15-04-2025
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.
