BYD launches sodium-ion grid-scale BESS product

I just watched a YouTube video of a battery powered train in the UK [1]. If longevity and number of cycles is much higher than lithium ion coupled with a safer profile then I think this would be an ideal application for sodium ion. Really cool.

Edit: I'm talking about for both onboard batteries (for the safety profile) and the BESS container mentioned in the video. Not to mention trains wouldn't have to compete with the lithium ion battery supply that is taken over by EV cars and trucks.

[1] https://youtu.be/sARTvQj5jIg

Article says BYD sells Sodium-Ion cars too. Are those cars super low range with quicker charging times? If they are much cheaper batteries it makes sense for an urban setting to have such cars.

The more the western boomers fight about "clean energy" products, the more China will eat our lunch

At the same time we saw Northvolt going to Ch 11 due to costs and lack of expertise.

A lot of what comes from China might be low quality (especially for internal consumption) but it's cheap and they're specializing

> Sodium-ion cells are however much less energy dense, as illustrated by BYD’s new product only packing 2.3MWh per 20-foot container, much less than the 5MWh and more than is now standard in the lithium-ion BESS space.

Which really doesn't matter if you're on a stationary application, especially if the cost/longevity is competitive.

I hope that our tariff situation in the coming years doesn't leave us behind the coming tech curve.

Our entire energy future in the US could be held back severely if we are kept from adopting the best technology by politicians trying to prop up oil. The market must be allowed to choose the most efficient technology on its own. (And even the oil companies know that their future is limited, the only question is how long they can delay that future and how much money they can extract from consumers through higher prices than the alternatives.)

As usual, wake me up when it's in the battery of a car that I can afford _and_ use to visit my mom 500km away. (Don't tell me your EV can do that : either it can't, for real - that's 500km of highway, of course - , or I can't afford it.)

Still, it will almost certainly not be a car built in my subcontinent, and that's infuriating.

It almost seems like the right way to address energy transition was to buy cheap fossils to increase living standards, then let governement heavily subsidy R&D while the rest of the world plunged into post-Reaganism.

R&D works ! Who would have guessed ? It only ensured the domination of so many empires and only got a man on the moon. Such puny matters.

Thanks God the US and EU are never going to subsidy R&D ever again. That would be communism ! Better to spend money on ensuring our 1945 baby boom retirees have enough money to buy cheap Chinese stuff. Shareholder over engineer, always, all the time !

But pay "young" people to do, what, fundamental Chemistry ? Experimental Electronics ? Naaah. We have a board meeting tomorrow, we need results by 10:00.

All your "research" stuff will never pay out the 12% yearly interest that our shareholders asked. And old people depend on that for pension funds.

The kids understood that, and they stopped looking for engineering or research jobs. They're all consultants now. The smart ones will realize they have a bullshit job and leave to work on an organic farm. The less smart ones will burn down.

Anyway, we replaced pour R&D department with a new wing of the legal team that's finding more loopholes in the tax code, to ensure we never ever ever give a cent to anyone else than the pension funds. They're on the verge of finding a solution to that pesky "salary" problem, it's not the moment to bother them with your "ion" sci-fi stuff.

It's not like developing countries will do that, right ? Right ?