Western Australian battery technology company Altech Batteries has announced its first Cerenergy ABS60 salt-based battery energy storage system prototype is online and operating successfully across a range of temperatures, confirming its thermal stability and commercial viability.
Actually exciting battery tech that isn’t just fluff. They actually built the thing and tested it, rather than it being a theoretical, not-easily-produced thing and it worked.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
And it mitigates the current red herring of the anti-solar groups complaining that solar “generates too much electricity during the day, and not enough at night”.
With an effective and balanced grid storage system across the country, we can recharge the batteries during the day and then use the power at night.
I can only hope that the anti solar groups are arguing in bad faith when they complain about how the sun works.
Either that or: they actually think that pro solar doesn’t understand this fact or one of the two groups doesn’t know how to pair solar with batteries.
I wouldn’t write off EV usage too quickly. The lithium batteries in EVs right now are around 160Wh/kg. The sodium batteries coming out of production lines now are about the same, but are also substantially cheaper, safer, and built out of more abundant materials.
Yes, if you compare them to top of the line lithium batteries coming out of assembly lines now, they don’t look as good, but those batteries aren’t in actual cars yet. It’s very likely that we’ll see cheap EVs running sodium batteries, and they’ll often be good enough. We need more charge stations more than we need better batteries (as far as EVs go).
Actually exciting battery tech that isn’t just fluff. They actually built the thing and tested it, rather than it being a theoretical, not-easily-produced thing and it worked.
As others have said, this is for grid-scale and not EVs, but still exceptional progress and very important for energy storage.
I would argue that grid-scale energy storage is even more important than EV needs today.
Grid scale batteries allow for better security by distributing storage across the network and lets us store renewable energy from peak hours.
Cheap grid storage will be a game changer
And it mitigates the current red herring of the anti-solar groups complaining that solar “generates too much electricity during the day, and not enough at night”.
With an effective and balanced grid storage system across the country, we can recharge the batteries during the day and then use the power at night.
I can only hope that the anti solar groups are arguing in bad faith when they complain about how the sun works.
Either that or: they actually think that pro solar doesn’t understand this fact or one of the two groups doesn’t know how to pair solar with batteries.
I wouldn’t write off EV usage too quickly. The lithium batteries in EVs right now are around 160Wh/kg. The sodium batteries coming out of production lines now are about the same, but are also substantially cheaper, safer, and built out of more abundant materials.
Yes, if you compare them to top of the line lithium batteries coming out of assembly lines now, they don’t look as good, but those batteries aren’t in actual cars yet. It’s very likely that we’ll see cheap EVs running sodium batteries, and they’ll often be good enough. We need more charge stations more than we need better batteries (as far as EVs go).