http://www.idtechex.com/electric-vehicles-usa-12

ELECTRIC VEHICLES LAND, SEA & AIR USA 2012

The only event covering all forms of EVs and their parts for land, sea and air

27-28 March, 2012

DoubleTree Hilton Hotel

2050 Gateway Place

San Jose, CA 95110

USA

Most major breakthroughs in design and technology appear in other electric vehicles before they appear in cars. Whether by land, sea or air, electric vehicles need motors, controls, batteries and often supercapacitors plus advanced structural composites. Just over 1.6 million electric cars will be sold worldwide this year, including hybrids. But the total number of all types of EVs sold will be much greater - reaching over 39 million. In terms of units sold, that will mostly be e-bikes and vehicles for the disabled, but industrial/commercial vehicles will have four times their market value. Serious players must look at all of this - and IDTechEx now makes this possible.

Toyota Motor, Mr Greg Glander, Government Sales & Advanced Technology Vehicle Manager

Tuesday March 27, 2012
10:45 - 11:10 "Toyota Sustainable Mobility - Toyota's 2012 line-up of advanced technology vehicles"
Toyota's 2012 line-up of advanced technology vehicles

LiTHIUM BALANCE, Mr Tunji Adebusuyi, Research & Development

12:00 - 12:25 "High Performance Battery Management using Distributed Intelligence Architecture"
Safe, efficient and cost effective energy storage is key to the electrification of transport
Energy and investment continue to pour into battery development and battery management has to keep up
LiTHIUM BALANCE are using a new methodology to create the next generation BMS to be truly universal, usable by OEMs and aftermarket producers alike but at an affordable price point both in prototype quantities and volume.

OXIS Energy, Dr Mark Crittenden, Customer Brand Manager

12:25 - 12:50 "The Dawn of a New Era in Rechargeable Battery Technology - Why Polymer Lithium Sulfur is no Longer a Theory for Electric Vehicles?"
OXIS's Polymer Lithium Sulphur is the breakthrough technology required for the Worldwide electric vehicle markets
OXIS can explain this breakthrough by demonstrating how it has overcome the challenges of Lithium-Sulphur electrochemistry
OXIS can demonstrate its technology powering applications safely in the vehicles and the defence sectors

PREVIOUS EXHIBITORS INCLUDE:

Tesla

BMW Group

German E CARS

DLR

E Wolf

Polaris

Animatics

Solar Water World

Hawkes Ocean Sport

Aradex

ETH

Future Transport Systems

Vector

BSM

DHBW Engineering

Ekolo

Novisim

Peraves

Solar Gard

Animatics

ESP IN-Core Systems

FEC

LEVA

ELV motors

KillaCycle

KleenSpeed Technologies

Levant Power

Currie Technologies

Deepflight

CONFERENCE CONTACTS

Teresa Henry

Event Manager

+44 (0)1223 813703

t.henry @ IDTechEx.com

Dr Peter Harrop

Chairman

+44 (0)1256 862163

p.harrop @ IDTechEx.com    

EXHIBITION & MEDIA CONTACTS

Thomas Keenan

Sales Account Manager, Electric Vehicles

+44 (0)7528 559 397

t.keenan @ IDTechEx.com

Cara Harrington

Event & Marketing Manager

1 617 577 7890

c.harrington @ IDTechEx.com

Can PolyPlus's Batteries Power the Future?

By Alexandra Dean on April 05, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-05/can-polypluss-batteries-power-the-future

As any high school chemistry teacher will tell you, mixing lithium with water results in a pretty nasty explosion. So Steven Visco delights in dropping lithium batteries into a fish tank. As unsuspecting orange and white clownfish float by, the credit card-size battery sinks to the bottom. Electrons from the lithium in the battery are drawn toward oxygen from the water, illuminating a small light attached to the battery. “When we put that electrode in water and saw it was completely stable, it was a holy crap-type thing,” says Visco, a chemist who also works on fuel-cell technology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “And then we started to think about batteries we hadn’t even dreamed about.”

PolyPlus’s innovation is a ceramic seal that lets the battery pull oxygen from the water to create a controlled chemical reaction. Per gram of weight, the batteries last six times longer than anything commercially available, Visco says—which could ultimately add up to big profits for PolyPlus, the Berkeley (Calif.) battery research company he co-founded in 1990.

The trouble is, they work best underwater, so they’re not practical for use in most electronics or electric vehicles, the biggest potential markets. Visco’s team is using the water breakthrough to create a lithium battery powered by air, another substance previously thought too combustible to combine with the element, which should work for gadgets and cars.

Ultimately, the new battery could replace today’s lithium-ion models, which work by tapping energy released when lithium reacts with a metal oxide in the battery. Visco’s invention is lighter because it substitutes the metal oxide with water or air, which don’t need to be stored inside the battery. “This is a big deal,” says Arun Majumdar, director of ARPA-E, a federal agency that has given PolyPlus $5 million over the past two years. “No one else has the materials or the understanding that PolyPlus has.”

Now, PolyPlus faces what Visco calls its “valley of death” moment. Although the 27-employee company has no significant revenues, it has received $25 million in government grants and $15 million in equity investments from early backers over the past two decades, and holds nearly 100 patents. Visco says PolyPlus could start production of lithium-water batteries by 2014 and early lithium-air models the following year.

He estimates he needs another $25 million in private capital to do more research, build factories, and fend off powerful challengers such as IBM (IBM), General Electric (GE), and Toyota (TM), which are working on similar technology. PolyPlus “will need to rely more on both financial investors, in the form of venture capitalists, and strategic investors, potentially in the form of future partners,” says Robert Townsend, a lawyer at Morrison Foerster in San Francisco who acts as an informal adviser to the company.

PolyPlus faces one big technical problem: Its lithium-air battery can be recharged just 40 to 50 times, vs. thousands of times for traditional lithium-ion batteries. Until that hurdle can be overcome, the batteries won’t likely appeal to electronics companies and carmakers. That could make investors skittish. “Rechargeability is paramount for us,” says Bill Wallace, director of global battery systems for General Motors (GM). Wallace says GM’s venture arm would invest in a company like PolyPlus, but only if the batteries can be recharged a couple of hundred times or more.

Visco would like to expand incre-mentally, first perfecting a lithium-water battery, then non-rechargeable lithium-air, and finally a rechargeable lithium-air battery that, a decade from now, could power cars. To raise the necessary funds from venture capitalists, though, PolyPlus may have to abandon that timetable and concentrate on the biggest hurdle, rechargeability. “It’s probably a good idea … to try and solve the hardest problems first,” says David Wells, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is not invested in PolyPlus. “Venture is a hit business. You don’t get hits by aiming low.”

Visco fears VCs might push him into an early initial public offering, which could bring the lithium-air battery to market before it’s ready, leaving buyers unimpressed and limiting potential sales. He says he’s reluctant to be “forced into a position where you have to have a public offering,” which could lead to more competition in the field. An IPO “has to be a lot of noise, a tremendous public awareness,” he says.

For now, Visco is wooing strategic partners such as manufacturers and lithium miners to raise cash to start production of lithium-water batteries, which he says are ideal for powering sensors that monitor offshore oil rigs, submarine activity, and tsunamis. Most big underwater batteries today are toxic; Visco says his are entirely benign. Just as important, his batteries might last twice as long as today’s models—years on a single charge. “The ocean,” Visco says, “is going to be a bigger market than we even can map out now.”

