CHINA WILL BE VERY MUCH SHORT IN LITHIUM, page-275

LFP batteries will be main choice for BESS.
Sodium-ion batteries may be a back up for LFP BESS.

It is well know that LFP type prismatic batteries are being used to build the stationary energy battery systems because they are cheap, safe and have higher life cycle. Many battery gigafactories in the US and Europe, including LG's factories are all designed to produced LFP cells and modules at the same time with producing cylindrical (mainly 4680) or pouch type nickel and/or manganese based batteries. Because they all know the BESS market is going to be gigantic and they will use LFP cells for it. LFP battery manufacturing technology is well established atm.

I also don't think that sodium-ion batteries will never replace the Li-ion batteries in the BESS sector. Bu yes, when the lithium price goes to very high levels then sodium-ion battery will always be there to help to the market demand. But for the moment, the sodium-ion batteries can't compete with Li-Ion LFP batteries.

Ken Hoffman also explained why the sodium batteries are not good for the BESS. He said:

"In order to get cycle life, most sodium ion batteries need things like tin, lanthanum, and other rare earth metallics in order to sort of put something within the lattice to sort of keep the pathways of electricity sort of flowing otherwise it shuts down.."

This is correct. Normally the sodium batteries don't have a long cycle life and can't provide the massive power when the system need it. As you may know the Chinese now has made some of these systems in scale but they had to put a smaller lithium BESS in front of the large sodium BESS in the system as you may know. They actually made a hybris system. They (CATL) also did it when they proposed sodium-ion batteries for EVs. There was a Li-Ion battery next to the Na-Ion battery in the car.

Ken says that when they use tin, lanthanum and REEs in the sodium battery then it becomes expensive. Even if you make it cheaper then it will create a big problem in the supply of tin because (not many people know this critical point) tin is the metal which the world has the least reserves of. So if they start using tin, then the tin price will go hyperbolically up. There is no point of creating another shortage for a new mineral. It happened with cobalt, and now they are finding ways to reduce cobalt in nickel based batteries.