509
New sodium-ion battery skips mechanical cooling with 97.9% efficiency
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
509 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
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Honestly curious: I'm not a battery or even energy person, but this is interesting.
The charge/discharge efficiencies and rates could just mean we build networks of mixed types? "Trickle" charge/discharge via a slower battery that handles more cycles and is probably way cheaper to build (that's the premise of Na+, right?), but have those batteries back up a more expensive high-rate bank for when power is needed in a burst? Probably a switching problem at that point, which I imagine we already deal with having solar/hydro/fossil/etc.
A Na+ bank sized to handle regular use and charge a Lithium bank when underused so that one is ready for spikes seems like a way to go.
That is an option. For smaller setup, capacitors are used for high peak demand applications.
Sometimes a mixed setup is just not worth it, cause the peak demand is the important part, so you end up with like 80% LiPo and 20% Na.
But I'm certainly no expert on the economics of infrastructure battery installations.