The bottom line: PolyPlus’s batteries last many times longer than today’s models, but they can’t yet be recharged often enough to work in cars and gadgets.

http://youtu.be/HiOLan8J0cE
http://www.go100percent.org

Uploaded by GO100PERCENT on Dec 4, 2011

Elon Musk,
Chairman, Product Architect and CEO | Tesla Motors,
CEO and CTO | SpaceX, Chairman | Solar City.

Thoughts on transitioning to 100% renewable energy Is solar really part of the solution? Are batteries really sustainable?

What We Are:

Go 100% is a global community which is proving that being powered by 100% sustainable renewable energy is urgent and achievable. Anyone curious about, striving for, or who has achieved this aim is welcome. Join the community.

What We Do:

We aim to inspire each other and others to reach the 100% renewable energy goal locally and globally by

• building an interactive map of 100% renewable energy-related projects and goals around the world.
• publishing relevant news and editorials.
• providing educational tools Learn more
• catalyzing a virtual discussion where the Go 100% community can help develop best practices, forge partnerships, and build strength in numbers.

Why We Are Doing It:

The conventional fossil and nuclear energy system has led to multiple convergent existential crises, including climate change, air and water pollution, destruction of the oceans, the threat of mass extinction, water and food shortages, poverty, nuclear radiation problems, nuclear weapons proliferation, fuel depletion, and geopolitical problems.

The world's leading scientists have issued a mandate that we must change this energy system to a sustainable one based on conservation, efficiency and renewable energy in the near future or risk losing planetary habitability.

Gloom and despair are not healthy options. Focusing on solutions is. Without turning a blind eye to the problems, it's time to widen our view, see what works, and make the necessary changes. For the sake of our kids, future generations, and the many who are already suffering the impacts of fossil and nuclear fuel dependence.

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Solar Battery Thinner Than Human Hair Is World's Thinnest and Lightest

Jaymi Heimbuch
Technology / Solar Technology
April 4, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/solar-technology/spider-silk-solar-battery-worlds-thinnest-and-lightest.html

A battery with a thickness of just 1.8 micrometers could be a solution for ultra-thin, ultra-light energy storage for small devices. At 1.8 micrometers, it is thinner than a strand of spider silk and is one tenth the thickness of the thinnest solar cells available. It is also elastic, similar to spider silk.

The device is not just a battery but an incredibly thin solar cell as well, which means it can gather its own charge.

Smart Planet writes, "In order to create the battery, the scientists applied ink containing an organic semiconductor to plastic film that measures 1.4 micrometers in thickness. According to the researchers, the thinnest battery to date was 25 micrometers. One gram of the solar battery produces 10 watts of energy. The efficiency of conversion from solar power to electricity is 4.2 percent, substantially lower than typical solar panels. However, the new battery can function without conversion rate drops when folded or bent. According to the team, the spider-silk soar batteries can also be made cheaply."

According to the researchers, this miniscule solar cell and battery could power small personal devices such as air quality sensors. Or perhaps, larger versions could be used to power electronics in remote or hard-to-access places such as sensors on bridges or towers. Additionally, it is a durable battery.

Tsuyoshi Sekitani from the University of Tokyo states, "Power generation by solar cells increases with their size. As this device is soft, it is less prone to damage by bending even if it gets bigger."

The researchers hope that within the next five years, they will be able to increase the solar cell's efficiency to a rate that makes it competitive in the market.

How one Electric Car Handles Snow, Reindeer, and Being Put Inside a Freezer
When Volvo tests its electric cars' cold weather performance, it does so in style.

Cost of Advanced Lithium-Ion Batteries for EVs Dropped 14% Last Year, 30% Since 2009
Nothing is more important for the long-term success of electric cars than a steady reduction in the cost of advanced batteries.

Ask the Experts: Why Hasn't Cradle-to-Cradle Design Caught On Yet?
It seems like everybody who knows the Cradle-to-Cradle principles thinks they're brilliant, yet adoption of the methodology and design philosophy seems slow. What is holding it back? William McDonough answers.

Fully Charged Takes Renault's Freaky, Lightweight Twizy for a Spin
The Renaul Twizy could, says Robert Llewellyn, be disruptive technology that transforms how we think about cars.

The Terrible Catch-22 That Happens When Cities Choose Bikes
You know bikes are good. City planners know bikes are good. Yet as soon as cities are successful in getting people biking, a horrible catch-22 is set in motion.

New Organic Solar Technology Gets Us Closer to Electricity Generating Buildings
A German company has designed a more efficient thin-film solar cell that can be used to make electricity-generating tinted windows and concrete structures.

Buy an Electric Car, Get Rooftop Solar for Under $10,000
SunPower partners with Ford to offer a deal on home solar. Considering the average American spends over $2,000 guzzling 558 gallons of gas driving per year, that's a steal.

Ask the Experts: Where's the Green Outrage Over Nuclear Weapons?
Why aren't nuclear weapons such a top concern of environmentalists like they used to be? Satish Kumar of Resurgence magazine answers.

Elon Musk Joins Buffett, Pledges Fortune to Charity
Warren Buffett has been working on promoting the Giving Pledge for a while now, trying to convince other billionaires to do what he and Bill Gates did by pledging most of their fortunes to charity.

A Big Rubber Ducky Floats Down the World's Rivers
This is so cute, you just have to smile.

Environmental Collective Declares War on Trees
Agitprop remix highlights the growing problem of shade, as solar organizations declare war on tall, leafy plants

Incredible OLED Lighting Installations by Philips Shows Off First "Functional Lighting"
OLED technology is starting to shine in lighting designs, and this installation shows that it might turn up in homes relatively soon.

IBM Wants to Give Electric Cars 500 Miles of Range With Lithium-Air Batteries
IBM is working on a very promising kind of battery that could be a game-changer when it comes to electric vehicles.

GE's Hybrid Train Batteries Will Back Up Solar and Wind Power
Nickel-salt batteries developed by GE's transportation division will see their first application as back-up power storage for solar and wind farms.

Check Out NASCAR's New 100% Electric Pace Car!
The new NASCAR pace car will be a Ford Focus Electric, further pushing electric car technology into the mainstream and reaching an American demographic that is a bit different from the one that is usually targeted by EV makers.

Leaf-Mimicking Solar Cells Generate 47% More Electricity
Princeton University scientists achieve huge gains in light absorption and solar cell efficiency with a little leaf biomimicry.

Tesla's Electric Car Battery Tech Could End Up Powering Your Home
SolarCity, the biggest installer of solar energy systems in the U.S., and Tesla Motors, the electric car startup, are intimately linked via Elon Musk, the Chairman of the former and CEO of the latter.

May 4, 2012

The Battery-Driven Car Just Got a Lot More Normal

By BRADLEY BERMAN

BERKELEY, Calif.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/automobiles/autoreviews/the-battery-driven-car-just-got-a-lot-more-normal.html

CRITICS of electric vehicles say they are too expensive and lack sufficient driving range. But I wonder if those gripes would disappear if the E.V.’s on sale weren’t so — let’s not mince words — homely. I adore my all-electric Nissan Leaf, but its wide rear end, bulging headlights and odd proportions evoke a Japanese gizmo aesthetic that doesn’t necessarily appeal to mainstream American car buyers.

Enter the handsome 2012 Ford Focus Electric, the first all-electric car from an American automaker in the 21st century. Ford will begin selling the electric version of the new Focus in the next few weeks in California, New York and New Jersey, followed by 19 additional markets in the fall.

The Focus Electric looks nearly identical to the gas version, a small “Electric” badge the only clue that internal combustion has been supplanted by swift and silent electric propulsion. Sit in the low-slung, well-conforming seats and you feel oh-so normal. There are no circuit-board motifs, techno start-up sounds, weird shifter knobs or special Eco modes. The driver chooses among standard gear selections: park, reverse, neutral, drive and low.

