Glossary / Batteries and storage
Sodium-ion battery
A battery that shuttles sodium ions instead of lithium. Its materials are plentiful and cheap, and it is entering use in grid storage.
Sodium is abundant in seawater and rock salt and far easier to obtain than lithium. The principle is the same as a lithium-ion battery, but sodium ions are larger and heavier, so electrode materials that perform well were hard to find, and the technology long stayed in the lab. A 2014 review by Naoaki Yabuuchi, Shinichi Komaba and colleagues traces that materials work[1].
It stores less energy than lithium-ion but copes better with cold and is less exposed to price swings. In stationary storage, where weight matters little, it is beginning to compete with lithium iron phosphate.
Related terms
- Lithium-ion batteryA battery that charges and discharges as lithium ions shuttle between the positive and negative electrodes. Used everywhere from phones to electric cars.
- Lithium iron phosphateA type of lithium-ion battery with an iron-phosphate positive electrode. It uses no cobalt or nickel and is cheap, hard to ignite and long-lived.
- Iron-air batteryA battery that draws electricity as iron rusts in air and turns the rust back into iron when charged. Its materials are extremely cheap, suiting it to storing energy for days.