energy storage?

New battery technology has potential to significantly reduce energy storage costs

An international team of researchers are hoping that a new, low-cost battery which holds four times the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries and is far cheaper to produce will significantly reduce the cost of transitioning to a decarbonized economy.

techxplore.com

 

[svetz]

You live in exciting times, there's tons of research pointing to all sorts of wonders and with the rising lithium costs, that's great news. But, there's a long way between research and product.

CATL & BYD are both about to launch sodium battries and Redland has launch a bromide flow battery, for more see: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/lithium-prices-and-salt-batteries.51958

 

[Geoff-AU]

For every new battery tech, there are usually half a dozen vital performance criteria such as:

Cost
Size
Safety
Performance (instantaneous power)
Lifetime (number of cycled)
Mass-manufacturability

Most articles describing new batteries will say how good 4 of those criteria are.

But we do live in exciting times! There's a ton of research in this space now, which is great.

 

[Woody]

Sodium sulfur batteries are not DIY friendly. Clearly not a battery I’d bring home. There might be new designs out there but the ones I’m familiar with are high temperature batteries. The first time I saw these batteries date back to the 80’s when I was in engineering training. My on the job training had me working with two scientists who were designing a modular space harden microwave transceiver panel that required these sodium sulfur batteries to power their design in space. These batteries have to be super insulated and you need a primary battery or energy source to be able to supply sufficient energy to heat up the sodium sulfur batteries to a molten state. Once in a molten state, these batteries are good to go. Don’t let them cool off.

FYI these batteries are typically are good for around 1000-2000 cycles and they too grow dendrites. So high power density but not a long term battery.

Here’s a link talking about these batteries.

What is a Sodium Sulfur Battery? - News about Energy Storage, Batteries, Climate Change and the Environment

As the name indicates, NaS battery has sodium (Na) as anode and sulfur (S) as cathode. The ceramic electrolyte is sodium beta alumina.

www.upsbatterycenter.com