CATL signed a 60 GWh sodium-ion supply agreement with Beijing HyperStrong on April 27, the largest single sodium order in the history of the chemistry, and the same fiscal year Peak Energy stood up the first commercial-scale sodium BESS in the United States. LFP grid storage already prints a Levelized Cost of Storage near 65 dollars per megawatt-hour with 6,000 cycle warranties on the spec sheet. The marginal lithium cell now competes inside its own category, not against the alternative the sell-side spent five years calling vaporware.

The storage thesis that ran through every utility integrated resource plan from 2018 to 2024 sat on one assumption. Lithium dominates because lithium is the only chemistry that scaled, sodium is a paper roadmap, and any portfolio model pricing in non-lithium dispatchable storage was modeling fiction. CATL's April announcement is a 60 GWh production commitment, not a research note. The chemistry the IEA still files as "early commercial" is the one the largest cell manufacturer on the planet is allocating fab capacity to.

High-density LFP captures the data center and frequency-regulation tier where energy density per square foot underwrites the rack. Sodium captures bulk shifting and renewables firming where cycle life and abundance beat energy density. The same factory floor in Ningde runs both lines on rotating shifts.

The bottleneck the sell-side priced as permanent was lithium carbonate spot. Sodium runs on soda ash, half of which already prints in China. The bottleneck moved.