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Detroit automaker partners with Peak Energy to try a saltier route to energy storage
The lure of datacenter dollars is a strong one for America’s mega corporations - so strong that even automobile giant General Motors is getting in on the game by turning its battery research efforts toward stationary grid-scale energy storage. GM announced a partnership with energy storage firm Peak Energy on Tuesday that will see the Big Three automaker develop next-generation sodium-ion battery cells designed for grid-scale energy storage. GM will manufacture the cells and Peak will deploy them as part of its own proprietary energy storage systems, Peak said in its version of the partnership announcement. Oh, and GM will be making an investment in Peak too, though the amount wasn't disclosed. For those unfamiliar with sodium-ion batteries, there’s a good deal of chemical similarity between them and the lithium-ion batteries that have come to dominate the world’s portable rechargeable electronics, from massive electric vehicle cells to the tiny batteries in wireless earbuds and hearing aids.
Rechargeability and chemical similarities are where many of the comparisons end, though. GM and Peak argue sodium-ion systems can be made simpler, and can operate across a wider temperature range than conventional lithium-ion batteries, potentially reducing the need for the costly, energy-intensive cooling systems often used in grid-scale Li-ion storage deployments.
