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Comment by eagerpace | Hacker News Reader

There is no reason I can’t put a swimming pool size battery under my house. I don’t care what the energy density is, make it bulletproof and cheap and massive.

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Cost is a reason. You need to dig out that dirt (which is expensive), it needs supports, your house needs support around it/through it…

Making things bulletproof and massive runs opposite of cheap

I figured they meant while building the house, which of course would cut costs by a lot if it were engineered for.

"There's no reason" just "make it safe and cheap in huge size".

Kind of like there's no reason we can't go to Mars for tourism. Just make it as convenient, safe, and cheap as a jet to London.

I failed to land my point, it’s that instead of chasing small and complex battery systems to put in cars, lower tech, bigger, less convenient battery tech of the pool-under-house scale, could be an incredible option. Stationary batteries don’t have the same constraints as the portable batteries we are familiar with from even before the lithium ion age.

This sounds like grid storage, which is actively being deployed to even out supply from renewables.

For some reason I wouldn't exactly feel safe knowing there is a huge battery under my house that may combust at any moment.

That's the beauty with sodium ion batteries, they are generally considered to be even less flammable than already pretty safe LiFePO4.

Unfortunately that's not exactly true.

Aqueous sodium ion chemistries like Na-VPF and Na-tmCN are more fire-safe than lithium, but they're also not as developed/available yet.

Na-NMF, which is what a random off-the-shelf sodium cell is likely to be, is actually more flammable than LiFePO4.

Why under the house? It can sit under your yard, no need to bother with so many tons of construction concrete on top of it.

Not everyone has a yard lol

but everyone can afford a non-existant huge-ass battery under their house?

(Not everyone has a house either, some rent, others live in apartments, lol)

...

I could imagine plants messing with it, unless you bury it really deep.

that might be a evolutionary step where you just pump in electrolyte under a housing into waterproof container and every 10 years just pump it out again for fresh electrolyte

doesn't burn like LiFePo4 so no fire risks, though I am not sure what a short-circuit would do in damage/danger

why even under a structure though, just do it like a septic tank?

I don't think swimming pool is the best size. Why not a hole that's a few meters in diameter but SUPER deep? So long as your water table is sufficiently deep. This way you can service it, should you need to remove/replace contents. If it's under your house - good luck with that.

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