Comment Spectacular technology, shame about the math (Score 3) 20
Sodium Ion batteries, less impact for mining (better materials), more cycles, lots of really cool results. The ability to spread solar and wind generation across the day makes a huge difference to the success of renewable generation.
The advertising though
Containers are 3.1MWh. $71 million buys about 150. RTE say 75%. This reads a lot more like 450MWh, 200MW for 2 hours with 110MWh lost to heat. Good for negative 1,800 houses (I used 5kW 50% of the day per house). The equation does not swing to positive generation until there are at least 400MW of PV at roughly another $90million to build.
For all that it's a great story, there is not much past the headline that is safe to read and draw conclusions from.