Tech by PC

Battery technology is possibly one of the hottest areas of research today, at least in terms of practical application. The three most influencial sources for demand are electric cars, laptops, and cellphone/media player/gadgets. I group the last together because there is little significant difference between them as far as battery technology goes. The cellphone, media player, and gadget niche is pretty stable and its needs fulfilled. Most devices have plenty of power for normal uses and recharging them is not an inconvenience. Laptop batteries are not to that point yet. Dell and HP are working diligently to combine low drain components with extra batteries to increase the endurance of their laptops, yet extra batteries still add extra weight and charge time. Electric vehicle batteries are even further away from meeting what is required of them.

For all this research there is little progress made. As this Computerworld article points out, nothing significant has changed in Li-Ion battery technology since 1996. Up until recently there has been little catalyst for change. Our cell phones last long enough and can be charged every night while we sleep. Laptop endurance is not enough for everyone, but those that need more endurance can purchase extra batteries, which in effect is what Dell and HP are doing with their 19 and 24 hour battery life deals. My 4-hour batteries typically run 2.5 hours, so at a 0.625 reality factor that would equate to almost 12 hours for the Dell and 15 for the HP which I suspect are going to be more realistic real-world endurance figures.

I saw an article recently on a Toshiba laptop battery that is supposed to recharge to 90% in only 10 minutes. It is based on technology described here that was produced for an industrial environment. The SCiB has a 5 minute charge time which if scaled could be useful in electric cars. The trick would be how to charge them that fast. A battery is not going to give out more electricity than is put into it, and there is an inefficiency factor with both charging and discharging. You can tell some of this by feeling the heat from a battery as it charges or discharges. Putting such a battery on a household system would certainly be harder to support than one that charges over an 8 hour period, but presumably charging stations could be set up along roads and highways similar to gasoline refuling stations. These stations could have the electrical capacity to charge many vehicles at the same time, and with a 5-10 minute charge time would also attract commercial interests that would seek to distract drivers and capitalize on those minutes.

Finally we are going to see some progress in battery technology. When I look at the future I see batteries that we don’t even think about charging. Cars will automatically recharge when we park them at home, and laptops will recharge hours worth of life every time we are around a power source for a few minutes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Cars, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.