Sodium/sulfur battery development: Commercialization planning

Technical Report · Fri Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:6029375

Sodium/sulfur batteries have been under development for electric-vehicle and bulk-energy storage applications since the mid-1960s. Recently, the emphasis of the development work has been for electric-vehicle applications, although the system would be an attractive candidate for electric-utility load-leveling, providing the necessary improvements could be made. As a result, a commercialization study was performed for sodium/sulfur load-leveling batteries. The study included five separate analyses, for each of which several trade studies were performed to establish the validity of the conclusions. An outline was delineated for a 100-MWh, 30-MW load-leveling battery based on sodium/sulfur chemistry. Using the design as a baseline, a manufacturing plant was defined that would allow production of the cells for load-leveling batteries, and the costs for cells and for other battery-plant components were estimated. A family of potential applications for sodium/sulfur batteries based on the same cell design as that used for the load-leveling plant was next defined, and potential markets for such batteries were projected. Given the development requirements and market projections for each of the applications, a product-pricing strategy was developed for the period 1990-2005. With information from all the preceding steps, a preliminary business analysis was performed, from which it was concluded that there is a broad range of plausible business-parameter values that will make the manufacture and sale of sodium/sulfur batteries an attractive business. 50 figs., 26 tabs.

• Research Organization: Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (USA); Chloride Silent Power Ltd., Wayne, PA (USA)
• Sponsoring Organization: EPRI; Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6029375
• Report Number(s): EPRI-GS-7184
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
200107 -- Fossil-Fueled Power Plants-- Off-Peak Energy Storage-- (1980-)
25 ENERGY STORAGE
250901* -- Energy Storage-- Batteries-- Design & Development
250904 -- Energy Storage-- Batteries-- Other Applications
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290500 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Research
Development
Demonstration
& Commercialization
296000 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Electric Power
COMMERCIALIZATION
COST
DESIGN
DOCUMENT TYPES
ELECTRIC BATTERIES
ELECTRIC UTILITIES
ELECTROCHEMICAL CELLS
ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
ENERGY STORAGE
INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
LOAD MANAGEMENT
MAINTENANCE
MANAGEMENT
MANUFACTURING
MARKET
MARKETING RESEARCH
METAL-NONMETAL BATTERIES
PEAK LOAD
POWER CONDITIONING CIRCUITS
PROGRESS REPORT
PUBLIC UTILITIES
SODIUM-SULFUR BATTERIES
STORAGE
TESTING
USES
VALIDATION