GoKawiilThe race to secure power for AI data centers has spilled over into some unusual places, including the automotive world.
Battery recycler Redwood Materials kicked off the trend last year with a new energy storage division and a project that attached old EV packs to a Crusoe data center in Nevada. Then, Ford said it was repurposing some of its battery manufacturing capacity to make grid-scale batteries. And now GM is announcing its own — arguably more ambitious — plans for an energy storage system (ESS).
GM unveiled on Tuesday two new phases in its attack on the energy storage market. The biggest swing by far is GM’s new partnership with energy storage startup Peak Energy. For that partnership, GM is developing an entirely new sodium-ion battery chemistry tailored for grid-scale deployments.
Outside of China, no automaker has announced plans to build sodium-ion cells.
“The way we’re getting into the market is the easy way, through ESS,” Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at GM, told TechCrunch. “The performance characteristics are just what is needed in that market.”
GM wouldn’t share with TechCrunch how much money it is investing in this energy storage effort. But we do know the company has committed $900 million to commercialize new battery chemistries, an investment that includes a new battery development center.
Sodium-ion batteries work similarly to lithium-ion, but they swap out key materials to make the cells cheaper, longer lasting, and less prone to overheating. The tradeoff is that sodium-ion batteries need to be larger and heavier to store the same amount of electricity.
Peak Energy has already been working on energy storage systems that use sodium-ion batteries. Because sodium-ion batteries behave differently from lithium-ion, Peak has developed an energy storage system with that in mind. Its grid-scale batteries don’t have cooling systems or fire suppression systems because there’s less risk of overheating. The setup reduces upfront costs, and it should also eliminate costly maintenance, Paul Menson, director of energy storage commercialization at GM, told TechCrunch.
“This is the manifestation of the hardest part to engineer is no part at all,” he said. “Eliminate the part, eliminate the problem.”
GM plans to sell sodium-ions cells to the startup, which will then integrate them into its products. But that won’t happen right away.
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