A company in Utah is developing a battery system for home-based electricity storage that may make energy storage much easier and more economical for off-the-grid homes as well as helping to improve the efficiency of grid-tied homes.

The technology being developed by Ceramatec is a new variation on sodium sulfur batteries, an existing technology with very high energy density, but best suited for very large scale, industrial style installations such as grid storage. However, these batteries have the potential to bring the advantages of sodium sulfur batteries to a much wider range of uses.

Currently, sodium sulfur batteries operate at very high temperatures – above 300 degrees C (572 degrees F), and the components in them are corrosive. This isn’t the sort of thing that you would want in your home, and, for efficiency, they work best at a much larger size; they aren’t really at a home-scale size. On the other hand, there are some advantages to sodium sulfur batteries. They use very common and inexpensive materials, which makes them attractive. And the high energy density means that a small battery is all that is needed for a large amount of energy storage.

The Ceramatec battery separates the sulfur and sodium from each other with a thin ceramic membrane which allows electricity to be stored while operating at a much lower temperature. Ceramatec envisions a refrigerator-sized unit that would remain below 98 degrees C (208 degrees F), the melting point of sodium. Keeping the sodium solid makes for a much safer battery. The battery could store 20 kWh worth of energy, either from local, sustainable sources such as wind or solar, or from off-peak recharging from the grid, much like a plug-in hybrid car recharges when the grid demand is low.

Now, if you’re wondering why you need to know anything at all about EEStor, here’s a quick explanation. The company says that they can make “power storage devices” (not technically batteries, more like peculiar capacitors) that can hold 10x more power than advanced lithium ion cells. These “electrical energy storage units” will be lighter than the most advanced batteries in the world, can charge in minutes and will last forever.

It sounds too good to be true, but so many credible sources have been won over after viewing their technology, and they have had so many investors and clients interested in the technology, that there’s actually a chance that it’s real. If it is real, electric vehicles will be much more practical, less expensive and more convenient than we ever expected them to be.

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