E.V.’s are highly regarded for their high torque at zero r.p.m. — allowing zippy departures from red lights. In my week with the Focus Electric in the San Francisco Bay Area — the first multiday test of the car by a journalist — the powertrain felt as if it had been tailored for highway driving, offering rapid bursts of acceleration from 30 to 50 m.p.h., and from 55 to 75, with oomph left in reserve.

That’s one of many ways Ford engineers aimed this electric auto at drivers accustomed to the road manners of a gasoline car. “We wanted the Focus Electric to be a vehicle first, that just happened to be electric,” said Eric Kuehn, Ford’s chief engineer for global electrified programs.

Battery-powered cars are intrinsically quiet, the motor sound falling between a whir and a whisper. But the Focus is deep-space silent, the quietest of the many electric cars I’ve driven. The engineers told me they used extra insulation and sound damping.

The extra benefit of quieting the 107-kilowatt (143 horsepower) motor is a reduction of all road noise to ultraluxury levels, whether on city streets or while briskly accelerating to the maximum speed of 85 m.p.h. The single-speed transmission provides direct linear velocity, with no hint of cylinders firing or gears waiting to engage. The concomitant high efficiency means that fuel costs just a third as much as filling up the gas-powered Focus, according to fueleconomy.gov. These days that’s the equivalent of about $1.30 a gallon.

In my week with the Focus, I was E.V.-incognito. Not once did I receive a curious glance from a pedestrian or fellow roadway denizen. Focus Electric drivers desperately seeking green cred can find a prominent public charging location to plug in. When I juiced up outside a Walgreens in Pleasanton, Calif., 40 miles east of San Francisco, strip-mall shoppers gawked at the charging cord dangling from my Ford.

One woman said, “I didn’t know electric cars existed.” A father told his son: “Look. That’s the wave of the future.” If I’d wanted, I could have preached E.V. religion all day to potential acolytes.

Thankfully, I didn’t need all day to charge because the Focus Electric uses a 6.6-kilowatt charger capable of replenishing the batteries at twice the rate of a Leaf. This equates to a full recharge from empty to full in a little more than four hours when pulling 240 volts — adding about 20 miles of driving range in an hour, instead of 10 miles for each hour with the Leaf.

There were three or four trips during my week when I would have been forced to leave the Leaf, with its 3.3-kilowatt charger, at home. But I was able to take the Focus Electric because, for example, an hour-and-a-half charge at the Walgreens allowed me to make the 35-mile return to my home charger. I had lunch while I waited at a fast-food joint nearby. Charging at half the rate would have exceeded the limits of my schedule and my patience.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s estimated driving range of 76 miles is spot-on. The farthest I ventured was 83 miles, with the dashboard indicating use of 19 kilowatt-hours from the 23-kilowatt-hour pack. Batteries always keep a kilowatt or two in reserve, so I probably could have pushed the range beyond 90 miles with careful driving.

The Focus once again proved the rule-of-thumb on E.V. efficiency: four miles of driving per kilowatt-hour under favorable conditions, and closer to three when blasting the air-conditioning, running uphill or driving in cold weather.

In terms of understanding range from behind the wheel, I wish Ford had provided a conventional-style analog fuel gauge with a big red needle and hash marks. Instead, the car has a small thermometer-style display of the battery state-of-charge combined with an estimate of the remaining miles. Leaf owners refer to their cars’ similar feature as the guess-o-meter, but the Focus’s predictions were even more scattershot.

On one trip, when I really needed to know if a low battery was going to carry me the last five miles home, the dashboard’s guess at the remaining range shot up wildly to 85 miles and then to a ludicrous 139 miles despite showing only an eighth of the charge remaining. Ford said this was a glitch in my near-production test vehicle that had been fixed in production models.

Ford makes matters worse with other confusing E.V.-related dashboard displays and nomenclature — not sufficiently explaining terms like battery “surplus” and “budget.” And rather than show the level of regenerative braking with bars or a meter, long features of hybrids and E.V.’s, the Focus flashes an inscrutable “braking score” each time you come to a stop.

Worst of all, blue butterflies appear and flutter when you drive in an eco-friendly manner, a cutesy affectation that made me want to snuff out the flying bugs by pushing the limits of the E.V.’s acceleration.

One innovation where Ford fares better is the blue light circling the fueling door on the left side, where you plug in the car. It shows charging progress at a glance from a distance by illuminating successive sections of what serves as glowing state-of-charge pie chart.

The interface shortcomings — and twitchy brakes that took a day to get used to — are forgotten when you mash the accelerator: the aggressive throttle settings tended to provoke a chirp of the low-rolling-resistance tires.

Above 10 m.p.h., the Focus becomes well-planted and controlled by taut steering. Without a gas engine up front, the Focus Electric’s weight distribution is close to ideal at 49 percent in front, 51 percent in the rear. (The gasoline car is nose-heavy at 61/39.)

Because of its 650-pound battery pack, the car is relatively heavy, at 3,642 pounds, but the engineers did a good job of adjusting springs and shocks to handle the extra weight in the rear. The car has a substantial but not ponderous feel.

What’s less forgivable is the packaging of the batteries. Some are placed where the regular Focus’s gas tank would be, but the main pack is under the liftgate, reducing cargo space by 39 percent, to just 14.5 cubic feet. There is room for a few bags of groceries but nothing more. And back seat legroom is tight, as it is in the gas version.

Building an E.V. from the ground up would have allowed designers to put the battery under the cabin, presenting new possibilities for passenger comfort and cargo space. But Ford decided to reduce the risk and cost of making an electric car by building the Electric on the same assembly line as the gasoline Focus; workers install either electric motors or gas engines, and they bolt in either lithium-ion battery packs or gasoline tanks. That gives the company the option of expanding or reducing E.V. volume based on demand.

Nissan, BMW and Tesla would argue that giving up the ability to optimize the vehicle platform — and integrate all the systems for electric-car efficiency — is too high a price for the relative ease of development and production in Ford’s approach.

In the end, the Focus Electric solves the nerdy-E.V. problem, but it may underscore the biggest current challenge to widespread adoption of electric cars: their cost. The availability of gas and electric versions of the Focus, side by side in showrooms, will invite apples-to-apples cost-benefit comparisons.

The Ford Focus Electric has a base price of $39,995 — minus a $7,500 federal tax credit and a $2,500 rebate in California. That puts its tab at $30,000, some $7,000 above the upscale Focus Titanium. I can hear the electric naysayers exclaiming “Aha! You won’t make back the savings at the pumps.” That’s despite $4 gasoline, and the Focus Electric’s 110 m.p.g. equivalent rating.

But when buying any new car, especially an innovative model of any kind, emotions, aesthetics and externalities eclipse economics. Most owners will recoup at least a few thousand dollars of the premium from much lower fuel and maintenance costs.

Beyond that, what do you get for the extra money? A faster, quieter Focus — one that eliminates gas station visits, tailpipe emissions or any personal connection to OPEC. Also, one of the sharpest looking American cars on the road.

Grid-Scale Metal Liquid Batteries Could Revolutionize Renewable Energy Use

Michael Graham Richard

May 15, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/grid-scale-metal-liquid-batteries-could-revolutionize-renewable-energy-use.html

TED/Screen capture

Most Exciting Development I've Seen in Ages!

