alt Hacker NewsIt's promising how costs are dropping. CATL have recently announced sodium ion batteries with a cost around $40 per kWh and material costs around $10 so there's room for things to drop as production scales. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/08/catl-sodium-ion-batter...
CATL and BYD are both building 30 GWh per year plants or 60 GWh between them so that's enough for 100 Tilbury plants per year just from sodium batteries. And of course lithium batteries are still cranking along.
It would be interesting to read up on the economics of power storage.
As to what price points for the batteries equates to different usage patterns.
Peak shaving, morning and evening peaks, occasional discharge.
Batteries can make money also by taking negative price electricity.
Once gas has been run out of the market more battery power availability could support carbon free steel I imagine where it is just electrochemistry.
At each point they’d be ruptures in the market, where some forms of electricity just can’t compete.