American automotive giant General Motors (GM) is following its rival into grid scale storage – after both pulled back from their failed electric vehicle developments – but is deciding to place its battery bets on relatively new sodium-ion technology.
GM announced last week a partnership with Peak Energy, which was founded in 2023 and in 2025 delivered the first grid-scale sodium-ion storage solution ever deployed to the US electric grid. Peak is aiming to begin production at a domestic giga-scale sodium-ion battery manufacturing facility early next year.
The two companies aim to combine Peak’s own passively cooled sodium-ion battery storage technology with GM’s battery cell development. GM will develop sodium-ion battery cells at its Michigan battery labs while retaining exclusive manufacturing rights, while Peak will incorporate the cells into its proprietary energy systems.
Lithium-ion battery chemistries – such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) -have dominated deployment in EVs and grid scale batteries, but chemistries such as sodium-ion are now emerging as a potentially safer, more sustainable and lower cost alternative for stationary storage.
Peak Energy says its passively cooled battery storage system is able to reduce energy storage costs by 20 per cent compared to conventional systems, while delivering more than 99 per cent uptime.