Almost every week, I see some R&D project or lab prototype that makes me go "ooh, that's interesting!". But it's rather rare that I encounter something that makes me rethink my whole vision of the future! It happened to me when I saw the video below, which is a presentation by a MIT professor on how he designed grid-scale liquid metal batteries. I won't try to describe Professor Sadoway's design in detail because he does it much better than I could in the must-see TED video below, but I want to put this technology into context and talk about why it got me so excited, and how it truly can revolutionize the important energy sector, and thus be very very good for our fragile biosphere.

But the first thing to note is that Professor Sadoway's grid-scale batteries were designed so cleverly! From the ground up, the goal was to make them dirt-cheap (literally!) and very safe and reliable, which is why they can operate comfortably at high temperatures (something that needs to be constantly cooled has more chances of failing if something unexpected happens). He didn't just try to stretch an existing design into something bigger, he created them to be grid-scale from the ground up. It's truly the kind of genius work that should be backed by massive resources, either from venture capitalists or the Department of Energy or whatever. The faster we can bring these to market, the faster we can ramp up intermittent renewable sources of energy way past the point at which they would start to screw up our current grid infrastructure. And we need all the carbon-free energy we can get, especially with China and India rapidly ramping up their coal usage.

TED/Screen capture

Problems & Solutions

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have great advantages over other sources; once operating, they don't produce greenhouse gases or air pollution, they have no fuel costs, and they can more easily be scaled up or down to either take full advantage of a very sunny spot in a desert or very windy site offshore, or fit on a rooftop in a city.

But they also have a big disadvantage, which is that we can't truly control when they produce energy. Once the sun is shinning or wind blowing, we can tweak them to maximize output, and we can forecast wind and sun with pretty good accuracy, but despite all that, it remains that sometimes there's just no sun or wind.

Workarounds exist, but they come with their own problems. For example, you can have backup power plants that take over when there's a shortcoming of renewables. Or you can import renewable energy from another region where the wind is blowing and/or sun is shinning, or from a region that isn't producing electricity from intermittent sources.

The problem is that this only works with relatively small amounts of intermittent renewable sources in the system. If wind power makes up 5% of the total and half of it goes down, that's only 2.5% of total. You can probably deal with it by ramping up production at other power plants, or firing up backup 'peaker' plants, or by importing power from another region.

Geograph/CC BY 3.0

But if our goal is to make wind and solar much bigger players, we run into big problems. If wind and solar are 75% of total energy production capacity in the system, we can't expect to have enough backup power plants that sit idle most of the time at the ready to pick up the slack. That would just be too expensive. It's also not practical to overbuild solar and wind capacity up to a point where any region that gets sun and/or wind has enough overcapacity to always export power to other regions where there is no sun or wind. And with this much wind capacity, we also run into the problem of maybe having strong winds at night when there is very little demand, and then almost no wind during peak time on very hot days when everybody is running their A/C.

That's what affordable grid-scale storage of the kind Pofessor Sadoway proposes could help us with. It would not only make our current grid more efficient by allowing us to capture excess power produced off-peak and using it during the time of highest demand, but in the long term, it would allow us to ramp up the use of wind and solar to a point that would be extremely hard to reach without it.

So kudos to Donald Sadoway, and I wish him the best of luck developing this potentially world-changing technology!

Via TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html
(video)

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/profile-sadoway-innovative-approach-batteries-0423.html

April 23, 2012

Taking an innovative approach to battery design

Donald Sadoway’s radical rethinking of electricity storage could revitalize renewable-power technologies.

David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

Donald Sadoway
Photo: M. Scott Brauer

You have to give Donald Sadoway points for style: Not many professors come to the last class of a semester dressed in black tie, decorate the table with linen and a vase of fresh roses, and toast their students with champagne. But then, Sadoway has a tendency to do things differently.

Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT, has earned a crescendo of recognition this year for his pioneering work on an entirely new type of battery, one based on floating layers of high-temperature molten metal and salt. The battery could provide electricity storage on a scale useful to major electric utilities — allowing them to store energy whenever it’s available and cheap, and then pump it back into the grid when it’s most needed. Such storage capability could be the key to making intermittent sources of power — such as sun, wind and tides — a reliable part of the world’s energy supply.

The innovative approach earned Sadoway a coveted spot at this year’s TED talks; a video of his remarks garnered more than 440,000 views in its first three weeks online. And last week, Time magazine included Sadoway in its annual list of “the 100 most influential people in the world.”

Finally, Sadoway’s liquid battery project has garnered more than $13 million in government and industry funding, partly from the French energy company Total, provided through the MIT Energy Initiative (not counting money raised by a company founded to commercialize the technology — half of which came from Bill Gates, who watched Sadoway’s lectures via MIT OpenCourseWare).

Humble roots

Sadoway, the son of second-generation Ukrainian immigrants, was the first member of his family to attend college, let alone teach at one. His parents ran a motel in a small town outside Toronto. His mother was a high school graduate, but his maternal grandmother was illiterate, having had a year or two of schooling at most.

“The gene pool doesn’t turn over in two generations,” he emphasizes. “The only difference between us was opportunity.”

Maybe that rise from modest origins helped spur Sadoway’s tendency to go against the grain. He suggests that one reason his TED talk has become so popular is because of its underlying message “that you could develop a leading-edge technology by ignoring the professionals and putting together your own team of novices,” he says.

The “professionals” in battery technology were indeed skeptical of Sadoway’s liquid-battery concept when he first started working on it around 2005. For one thing, conventional wisdom held that for any manufactured product, the way to achieve economies of scale was to build large numbers of small things.

But Sadoway took the opposite tack, planning to build fewer and bigger things. Furthermore, his technology’s operating temperature — many hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit, required to keep the metal electrodes molten — was seen as an energy-draining showstopper: You’d need so much energy to keep the thing hot, experts reasoned, that this drain would counteract any gains in efficiency you might get.

Turning handicap to advantage

Not so, Sadoway and his team have demonstrated, through years of theoretical research and a series of ever-larger prototypes. (He describes the sizes of these, respectively, as a shot glass, a hockey puck, a saucer and a pizza.) In fact, it turns out that what has been a handicap for other types of batteries — namely, that they tend to get very hot during either charging or discharging — is actually a big plus for his liquid version.

Photo: M. Scott Brauer

Normally, this heating requires a complex, active cooling system to counteract. But for Sadoway, it means that in actual operation, it shouldn’t be necessary to heat the battery much, if at all: It will self-heat while charging and discharging. Even in the desert on a summer day — a situation where conventional batteries can sustain damage or fail — his liquid battery, at about 1,400° F, would be unfazed by the extra heat.

Sadoway’s liquid-battery concept was based on his earlier work in the metal smelting industry. (His three degrees, all from the University of Toronto, are in metallurgy). He realized that the reactor used to smelt aluminum — which relies on huge amounts of electric power driving current through huge vats of molten ore — could be turned on its head to store power, rather than using it up.

Sparked by a suggestion from MIT colleague Gerbrand Ceder, Sadoway set out to see if this concept could be made to work as a battery system. Most people in that situation, he says, would probably have hired top experts in the fields of electrochemistry and smelting to carry out the research. Sadoway took the opposite route, hiring students.

“They were not just any youngsters,” he explains, “they were youngsters at MIT. Nonetheless, they were novices” — and therefore didn’t quite realize how daunting the task might be. And besides, he says, “they believed that if this worked, it could change the world.”

Sadoway’s industrial and academic experience, combined with the students’ energy and enthusiasm, led to significant progress — after a few blind alleys along the way. In the end, with particular help from former graduate student David Bradwell, this research yielded working prototypes.

