sodium battery (sodium battery) with its cost advantage of material (sodium resource abundance 423 times for lithium), energy storage system cost is reduced to 50/kWh (lithium battery 120/kWh), and there is no need to rely on cobalt, nickel and other rare metals. The first-generation sodium battery made in large quantities by Ningde Times in 2023 has a production price that is 37% less than the lithium iron phosphate battery of the same capacity, the energy density reaches 160Wh/kg (nearly 180Wh/kg of lithium iron phosphate), and the cycle life is over 4500 times (capacity retention rate ≥80%). Upon implementing sodium batteries on one Chinese power plant using energy storage, one found the cost of the project reduced by 29% while the period in which an investor would return back his or her investment decreased to 5.2 years from 8 years.
Another breaking point of sodium batteries is that it possesses a thermal stability feature: its temperature runaway is around 300 ° C (lithium battery 150 ° C) while there is neither fire nor explosion in the experiment of acupuncture. In 2024, BYD sodium battery pack finished UL 9540A certification, becoming the first product to enter the market in North America. In low-temperature performance, the sodium battery -30℃ discharge efficiency retention rate reached 92% (lithium battery only 65%), after a winter photovoltaic energy storage project in Heilongjiang, the efficiency of the energy storage system increased from 78% to 89%.
The growth rate is tremendous: global sodium battery capacity skyrockets from 3GWh in 2022 to 48GWh in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 320%. Zhongke Sodium estimates the price of mass production will drop to 40/kWh in 2025, making the energy storage power station kilowatt-hour price (LCOS) drop from 0.15/kWh to 0.09/kWh. The European Energy Agency predicts that if the market share of sodium batteries reached 3,042 billion.
Different application points to check its feasibility:
Low-speed electric vehicles: Yadi’s electric cycles with sodium batteries extend their range to 120km (60km for lead-acid batteries), the charging time is minimized from 8 hours to 1.5 hours, and battery life is extended to 8 years (2 years for lead-acid batteries);
Power grid energy storage: a 50MWh sodium battery energy storage power plant in Germany has a response time of 98ms (lithium battery 70ms), and the annual revenue of participating in power frequency modulation has increased by 23%.
Renewable energy integration: In Xinjiang wind farm storage project, the failure rate of sodium battery during dust storms (particulate matter concentration ≥500μg/m³) is merely 0.3 times/year, 5 times lower than lithium battery.
Technical challenges remain: current highest energy density of sodium battery (200Wh/kg) is 33% below that of ternary lithium battery (300Wh/kg), limiting their applications to high-grade electric vehicles. However, the research of solid sodium batteries is advancing at a speed, Toyota 2023 laboratory prototype energy density has broken through 280Wh/kg, cycle life reaches 12,000 times, if the mass production of 2030 will turn the industrial model upside down.
Joint drive of policy and capital: China’s “14th Five-Year Plan” new energy storage implementation plan clearly placed sodium batteries as leading technologies and subsidized the relevant enterprises $420 million in 2023; The EU Horizon plan to invest €800M for subsidizing sodium battery R&D. Gaogong lithium power predicted that the global market share of sodium batteries will reach 12% in 2025 (< 1% in 2022), making it the second largest electrochemical energy storage technology after lithium batteries.
While cost reduction, safety and sustainability are the final signs of the energy storage industry, sodium batteries are sprinting from the laboratory to the top of the business with a cost red line of $50/kWh, 4,500 cycle life and full climate flexibility of -30 ° C to 60 ° C. Perhaps as Ningde Times Zeng Yuqun elaborated: “Sodium battery is not an alternative, but the key to open the trillion-level energy storage market.”