Hithium unveils 20,000-cycle sodium-ion cell and 4MWh BESS

Hithium Battery Research Institute director Dr Aileen Wang at yesterday’s launch. Image: Hithium.

Hithium hosted a launch yesterday for its new sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery cell and energy storage system product line, promising a 30-year expected operational lifetime.

In a pre-recorded video streamed live on LinkedIn, the Chinese battery manufacturer’s research institute director, Dr Aileen Wang, introduced the ∞Cell N785Ah and the battery energy storage system (BESS) ∞Power N4.0MWh.

Wang said the sodium-ion battery team at Hithium was tasked several years ago with building a battery that could redefine energy storage. Having observed that lithium-ion (Li-ion) cost curves were beginning to flatten, sodium-ion was seen as a potential new driver of growth.

“We did not just follow lithium-ion. We wanted to explore where lithium-ion has yet to go, to see whether electrochemical energy storage could operate over a much longer timeframe,” Wang said.