“They worked miracles,” he says of his team. And the recognition he’s been getting this year, he says, is “about them, it’s not about me. It’s the group.”

This “overnight” success wouldn’t have been possible without a lifetime of study and experience, Sadoway says. After he gave his 14-minute lecture at the TED conference, having carefully rehearsed and memorized it so that he could deliver it without notes, someone asked him how long it took him to prepare the talk.

Sadoway’s response: “About 35 years!”

                                                                        CONTACT:          Brian Briscoe
                                                                                                                                                Tucker & Associates
                                                                                                                                                214.252.0900
                                                                                                                                                brian @ tuckerpr.com

Interstate Batteries Introduces Next Generation in Battery Technology

New Commercial Battery Excels in Cranking, Deep Cycling Performance

DALLAS (May 21, 2012) — Deep-cycling performance. Faster recharging. Stronger starting. These are the attributes of the 31-AGM7, the new extreme absorbed glass-mat (AGM) battery that Interstate Batteries will roll out this month. The commercial line battery is the product of years of technology experimentation, testing and validation.

            Conventional alloy-lead AGM technology batteries have been used for years in motorcycles, automobiles, wheelchairs and backup power supplies, but Interstate Batteries’ new pure-lead AGM battery exceeds the performance of these products. Batteries run through several cycles of discharging and recharging power.  Most starting batteries don’t typically discharge deeper than a 10% depth of discharge.  Interstate’s AGM battery with Pure Matrix Power^TM, on the other hand, produces 400 cycles at 80% depth of discharge.  A starting battery capable of that many extreme deep cycles is unique in the battery industry.\

            Pure Matrix Power is a combination of pure non-alloy lead and an extra thin plate design. The pure lead without the common impurities of alloyed lead and the increased surface area of the thinner plates results in a battery that peforms at an extremely high level in both cranking the engine and powering electrical accessories over and over again.

            Cranking and recharging performance are two additional qualities setting Interstate’s 31-AGM7 battery apart from others.

            “Interstate Batteries’ new AGM battery can accept and produce a tremendous amount of current very quickly, reducing the battery’s charge time” said Gale Kimbrough, Interstate Batteries’ technical services manager. “Additionally, extreme cold and extreme heat challenge a battery’s ability to perform, and this new AGM battery, with its temperature-resistant properties, rises to this challenge by delivering at a high level in all climates.”

            Thick glass-mats inside the AGM battery absorb the battery’s active ingredient. Electrolyte, a mixture of sulfuric acid and water, is housed in a liquid state in most automotive batteries. The Interstate Batteries 31-AGM7 battery has world-class cranking and extreme cycling performance and works well for both starting engines and non-cranking applications, such as the many auxiliary power applications on a commercial vehicle. These include auxiliary power units (APUs), heating, ventilation and air conditioning, power generators, lift gates, solar panels and other heavy-cycling applications.

            “The Interstate Batteries new 31-AGM7 battery features the most efficient plate design in the industry to both start the engine and power accessories,” Kimbrough said.

            With an expected battery service life three times that of a conventional SLI battery and twice that of conventional non-alloy AGM batteries, the Interstate 31-AGM7 offers the lowest cost per cycle.

# # #

About Interstate Batteries

Interstate Batteries delivers Outrageously Dependable^® portable power solutions. The Dallas-based company distributes automotive batteries, franchises and operates retail battery stores, recycles batteries, and provides motive and critical power products. Interstate sells products throughout North America, Australia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Interstate employs more than 1,600 team members throughout North America. For more information, visit interstatebatteries.com.

The end may be near for troubled American battery maker A123

By Charlie Morris

Sat, 06/02/2012
http://www.chargedevs.com/content/news-wire/post/end-may-be-near-troubled-american-battery-maker-a123

The road to success for tech startups is always under construction, and one wrong turn can result in a plunge from an unfinished bridge and fiery death. Sadly, such a disaster may be approaching for battery maker A123, which told the SEC this week that its “ability to continue as a going concern” is in doubt.

The company isn’t giving up just yet, saying in its latest 8k filing that management “continues to seek to reduce cash used in operating and investing activities, including by improving the Company’s gross margins, reducing operating expenses, and reducing working capital. Although the Company’s intent is to improve its operating efficiencies and to obtain additional financing, there is no assurance that the Company will be able to obtain such financing on favorable terms, if at all, or to successfully further reduce costs in such a way that would continue to allow the Company to operate its business.”

The Massachusetts firm has received several forms of support from federal and state governments, including a $249-million grant from the DOE in 2009. Policymakers wagered that A123’s edge in technology would allow it to compete with the much larger multinational firms that dominate the battery business. Alas, the company suffered a string of misfortunes, including some troubles at Fisker, A123’s most famous customer. The discovery in March that a defective batch of prismatic cells was likely to cost the company 50 million bucks may have been the last straw.

Critics of the Obama administration’s support for high-tech manufacturing companies were jubilant, including the Wall Street Journal, which detailed the woes of American battery makers in a feature article. Commentators on the other side of the street voiced fears that the US may be abandoning the fast-growing battery business to giant Asian firms that are heavily subsidized by their own governments.

Army Scientists Boost Single Cell Battery Density by 30%

Megan Treacy
Technology / Clean Technology
June 6, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/army-battery-breakthrough.html  

© Conrad Johnson, RDECOM Public Affairs

Scientists at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have made a breakthrough in battery energy density that could lighten the load of soldiers in the field and eventually lead to better batteries in our electronics. The scientists discovered that by adding a new substance to a single cell battery they could boost the energy density from four volts to five, a 30 percent increase.

"There has never been a battery, a single cell, that operated at five volts," Cynthia Lundgren, electrochemical branch chief at the laboratory explained. "Through our understanding of that interface, we were able to design an additive that you add into the electrolyte that is somewhat of a sacrificial agent. It preferentially reacts with the electrode and forms a stable interface. Now the battery is able to operate at five volts."

Army researcher Arthur Cresce, who helped design the substance two years ago said, "This is what you would call a quantum leap. We've gone from circling around a certain type of four volt energy for quite a while. All of a sudden a whole new class of batteries and voltages are open to us. The door is open that was closed before."

The Army has patented the technology and informed the battery industry of the breakthrough, which means it could make its way into our gadgets soon.

The Army hopes to use this discovery to create lighter batteries with higher densities for soldiers to carry, making more room in their packs for water or other essentials. Ultimately though the lab wants to focus on designing power systems that run on renewable energy or readily available sources like water. One idea is to create small fuel cells that run on hydrogen that has been split from water.

For both soldiers and civilians, better batteries open up greater possibilities for using renewable energy to fuel our gadgets and other electronics. Greater density and better materials mean better storage for things like solar or wind power that can be inconsistent sources of energy, but the best and cleanest options.

http://youtu.be/i-MrUamj_OA

Ultracapacitors: The next big thing in energy storage?

By Chrissy Coughlin

Published June 10, 2012
http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/06/10/ultracapacitors-next-big-thing-energy-storage

(Click link for radio podcast)

We've all heard of the battery, of course -- but how many of us have heard of the ultracapacitor? I'm guessing that's a pretty small slice of the audience, so I'm pleased to say that that's about to change when you listen to my conversation with Mark McGough, CEO, of Oneonta, N.Y.-based Ioxus, the world's top-tier producer of ultracapacitor-based energy storage systems.

A veteran of the alternative energy space, Mark has been at the helm at Ioxus since 2010. He talked ultracapacitor functionality, applications, and why ultracapacitors are being touted as the next big thing in energy storage. Even Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame has indicated that ultracapacitors will be the future of the electric car. Who knew?

