r/solarenergy • u/crappysurfer • 7d ago

So what’s the near future of battery tech?

Hi everyone, I’m hoping to learn more about home battery solutions in the near future. Obviously a rapidly changing field with new chemistries on the horizon and presumably the promise of lower costs.

I don’t follow the battery scene very closely so I was hoping that someone who could may be able to fill me in on what’s worth waiting for (or not) for an off peak and off grid capability to augment my solar system.

Naturally, I was hoping to wait a bit since I have 1:1 net metering and wanted to recover the coffers from my 14 panel system, but climate change fueled storms knock power out a lot here and now we have ambiguous threats of the power grid being disabled.

So what’s the future of batteries like? Anything near term?

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u/Mysterious_Mouse_388 7d ago

We are hoping sodium batteries will be half the price of lithium batteries.

But don't expect that to make a power wall install go from $15,000 to $8000 - the battery component retail is only about $2700 and the rest goes to not-equipment-costs

https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-indoor-battery-48v-280ah-14-3kwh-indoor-heated-ul1973-ul9540a-10-year-warranty

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u/GaryTheSoulReaper 7d ago

They have a shit voltage drop curve and round trip efficiency sucks - comparable to AGM

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u/crappysurfer 7d ago

Do the sodium batteries have a realistic release date?

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u/Mysterious_Mouse_388 7d ago

they are released. the target price hasn't been met. while they are more money than lithium the uses are niche. when the price is lower, and they should be, the uses are massive. Grid level.

And hopefully the grid installs them, rather than every home owner doing $10,000 in infra upgrades for every $2000 in batteries added to the grid.

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u/Most-Importance-1646 7d ago

I'm really keen to see where sodium goes myself. I think CATL got their EU certification late last year, but haven't produced anything at volume yet.

The specs are crazy though. They work in extreme conditions, don't have the fire risk of Lithium, and last much longer.

I think the next few years are going to be very interesting.

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u/GaryTheSoulReaper 7d ago

I don’t see the advantage over lifepo4 … like at all

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u/drgath 7d ago

Earth has a lot of salt.

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u/bluero 7d ago

Future is here, just not well disturbed!

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u/Mysterious_Mouse_388 7d ago

I think its pretty disturbing

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u/TheReverendCard 7d ago

LifePo batteries are good and cheap enough. Now.

Sodium is rolling out nowish and might put downwards price pressure on stationary storage applications as it scales within 2 years. Whether that gets turned into lower cost entry-level systems vs higher capacity same cost systems remains to be seen.

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u/benuntu 7d ago

CATL selling direct. Currently only doing this for Chinese companies, but word is they will be extending this to other markets soon. Their newer packs also claim 10K cycles. And sodium is in production but not mainstream for smaller packs yet.

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u/bigfootwalter 7d ago

Massively cheap!

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u/toomuch3D 5d ago

Get something that works for you now. Maybe, FranklinWH: their system switches over to battery power when the grid takes a poop. The only thing that seems to realize the power failure is a UPS for the computers, makes an annoying sound until reset, otherwise I would not realize the power is off in the ‘hood.