Sodium battery chemistry strikes again. The potential future alternative to lithium-ion is making significant research inroads into developing future long-duration energy storage solutions. Inlyte Energy this month reported it has achieved advanced results in its iron-sodium battery technology, which will help the company to address the crucial electricity megatrends: low-cost renewable energy integration, efficient industrial electrification, and electric capacity needs for high-performance computing. The announcement comes shortly after the Argonne National Laboratory touted its own research breakthrough on enhancing sodium-ion (NA+) batteries by preventing cracks in the cathode particles. Chemistries such as iron-sodium, sodium-ion, zinc-based and iron-flow are pointing the way to a possibility of longer duration options than lithium-ion, which in utility-scale energy storage only offers a few hours of discharge time.

Full report : Inlyte Energy says its cells have achieved more than 700 cycles with no loss in energy capacity and 90 percent roundtrip efficiency.