So what exactly is an ultracapacitor? To say that it is a battery on steroids is oversimplifying things, but they do, indeed, more or less look like a battery, are more powerful than a battery, and can be charged and discharged up to a million times and in just a matter of seconds -- obvious advantages over battery technology. They basically store and release energy quickly, which in the world of renewable energy is rapidly changing the energy storage landscape.

When paired with a battery (or by itself) they are the power on board allowing manufacturing equipment, buses, passenger cars, wind turbines to achieve performance that they could never have achieved with battery technology alone. On hybrid buses, for instance, ultracapacitors are pivotal in making them cleaner and more fuel-efficient by providing propulsion. On wind turbines they provide the adjustment of the blades in different wind conditions allowing for more efficient energy harvesting.

Although the ultracapacitor market is worldwide, the market for Ioxus (and most likely its competitors) is still primarily overseas in China and Japan. In fact, two-thirds of Ioxus products are shipped to those countries. Mark threw out this astounding fact: China is putting up wind turbines at a rate of one every 90 minutes around the clock. China is also in the throes of putting a fleet of 300,000 hybrid buses on the road as well.

Although the lion's share of products are still shipped overseas, the U.S. has secured a leadership position in energy storage and most definitely in the world of ultracapacitors. Mark doesn't see that changing because the U.S. is churning out the most innovative technology entrepreneurs and materials scientists in the world and heavily investing in research and development.

And this translates into good news on the job front. In the fall of 2010, when Mark came on board at Ioxus, there were 19 employees. Now they have 82 and it's about to get even higher. And I gathered from our conversation that this is a pretty standard trend in the ultracapacitor /energy storage world.

So will ultracapacitors be part of our every day language in the next 5-10 years? They may not roll of the tongue like a battery per say but what is certain is that the technology is getting better every day and that with universal increased commitment to renewable energy, energy storage becomes ever essential. We may not ask for ultracapacitors by name now, but if Mark has anything to say about it, we will very soon.

(Ioxus was chosen in 2011 by Global CleanTech 100 as one of the top 100 companies around the world that is going to make an impact on the global energy technology.)

George Papoulias edited this podcast.

"Nature of Business" radio show founder and host Chrissy Coughlin addresses critical sustainability issues and the nexus of economic stability, social improvement and environmental impact in a fun and meaningful way.

Read more from Chrissy Coughlin

Nature of Business radio, created and hosted by Chrissy Coughlin, is a weekly show on business and environment.

June 11, 2012

Shaky Battery Maker Claims an Advance

By BILL VLASIC and MATTHEW L. WALD

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/business/energy-environment/a123-us-backed-battery-maker-claims-breakthrough.html  

DETROIT — Lauded during a visit by President Obama, A123 Systems was supposed to be a centerpiece of his administration’s effort to use $2 billion in government subsidies to jump-start production of sophisticated electric batteries in the United States.

Instead, the company, which makes lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, has stumbled along with the rest of the nascent industry and now threatens to give more ammunition to critics of the president’s heavy spending on new energy technologies.

A123 had to cut workers at its new factory in Livonia, Mich., financed in part with the promise of a $249 million government grant, after its battery for one new electric vehicle faltered and required an expensive recall. Completion of the factory has been delayed. The company is running short of money and has warned that unless it raises more cash from private investors, it might not be able to stay in business.

Yet as much as A123 represents the risks of the government’s battery technology program, it also represents its promise. On Tuesday, A123 Systems unveiled a new battery technology that the company says is a breakthrough in the industry.

The advance uses a new chemistry that could permit the creation of a simpler, lighter, longer-lasting battery pack that does not require a system to cool or heat it.

The success or failure of the new technology may well determine the fate of A123. It will also render an early verdict on Mr. Obama’s broader push to promote electric cars and build a domestic industry to develop and manufacture advanced batteries to run them.

The president’s prediction of a million electric cars on the road by 2015 seems unattainable, given the tepid demand for the first models on the market. So far this year, combined sales of the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and Nissan Leaf electric car total less than 10,000 vehicles. The slow sales have already become a campaign issue, and the failure of the solar-panel company Solyndra has also drawn intense criticism of the administration’s clean-energy subsidies.

In response to the Solyndra bankruptcy, which cost taxpayers about half a billion dollars, the Department of Energy has tightened controls on loans related to electric cars and other fuel-saving technology. In the case of Fisker Automotive, which received the defective A123 batteries, the government froze its loans when the company missed production schedules.

Executives of A123, which is based in Waltham, Mass., say the company has gotten off to a slower start than anticipated because the market for electric cars has failed to grow. The company reported a loss of $125 million in the first quarter of this year, as revenues dropped 40 percent from the year earlier.

“It’s been softer than what we and everyone else expected,” said David Vieau, chief executive of A123.

Yet the major automakers remain committed to electric vehicles so far, and G.M. has given A123 the contract to supply batteries for the Chevrolet Spark, an all-electric minicar due next year.

The government, for its part, recently gave A123 an extra two years to meet production targets at its Michigan factory and earn the full $249 million grant, which is being disbursed in tranches. So far, only about half the money has been given to the company.

In addition to the factory grant, A123 has received about $14 million in Energy Department money for research and development.

The government may have financed the company because “these guys have some new chemistry, some new ideas,” rather than the ability to commercialize the product, said Professor Prashant N. Kumta, a materials science expert at the University of Pittsburgh, who began working on lithium-ion batteries in the 1990s.

He said that A123 had been “a bit of a disappointment” because it had not put much product into the market.

The Energy Department said it would not comment on the viability of individual companies.

But a spokeswoman, Jen Stutsman, said, “The market for electrified vehicles is expected to triple by 2017 — which is why automakers in every part of the world are racing to introduce new models of hybrid and electric vehicles.”

“The investments being made today will help ensure that the jobs that support this rapidly growing industry are created here in the United States,” she said.

Supporters of the energy programs say it is unrealistic to expect every government-backed company to thrive immediately.

“We should be willing to take on some of the risks for the new energy economy, even if some of these start-ups fail,” said Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that investigated Solyndra.

But Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president and former governor of Massachusetts, has attacked subsidies to energy companies as a waste of taxpayer dollars. “When Mitt Romney is president, government will stop meddling in the marketplace,” a Romney spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said on the campaign’s Web site.

A123 Systems is a prime example of how a promising venture can bog down in the harsh realities of the automotive marketplace. Founded in 2001, the company has been primarily focused on making lithium-ion battery packs specifically for cars, like the Fisker Karma and a forthcoming all-electric version of the Chevrolet Spark, a minicar made by General Motors.

But the company stumbled when it was forced to recall potentially defective batteries planned for use in the Fisker vehicle. And with the future market for electric cars in question, A123 might not survive solely on batteries for those models.

Instead, A123 is now hoping that the new technology it unveiled Tuesday, called Nanophosphate EXT, will help it enter new markets. The company says the new electrolyte chemistry eliminates the need for heating and cooling in extreme temperatures. That would avoid the addition of costly and heavy temperature-management equipment and prolong the life of the battery.

The technology could be used to produce batteries for telecommunications equipment, military vehicles and hybrid gas-electric cars that employ start-and-stop engine systems. It also could yield batteries that could be used to replace the millions of ordinary lead-acid batteries in cars currently on the road.

“It’s a hedge against the market for electric vehicles,” Mr. Vieau said.

The company is hoping that the promise of the new technology will help persuade investors to back a $50 million convertible debt offering by the company.

One battery expert said the new technology’s extended life span could have an immediate impact on the luxury-car market.

