Local Main Arm resident Sapoty Brook contacted The Echo to let them know that he has just received one of the first sodium-ion home batteries in Australia from BetterESS.
Sodium-ion batteries, which are salt-based because their sodium compounds are often drawn from common salt, continue to raise hopes for an alternative to lithium-ion batteries.
Advantages
There are numerous advantages to sodium-ion batteries over lithium-ion batteries. In particular sodium-ion batteries have higher thermal stability, lower risks of fire or explosion, and better performance across temperature extremes.
The fact that sodium is readily available and doesn’t require mining of rare earth minerals makes them more environmentally friendly. However, lithium-ion batteries are still superior for high performance on compact devices.
‘The way that the sodium-ion battery is packaged reduces extra wiring and it supplies the whole system in one bundle, including the inverter and charge controller, etc,’ said Sapoty who sells off-grid systems.
‘I think this battery is big news because as prices for home batteries will drop in five years to less than one-fifth the current price, the electricity grid will collapse!’ he said.
‘You get around 10kWh from this battery which costs about $4,500. It’s just sun power in one end, and AC power out the other.’
However, some sodium-ion batteries have a shorter lifecycle than some lithium-ion batteries at this stage.
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