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They're in commercial use in China already. They have some disadvantages compared to lithium batteries as they don't hold as much charge, but they are a lot cheaper to make and don't require rare earth minerals.
https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/13/china-1st-large-sodium-battery-energy-storage-station-operation/
Well I would have preferred it to be used as a stopgap for now leading to other discoveries like this proton battery. Cause it seems like lithium will be in use for another 10 years at this rate. The whole situation reminds me of graphene and how that is barely making any advancement either.
It's just different use cases for different tech. Sodium batteries are good for large scale energy storage facilities where size and weight doesn't matter, or vehicles that are meant to just get around in a city. For example, if you have a bus on a fixed route then a sodium battery works really great. Proton batteries have potential for applications where you do want to have high energy density, but they're always going to cost more than sodium.
Graphene is being used in certain high sensitivity/quality sensor chips.
Yeah, I have the same sentiment.