“The car company can advertise that this lithium-ion battery is going to last the life of the vehicle, with no need for replacement,” said Ahmad A. Pesaran, an engineer at the government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

Potential automotive customers can test samples later this year, with production scheduled to begin in the first half of 2013.

Bill Vlasic reported from Detroit, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

http://science.dodlive.mil/2012/06/18/energize

Written on June 18, 2012 at 7:49 am by jtozer

Energize!

Kang Xu, an Army Research Laboratory scientist, is one of the inventors responsible for a 30-percent increase in energy density in lithium batteries. (Photo by Conrad Johnson)

Army scientists are squeezing more power from batteries by developing new methods and materials with incredible results.

“Our battery group has recently developed some new materials that could potentially increase the energy density of batteries by 30 percent,” said Cynthia Lundgren, electrochemical branch chief at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

This small group of scientists work on energy and power solutions for America’s soldiers.

“This 30 percent is actually quite a big deal. Typically improvements range about one percent a year with a few step changes,” Lundgren said.

For years, researchers studied how batteries work. They looked at how each component reacts with another. At high voltages, batteries are extremely energetic systems.

“There has never been a battery, a single cell, that operated at five volts,” Lundgren explained. “Through our understanding of that interface, we were able to design an additive that you add into the electrolyte that is somewhat of a sacrificial agent. It preferentially reacts with the electrode and forms a stable interface. Now the battery is able to operate at five volts.”

Scientists are calling the additive a major step forward. Since Army researchers Kang Xu and Arthur Cresce designed the substance two years ago, the lab has filed patent applications.
“This is what you would call a quantum leap,” Cresce said. “We’ve gone from circling around a certain type of four volt energy for quite a while. All of a sudden a whole new class of batteries and voltages are open to us. The door is open that was closed before.”

Army research has the potential to reduce battery weight and allow soldiers to carry more ammunition or water.

“Our goal is to make things easier for the soldier,” Lundgren said. “This research started because of the Army’s unique needs. There is a huge investment in batteries.”

In the future, Lundgren hopes they just don’t make better materials, but rather design new types of energy devices undreamt of today.

“We’re looking at designing systems to allow for ubiquitous energy — energy anywhere for the soldier using indigenous sources,” Lundgren said. “Some of our new programs are looking at how we may make fuel out of water. For instance, can we split water and make hydrogen to be used as fuel in a fuel cell or small engine?”

Lundgren said future advances will occur with the right resources.

“The laboratory gives us really good resources, but our highest value resource is our scientists,” she said. “We have an exceptional group of scientists here. We’ve been able to retain them. They have been sought after by many people. But, they’re ability to do good research here, research that can make a difference has allowed us to attract and retain really top talent.”

By David McNally, RDECOM Public Affairs

Can 500-mile lithium-air car battery make gas obsolete?

New Lithium-Ion Battery Design Stores 7X More Energy

Megan Treacy
Technology / Clean Technology
June 28, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/new-lithium-ion-battery-stores-7x-more-energy.html

© EMSL
Microscope images show real-time measurements of silicon nanoparticles inside carbon shells before (left) and after (right) lithiation.

Clean technologies increasingly depend on batteries, particularly lithium-ion batteries. Everything from electric cars to renewable energy back-up storage, as well as almost all of our gadgets like smartphones and laptops use them. To really push these technologies forward, battery storage and performance has to increase without increasing in size.

Researchers at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) think they've come up with a novel way to do just that by using silicon nanoparticles that swell to increase the amount of lithium ions that can be stored, resulting in a lithium-ion battery system that can store seven times more energy and be discharged and recharged five times as many times as the current technology. This advance could lead to batteries that not only store much more energy, letting electronics run longer on a single charge, but batteries that have much longer lifetimes.

EMSL explains, "When in use, lithium ions flow from the cathode through an electrolyte into the anode, most commonly made of carbon. During recharging, the ions are pushed back to the cathode where they started. Researchers built upon current technology by making a new type of anode that consists of single silicon nanoparticles inside carbon shells, much like yolks inside eggs.

In this new design, lithium ions flow from the cathode through the electrolyte, diffuse through the carbon shells, and enter the silicon—which can hold ten times as many lithium ions as carbon alone."

The coolest part of this new system is that the silicon nanoparticles swell when filled with the lithium ions, but don't burst the carbon shell.

The researchers say this new system is not only higher performing, but the manufacturing process to make these batteries is affordable, efficient and easily scaled up for higher production.

Spray-On Lithium-Ion Batteries Can Turn Any Surface Into a Battery

Megan Treacy
Technology / Clean Technology
July 2, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/spray-lithium-ion-batteries.html

© Jeff Fitlow

Researchers at Rice University have developed a truly game-changing battery technology -- paintable or spray-on lithium-ion batteries. This new technology allows any surface to become a battery, which could lead to major advancements not just in energy storage, but in solar power generation, too.

The Rice team formulated, mixed and tested various paints to make up the five layered components of a lithium-ion battery: two current collectors, a cathode, an anode and a polymer separator in the middle. Once the right formulations were found, the team sprayed them onto different surfaces including ceramic tiles, glass, stainless steel, flexible polymers and even a beer stein to test how they would bond to the surfaces. Then the real fun began when they put the painted-on battery to work.

© Neelam Singh/Rice University

According to Rice University, "In the first experiment, nine bathroom tile-based batteries were connected in parallel. One was topped with a solar cell that converted power from a white laboratory light. When fully charged by both the solar panel and house current, the batteries alone powered a set of light-emitting diodes that spelled out “RICE” for six hours; the batteries provided a steady 2.4 volts."

Not only did the batteries work and with a consistent capacity, but they were able to go through 60 charge-discharge cycles with just a small decline in capacity.

The researchers have filed a patent for the technology, though they plan to continue tweaking things to boost its performance. The team sees the batteries being painted onto tiles that can be snapped together in a variety of configurations and say that since spray painting is already an industrial process, it could easily be scaled up and incorporated into the battery industry.

But perhaps the most promising application could be integrating them with spray-on solar cells, which could create an energy generation and storage system that could be painted onto any surface.

Media Contact:
Alexandra Sherbow
Eisbrenner Public Relations
asherbow @ eisbrenner.com
248.554.3526

New Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Expo Unites Industry Leaders, Advances Technologies

World’s first free-to-attend Charging Infrastructure Expo conference and exhibition highlights growing industry

Novi, Mich., June 11, 2012 – The electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) industry is growing. By 2017 it is estimated that $4.3 billion will be spent on EV charging equipment. With the number of electric charging stations continuing to grow and tremendous investments in new technology – such as a recent funding announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy for up to $4 million to develop wireless charging – the charging infrastructure industry is poised for aggressive development. These advancements bring significant opportunity, making now a critical time to examine the industry and its future.

The world’s first-ever, free-to-attend Charging Infrastructure Expo, to be held November 13-15 at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Mich., alongside The Battery Show, provides a forum for industry leaders and stakeholders to engage in intelligent discourse surrounding the most promising opportunities and pressing challenges in the charging infrastructure industry. The expo will feature an exhibition as well as conference sessions dedicated to industry challenges and opportunities and highlighting the latest EV charging technologies.

“The initial challenge – one that will be addressed at Charging Infrastructure Expo – is for business owners, managers and fleet operators to understand what charging infrastructure solution best fits their needs,” said Adam Moore, exhibition director. “The expo will enable business leaders to acquire this information and discover the value of these solutions for their future business.”

