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Not as expensive as one would think. NGK makes containerized soidum-sulfur batteries that are great for grid level storage and have been available for close to 20 years now. I would expect that such things will be deployed at sub stations eventually as rooftop solar becomes more widespread as they will help with load leveling and grid stability as more intermittent renewables are added.

Three times more powerful than any other battery in the world??

NGK has a sodium-sulphur battery system backing a wind farm in Rokkasho, Japan which has a capacity of 245MWh compared to the headline 129MWh of the Australian Tesla battery.

https://www.ngk.co.jp/nas/case...

It looks like reading is.
From this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"As of 2008, sodium–sulfur batteries are only manufactured by one group, the NGK/TEPCO consortium, which is producing 90 MW of storage capacity each year.[11]"
So it would take 555 years to make one 50 GW battery installation.

"Japan Wind Development has opened a 51 MW wind farm that incorporates a 34 MW sodium sulfur battery system at Futamata in Aomori Prefecture in May 2008.[11]"
Yea that is not close to 50 GW.

"As of 2007, 165 MW of capacity were installed in Japan, and NGK has announced in 2008 a plan to expand its NaS factory output from 90 MW a year to 150 MW a year.[13] (Source in Japanese, but with some pictures.)"
So if they did increase this by 150MW a year it would take 332 years.

And this linke https://www.ngk.co.jp/nas/ [ngk.co.jp]
Has a single case study in Japan for a 51MW system which is 1000 times smaller than you claimed.

Your statement was "There are multiple 50+GW battery installations in Japan" and your links actually back this up as pure fantasy. So unless you made an error in size by a factor of 1000 and after a snarky reply failed to catch it, you are living in a fantasy land.
So give me a link to a single 50 GW battery system. The largest I found was 500MW.

https://www.ngk.co.jp/nas/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Googling is not hard.

Sodium-sulphur batteries cost about $2 million per MWh of storage. They also catch fire (not surprising when you've got sodium metal and sulphur at 300 deg C in a battery...) and it can take weeks for the fire to be put out.

http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/n...

That's not the only NGK battery fire that's been reported over the past few years even though there aren't that many installed around the world.

"Next up: Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?"

NGK make large storage batteries and they use their own products to power an office complex in Japan, doing just what the article suggests by storing overnight lower-cost electricity in a large battery pack.

Apparently it two weeks for the resulting fire to be extinguished.

NGK have sold a bunch of these batteries around the world, including to support wind power in the Shetland Isles in Scotland.

Positioning such a battery a couple of metres from a 3,800 tonne fuel-oil tank was probably not a good idea...

I have seen a few manufacturing kilns before. But there is always the question of what to do with waste heat (and there is ALWAYS waste heat, except for microwaves and light).

Lithium ion requires over 1300C, not the nice low temps of glass. A high temp reactor is not overkill for mass production of lithium. In fact, it has the advantage of not converting from heat to steam to mechanical to electricity back to heat. Instead, is makes DIRECT use of the heat, thereby jumping the efficiency rate way up (and the costs way down).

As to the waste, thorium is fairly low waste and not an issue. We used it at Ft. St. vrain and it was at 1K C. All that is needed is a little bit more heat to bring up for one process. But a direct heat like this makes a lot of sense, esp. when something as simple as helium can carry the heat without radioactive products.

Wind / Solar along with NAS batteries -> http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/power/nas/index.html - really could handle our base load. Certainly the percentage that we in the US use nuclear for.

Not only that, we should be looking at new computerized internet electric meters, and laws that would require utilities to pay fair market value for electricity produced by small private generators. Little 5KW vertical turbines everywhere. Then, just put huge battery installations where the old coal plants are, and we are on the road to green energy.

Not today obviously, but it would grow. And new nuke plants would just not be needed. At least Uranium water/water plants. Thorium / Pebble Bed Reactors might be an option for the future.

Solar and wind power are fine for base load power. just add batteries -> http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/power/nas/index.html

The manufacturer says 75%:

http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/products/power/nas/index.html

Also they say 2500 cycles and 15 year life. Which is fairly unexciting in the battery world.