GoKawiilDespite setbacks in sodium-ion battery development in the U.S., the startup Peak Energy says it can be the one to finally achieve the ambitious application of using the tech to store energy for the grid.
When U.S. start-ups Natron Energy and Bedrock Materials shut down sodium-ion battery operations last year, they joined an ignominious list of more than dozen failed Western battery companies.
CATL, based in China and the world’s largest battery company, then dropped a bombshell in April, announcing it would supply 60 gigawatt-hours of sodium-ion cells to the grid storage provider HyperStrong. The largest sodium-ion battery order in history suggested China was on its way, as with lithium-iron phosphate in previous years, to dominating yet another promising chemistry.
The Colorado-based Peak Energy insists it can succeed where companies like Natron failed. Company executives say its sodium-ion tech can compete directly with low-cost lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which currently dominate grid storage. Unlike Natron, which ran out of money and investors’ patience, Peak Energy has a giant in its corner: General Motors. Like Tesla and other automakers, GM is moving aggressively into grid storage to keep massive battery factories humming in the wake of slumping EV demand.
Peak Energy has formed a partnership with the automaker to ultimately deploy sodium-ion batteries at grid scale. In July, the company announced it will build a US $71 million, 17,000 square-meter factory near Sacramento, with capacity to produce 4 GWh of sodium-ion batteries annually, enough to power 4 million homes.
Sodium-Ion vs Lithium-Iron Phosphate Batteries
As with other sodium-based designs, Peak Energy’s cells can’t yet match the energy density of LFP batteries. Company executives from Peak Energy and GM, which has partnered with Peak to codevelop and manufacture the batteries, freely admit they can’t currently compete with current LFP prices on a per-cell basis.
Yet Peak Energy says its passively cooled storage system will still cost operators 20 percent less over its lifetime compared with LFP storage. Cameron Dales, Peak Energy’s cofounder and chief commercial officer, says the company’s GS1.1 system will store energy for 20 years, over roughly 20,000 cycles, and still retain 80 percent of its capacity. For LFP, a basic durability benchmark pegs them at 70 percent capacity after 8,000 cycles.
Peak Energy’s case is helped by a booming market for energy storage, to back up AI data centers and to store excess solar and wind energy. Volatile lithium prices have major players looking for a steady alternative.
Incumbent LFP batteries, Dales says, were initially designed for EVs, where cell costs and energy density are critical for driving range and affordability. But utilities and storage operators are focused on entirely different metrics. They want batteries that last the longest, at the lowest overall cost, to maximize returns and justify massive capital investments.
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