TL;DR
Storing sun and wind power for the evening does not have to depend on lithium. Sodium-ion batteries swap lithium for sodium, which is far more abundant, and need no cobalt or nickel, and they are now being built for the power grid on two continents. CATL, the company that made 39.9% of the world's electric-car batteries in the first half of 2026, says its sodium-ion grid battery, launched in June, should reach about 1 gigawatt-hour of cumulative shipments by the end of this year, with deliveries outside China from 2027. In Europe, a three-company team says its sodium-ion platform finished customer validation in September. Those are company claims, relayed in a Nov. 9 interview, and an Italian battery professor in that interview says the energy gap with today's cheap lithium batteries now matters little for grid storage. The cells that keep the lights on at night are getting a second, more plentiful recipe. Our odds on when these batteries reach grids beyond China are below the line; to see them, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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