As governments and companies look to a future run on renewable energy, the need for utility-scale batteries is greater than ever. Currently, the dominant battery form is the lithium-ion battery, which is produced using lithium and other critical minerals, a market dominated by China. While this type of battery is extremely useful for electronics, electric vehicles (EVs), and utility-scale storage, demand for lithium is expected to outpace supply in the coming years. For years, researchers have been assessing the potential for alternative battery technology to support a green transition, and one company believes it may have finally found the solution.
Antonio Baclig spent around eight years at Stanford University searching for alternative battery forms that could be used for utility-scale storage. Finally, Baclig believes he may have found the answer, using technology first developed in the 1970s that uses table salt. Baclig explored a wide range of battery technology and eventually found a family of sodium metal halide batteries. The British company Beta Research was the first to develop iron-sodium batteries, but it eventually shifted to nickel-sodium in the 1980s due to its greater energy density.
Iron-sodium batteries may be better suited to the needs of today, and Baclig is continuing research that was previously left behind. He believes the technology could help his start-up, Inlyte Energy, which was founded in 2021, to develop low-cost, long-term energy storage. Compared to EVs, which require batteries to hold vast amounts of power in a small space – something the nickel-sodium batteries offer – power plants do not need to contain so much energy in such a small space. “We have to focus this on cost now. It’s not [primarily] about energy density,” stated Baclig.
Baclig connected with Beta Research and partnered with the British firm in 2022 to continue developing the previously paused battery research. The collaboration has resulted in the creation of a scaled-up cell in the form of a ceramic tube filled with powdered iron and salt, which holds 20 times more energy than the previous cells that were developed with EVs in mind. Inlyte has since carried out a successful testing phase on a 100-cell module. Baclig explained, “That was our first module, and it just worked. We’re building on something that has a long track record, so we don’t have to reinvent.”
The use of pre-existing, tried-and-tested technology has allowed Inlyte to fast-track the development of the larger batteries and progress quickly to the testing phase. Inlyte has already signed its first major utility contract with Southern Co., which owns the biggest utilities in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Southern has agreed to install an 80-kilowatt/1.5-megawatt-hour Inlyte demonstration project near Birmingham, Alabama by the end of 2025. This project will work as a field-testing project before Inlyte deploys the technology on a larger scale. Southern Co. will install and operate the first large-scale Inlyte battery system for a minimum of one year as part of its plans to test innovative long-duration storage systems in the field.
The technology is highly appealing to companies looking for alternatives to lithium-ion battery technology because it has a low fire risk, as it does not use flammable electrolytes – which lithium-ion batteries do. The components required for production can also be sourced domestically, which is viewed as increasingly important in the current economic environment. Further, the materials required to produce the battery are extremely low cost, the manufacturing process is straightforward, and the technology appears similarly efficient to lithium-ion batteries.
Ben Kaun, Inlyte’s chief commercial officer, said, “Our batteries use abundant, low-cost metals.” Kaun explained, “Iron-sodium batteries have this interesting feature where if you want to make a longer-duration battery, you just need to add more iron and salt. Once you’ve built one that cycles to a five-to-ten-hour discharge rate, you can add more iron and salt to get 24 hours of backup power.” Kaun added, “We are even outperforming lithium on certain metrics.”
Inlyte raised $8 million in seed funding in 2023 and acquired Beta Research’s U.K. facility to develop the technology. It recently announced a strategic partnership with the Swiss firm Horien Salt Battery to scale up production for its first U.S.-based factory. This suggests that Inlyte may soon be progressing past the pilot phase of battery testing to commercialisation. Kaun explained, “Once we hit the gigafactory level, we anticipate that our technology will be able to compete with lithium-ion for use cases like load shifting and will offer a cost-effective, safer solution for grid-scale projects.”
The road to assessing and testing alternative battery technology is long and arduous, and many start-ups have failed along the way. Often, alternative battery options have been found to be unsuccessful when tested in a real-world setting. However, Baclig and his partners are hopeful that the use of the pre-existing technology and the success experienced in the pilot phase will help Inlyte to produce an alternative, low-cost storage solution that does not rely on finite lithium supplies and can be manufactured domestically.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com