This study focuses on the relative energetic stability of beta-spodumene configurations with different atomic ordering, evaluated using electronic structure methods based on static periodic density functional theory. We found that beta-spodumene configurations with a framework containing exclusively Al-O-Si linkages are energetically the most stable, consistent with the aluminum avoidance principle. A correlation between the interstitial sites occupied by lithium and the stability of the configuration was established: highly stable configurations contain greater proportions of lithium associated with the edges of AlO4 tetrahedrons. The identified low-energy configurations have a band gap of similar to 4.8 eV, and similar electronic band structures and densities of states. Both the PBE and PBEsol functionals predict small differences in the relative stabilities of the different configurations of beta-spodumene. However, only PBEsol is able to reproduce the experimentally observed stability differences between a-spodumene and beta-spodumene. beta-Spodumene is the preferred polymorph at high temperatures, with the PBEsol inversion temperature from alpha- to beta-spodumene predicted to occur at 1070 K.