Long-Overlooked Technology is Breaking Through. Planned Natron Energy Factory in Edgecombe County is Key.
“The Bloomberg article below highlights what is now a major win for Edgecombe County and the State of North Carolina. Natron Energy has officially chosen the Kingsboro Business Park for its new manufacturing facility—outlasting over 70 competing sites across the country. This marks a transformative moment for our region, placing us at the forefront of the next generation of power technology and directly addressing the nation’s growing demand for electricity.”
Bob Pike, President/CEO, Carolinas Gateway Partnership
“Trade Tensions With China Clear Path for Salt-Powered Batteries”
The idea of making batteries from sodium has been around for centuries. In Jules Verne’s 1870 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo drives an electric submarine powered by salt. But while researchers have experimented for years with using the cheap, superabundant material for power storage, sodium-ion batteries could never match the energy density of other battery types, particularly lithium-based formulas. Now expanding energy needs and global trade tensions mean the long-overlooked technology is finally breaking through.
Born out of founder Colin Wessells’ doctoral thesis in 2012, Natron Energy Inc. is among the few companies in the world that mass-produce sodium-ion batteries and is the only one doing it in the US. Its first plant, in Holland, Michigan, opened in April 2024 at a cost of $40 million to retrofit an existing $300 million facility, and is set to produce 600 megawatts of batteries annually by the end of 2025, almost enough to power a city the size of San Diego. The company is lining up funding for an additional $1.4 billion factory in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, that would increase its production capacity by roughly 40 times. Natron says that’s needed to meet demand from its customers, which include data centers and cloud computing companies, particularly as artificial intelligence sucks up more and more energy. “Power demand is going to go through the roof,” says Chief Executive Officer Wendell Brooks.
Generally speaking, sodium-ion batteries are cheaper to make and less combustible than their lithium-ion counterparts. They also pack less power into the same amount of space, which has been a disadvantage for products such as electric vehicles and smartphones. But some of the fastest-growing areas of need for energy storage, including data centers and other industrial settings, aren’t especially sensitive to battery volume or weight, says Evelina Stoikou, Bloomberg NEF’s head of battery technologies and supply chains. That makes the technology more appealing: BNEF projects that sodium-ion batteries will account for 15% of the energy storage market by 2035, up from about 1% today.
Uncertainty regarding the supply of materials needed to make lithium-ion batteries is also giving sodium a boost. A spike in lithium prices in 2022 prompted a frenzy among investors and startups seeking alternative solutions. In China, battery giants Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. and BYD Co. both began developing sodium-ion batteries for storage and electric vehicles around that time. “China tries to be the leading country in all important technologies, and the others try to keep up,” says Marcel Weil, a researcher at the Institute for Technology Assessment & Systems Analysis, an independent German research center that evaluates battery technologies. Since then, lithium prices have dropped, posing a challenge to nascent sodium-ion startups. But BNEF analysts expect the commodity’s price to continue to fluctuate.
President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese goods are another factor pushing investors and buyers to look at sodium. China refines most of the world’s lithium and produces most of its graphite, a component of lithium-ion batteries. If the country stops exporting graphite, or if the Trump administration continues to increase tariffs on it, lithium-ion battery producers around the world would be gravely affected. Sodium-ion batteries are a way to circumvent that supply chain: They often use hard carbon, a far more abundant material similar to charcoal, for their electrodes.
The flammability of certain types of lithium-ion batteries has also spurred interest in safer alternatives. Sodium-ion batteries can be stored with no charge in them, reducing fire risk compared with their lithium-based counterparts, says Andy Leach, an energy storage associate at BNEF.
A set of 10 Natron battery packs—which fits a standard server rack—is about the size of a refrigerator and can store 250 kilowatts of energy, enough to power more than 100 homes in California. That’s a lower energy density than that of lithium-ion batteries. What makes sodium-ion batteries particularly well suited to data centers, according to the company, is their extremely fast rate of discharge. A lithium-ion battery might take an hour to dispense all its power, but a Natron battery can do it in as little as two minutes, the company says. That speed could be critical in a blackout, a scenario that’s becoming increasingly likely with the prevalence of extreme weather. Natron’s batteries could allow a facility to continue running for a few minutes while backup generators come online.
Although Natron’s batteries are currently at about cost parity with lithium-ion batteries, Brooks says he expects costs will be halved when its North Carolina facility reaches full capacity, though it’s unclear when that might be. Besides data centers, other industries Natron is targeting include oil and gas refining and military applications such as anti-drone and anti-missile systems, which also require short, intense bursts of power and the ability to recharge rapidly. The company is already shipping products to customers in all these sectors at a proof-of-concept scale and expects to ship commercially by the end of the second quarter.
Sodium-ion batteries are starting to play a role in the Chinese EV market as well, where carmakers are focusing on consumers who don’t mind less range if it comes with a cheaper price tag. The technology can be found in EVs manufactured by Yiwei, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen-backed JAC Group, which cost as little as $7,000 and have ranges reaching about 230 kilometers (143 miles). Some sodium-ion battery makers in China are also targeting power tools. Scientists have examined elements across the periodic table for their battery potential, including calcium, potassium and magnesium, “but sodium is the system which is closest to really having a breakthrough to market,” says Weil, the battery researcher.
That doesn’t mean it will become as ubiquitous as lithium. Minglong He, principal scientist for the ABB Corporate Research Center in Switzerland, which has invested in sodium-ion battery startups including Natron, doesn’t expect the technology to ever dominate the market. He envisions a future in which batteries like Natron’s serve data centers and other specific markets, while chemistries with higher energy density, such as lithium iron phosphate, are used for EVs or smartphones. Other varieties may continue to chip away at lithium-ion’s market share in certain niche applications, from iron-air batteries for long-term energy storage to thermal batteries for homes. “I don’t think there’s one battery technology, one cell chemistry, for all applications,” He says.