Thinking About Sodium Batteries for Your RV or Tow Vehicle?

[SolarPoweredRV]

The newest battery chemistry to hit the Market is Sodium Ion. Because Sodium is so cheap, these new batteries have the potential to become cheaper than the current Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries (LiFePo4) that everybody is upgrading to.

Unfortunately, Sodium Ion batteries are not "Drop In" compatible with Lead Acid or Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. The reason has to do with the Sodium battery's voltage. Sodium's voltage range is much lower than either Lead Acid or LiFePo4. Additionally, as the battery is discharged the voltage drops, much like Lead Acid batteries, however, the operating voltage is even lower than Lead Acid batteries. Consequently, as the battery gets below 50% State of Charge (SOC) many of your 12 volt devices will not function properly. For example: your landing gear or slide motors will be very slow, or they will not function at all. The low voltage could also damage your 12v motors because the increased resistance from the low voltage will generate more heat than the motors were designed for.

When it comes to your Tow vehicle, the lower operating voltages of Sodium batteries could burn up your alternator, or simply not work at all because your vehicle's electrical system is looking for higher voltage from the battery.

I have long been a proponent of cheaper Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries and I believe they are currently very well priced. The advantages of LiFePo4 batteries over Lead Acid are many, and they are a very good "drop In" replacement or your RV's battery bank.

When it comes to Sodium Ion batteries, I would strongly recommend against installing them in either your camper or Tow Vehicle.

 

[Second Chance]

Thanks for posting this, David. I've been reading a lot of hype in the tech rags about sodium batteries for everything from mobile phones to EVs and hybrids. The articles tend to focus on the economics and logistics of producing the sodium batteries but I haven't seen anything addressing the issues you outline above - which appear to be quite high hurdles.

Rob

 

[Joe43230]

I have read about these for a couple of years but the applications have been for vehicles or situations where many individual cells are connected together to produce hundreds of volts. Then they go to specialized controllers before going anywhere else. Not much seen about replacing a single battery as a starter or a camper battery. Maybe if they included a built-in controller but then there would be complications with other controllers.

 

[jkwilson]

I have read about these for a couple of years but the applications have been for vehicles or situations where many individual cells are connected together to produce hundreds of volts. Then they go to specialized controllers before going anywhere else. Not much seen about replacing a single battery as a starter or a camper battery. Maybe if they included a built-in controller but then there would be complications with other controllers.

I believe you’ll see a practical 12V option pretty quickly. A 24V battery with an efficient DC-DC converter will get full capacity out of sodium cells operating 12V systems. It won’t be plug and play, but the benefits of sodium will steer the economics that way pretty quickly. Very few environmental issues and no mining required like lithium will strongly favor sodium.

 

[18CrewDually]

Nope, no desire. Especially after watching Will Prowse's latest YouTube video on it.