Altech’s sodium chloride solid state battery exceeds expectations

Wow, it’s hard to know just how impactful this will be, but it sounds like they’ve got something here.

its batteries which it said avoid using metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and copper, providing a cost reduction of up to 40% compared to lithium-ion batteries.

Altech said its batteries are completely fire and explosion proof, have a life span of more than 15 years and operate in all but the most extreme conditions.

That’s huge, especially the fire and explosion proof part.

its why their main benefit is cost and safety. for power storage in a standing field or wall density isnt as important compared to for mobile usages (EVs) so sodium based batteries make more sense.
- There's still room in car design for bigger batteries too. Could be used in cheaper electric cars with a less optimal power to weight ratio than LiFePO batteries would yield.

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.

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
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).
- I'm all for Sodium batts in cars, but my understanding is this battery tech is a different chemical composition than other Sodium Ion batteries. Most of those are not solid state AFAIK.
- Will be interesting if they need the same thermal management that lithium packs do. That adds a fair amount of weight to the system

We tend to use between 3kWh (vacation/idle power consumption) and around 8kWh per day. If we switched to electric stove, water heater, and heat pump, and add a hot tub, that'd increase substantially. But if we added solar (on our long Todo list...), the battery in the article (60kWh) would probably be able to handle all our storage needs, and it'd fit in he garage (bonus of it can be placed outside/under a deck!). I live in a major city, but I would absolutely love to effectively be off grid.

Exciting stuff --- it seems these are touted as being extremely robust/safe, which is of course important for me if it's going to be in/near our house. Storage density not a huge concern, but price is somewhat important --- let's hope this sort of thing ticks all the boxes.

Most off the grid people live in rural areas but wouldnt an in city off-grid house be a pretty nice thing? Just seems like a cool concept.
- Off power grid maybe, imagine the nightmare of urban well-digging or apartment septic tanks.

Expectation: it doesn't work well at all

Result: It kinda works?

It sounds like it works really well. The physical size does sound quite large, but I'm not sure how that compares against other types of batteries.
- It probably doesn't matter. This type of battery is not all that interesting for things like electric cars, rather more so for things like grid energy storage on a massive scale. Think 1000s of these in a large building, getting charged during the day with excess solar energy, releasing it into the grid at night. Stuff like this is what has been missing to make even better use of renewables.

Said, let me guess, Altech.

Well how do you know they didn't double check it themselves to make sure? Checkmate cynics
No it was altech_eft

Indeed awesome. Sadly no words about recycling such a battery, though it sounds like it should be fairly recyclable.

They'll just add iodne, pluverize it, and sell it to people to shake on their fries.
- Sure, but then again, there are other elements as well.