from Hacker News

Peak Energy just shipped the US's first grid-scale sodium-ion battery

by breve on 8/2/25, 2:35 AM with 12 comments

• by bruce511 on 8/2/25, 3:24 AM

  I've been watching this space for some time, and seeing this sort of commercial production (even as a pilot) is very encouraging. We see a lot of reports of new stuff, a lot of which doesn't make it to market.

  The price of the battery (compared to the price of Lithium) is not mention, nor is relative size (and weight). However, once in production it's expected to be cheaper to produce, albeit requiring more space / weight per Kwh.

  So it may not replace car batteries, but for residential or grid-based solutions it should move the needle. Personally I'd love a cheap 100Kwh battery at home, and I don't care about size or weight...

• by rob74 on 8/2/25, 5:38 AM

  Great news for storing excess power generated by renewables, unfortunately the US is headed in another direction currently - but maybe at least some states still listen to reason, or they will be able to find international customers/partners?

  Actually, when reading the ad at the end of the article ("The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act.") I was surprised that Trump didn't cancel this retroactively, as he did with lots of other measures decided by the Biden administration...