Charging Infrastructure Expo will showcase many of the latest technologies as well as those currently in progress through product demonstrations and dynamic technology displays that provide first-hand experience. The expo’s largest exhibitor and a world leader in wireless technology, Qualcomm, is developing one such innovation – wireless charging for EVs.

“The need for advanced charging, compatible with the on-the-go lifestyle that most consumers have today, is a necessary development in the future of the electric and hybrid vehicle market. It’s an incredible opportunity to display our latest technologies, within and separate from the vehicles in which they will operate, at Charging Infrastructure Expo,” said Dr. Anthony Thomson, vice president of business development and marketing at Qualcomm. “The expo also allows our team to engage with other advanced battery and charging infrastructure industry players crucial to the growth of the industry as a whole.”

This unprecedented expo will bring together industry natives like Qualcomm as well as municipalities, fleet operators, developers, retail chains, apartment blocks, hotels, government officials and other stakeholders to discuss the current status and the potential outlook of the charging infrastructure industry. Charging Infrastructure Expo, co-located with The Battery Show, allows attendees to delve into the important topics in today’s electric vehicle and advanced battery industries from both a technological and commercial standpoint.

 “As EVs and hybrids become common place on roadways across the globe, companies’ investment in charging infrastructure and advanced battery technology will continue to grow. The expansion of The Battery Show, with the addition of Charging Infrastructure Expo, growing from a 65,000 sq ft exhibition to 130,000 sq ft in only a year is demonstrative of this,” said Adam Moore, exhibition director. “The exciting advancements in technology within these industries will be a catalyst to the expected growth.”

Limited exhibition space is available. For more information on The Battery Show or Charging Infrastructure Expo, visit thebatteryshow.com or chargingexpo.com.

ABOUT THE BATTERY SHOW 
The Battery Show is world’s premiere and free-to-attend advanced battery showcase. The exhibition demonstrates the very latest battery technologies and solutions, ranging from electric vehicle applications to raw material suppliers. Its two-track business and technology conference examines battery market development and opportunities, including how technical advances are likely to impact performance, safety and cost. The Battery Show launched in 2010; it is produced by United Kingdom-based Smarter Shows. For more information on The Battery Show, visit thebatteryshow.com.

ABOUT CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE EXPO
Charging Infrastructure Expo is a free-to-attend exhibition focused on electric vehicle charging technologies across the entire supply chain. It creates an exceptional opportunity for providers of electric vehicle charging technology to meet with charging station operators from both commercial and government sectors. Co-located with The Battery Show, exhibitors of the Charging Infrastructure Expo also have access to engineers and executives from electric vehicle manufacturers and utility companies, providing a valuable crossover and unrivalled access to genuine decision makers. The Charging Infrastructure Expo, launching in 2012, is produced by United Kingdom-based Smarter Shows. For more information on Charging Infrastructure Expo, visit chargingexpo.com.

Wooden batteries

Mar 22nd 2012, 18:02 by The Economist online
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/03/alternative-energy

THE main problem with both wind and solar energy is not their cost (which is falling satisfactorily with every passing year) but their intermittency. Supplying power to the grid when the air is calm or the sun below the horizon means storing a surplus when the day is blustery and the sun is up. And, at the moment, this is expensive.

Cheap and abundant materials for making batteries, though, might change that. Which is why a paper in this week's Science, by Grzegorz Milczarek of Poznan University of Technology, in Poland, and Olle Inganas of Linköping University, in Sweden, may prove important. For these two researchers propose making one of a battery's three components, its cathode, out of the waste from paper mills.

A battery—any battery—consists of two electrodes (an anode and a cathode) and an electrolyte. Current, in the form of positive ions such as protons (the nuclei of hydrogen atoms), flows through the electrolyte from anode to cathode while a balancing current of electrons, which are negatively charged, makes the same journey via an external circuit. The electrons can be employed, before they return to the battery, to do useful work. To recharge the battery, electrons are pushed in the other direction by (say) the current from a solar cell and the ions are thus drawn back whence they came.

Electrolytes are often made of simple, abundant (and therefore cheap) chemicals. The electrodes, however, are not. They usually require metals (lead, zinc, nickel or lithium, for example) whose cost renders so-called grid-scale batteries prohibitively expensive. Making cheaper electrodes would be a big step towards grid-scale batteries and that is what, in the case of the cathode, Dr Milczarek and Dr Inganas hope they have done.

A good cathode material must be capable of receiving and storing charge, in the form of positive ions and electrons, in large amounts. Lignin, one of the two main components of wood, can be modified to do just that. And lignin is cheap. Paper is made mainly of cellulose, the other component of wood, so the effluent from paper mills, known as black or brown liquor, is mainly water and lignin.

The reason Dr Milczarek and Dr Inganas thought lignin molecules suitable for cathodes was that they are rich in chemical groups called phenols, and phenols are easily turned into related groups called quinones. It is these quinones that are the crucial components. In combination with a second type of chemical called a polypyrrole, they provide just the sort of electron and proton receptors a cathode requires. Polypyrroles are not as cheap as lignin, but compared with metals they are not expensive.

And so it proved. The two researchers' measurements suggest the lignin-polypyrrole combination does, indeed, make an effective cathode, able to store a lot of charge. These are early days, obviously. But if someone could now come up with an equally cheap anode, the age of the wooden battery—and with it the age of reliable, always-on alternative energy—might yet dawn.

Grzegorz Milczarek Institute of Chemistry and Technical Electrochemistry, Poznan University of Technology, Piotrowo 3, 60-965 Poznan, Poland.

Olle Inganäs Biomolecular and Organic Electronics, Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, Linköping University, S-581 83 Linköping, Sweden.

E-mail: ois@...

Renewable and cheap materials in electrodes could meet the need for low-cost, intermittent electrical energy storage in a renewable energy system if sufficient charge density is obtained. Brown liquor, the waste product from paper processing, contains lignin derivatives. Polymer cathodes can be prepared by electrochemical oxidation of pyrrole to polypyrrole in solutions of lignin derivatives. The quinone group in lignin is used for electron and proton storage and exchange during redox cycling, thus combining charge storage in lignin and polypyrrole in an interpenetrating polypyrrole/lignin composite.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6075/1468.full
Science 23 March 2012:
Vol. 335 no. 6075 pp. 1468-1471
DOI: 10.1126/science.1215159

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rechargeable-battery-green

Power Plants: Could a Rechargeable Battery Be Made from Paper and Pulp By-Products?

Experimenting with plant lignin as a replacement for lithium and other metals, scientists create a rechargeable battery--but much work lies ahead to translate it into a usable power source

By Larry Greenemeier | March 22, 2012

Despite decades of predictions that a fully electronic, paperless society is almost upon us, we still live in a world populated with printed documents. This insatiable demand for plant cellulose–based writing and packaging materials may end up having a silver lining: a component for a new type of low-cost, Earth-friendly rechargeable battery.

Researchers Grzegorz Milczarek from Poznan University of Technology in Poland and Olle Inganäs from Linköping University in Sweden, have combined a polymer with a waste material from the paper and pulp industry to create a new kind of battery cathode, which today are mostly made from nonrenewable metals such as lithium or cobalt. Specifically, Milczarek and Inganäs used lignin, an organic substance binding the cells, fibers and vessels that make up wood. Plants are made up of as much as 30 percent lignin, is the second-most abundant renewable carbon source on the planet after cellulose, according to the International Lignin Institute in Switzerland. Each year, paper processing generates between 35 million and 45 million metric tons of a dark waste product known as brown liquor, which is rich in lignin derivatives.

Most batteries consist of electrochemical cells with two electrodes—an anode and a cathode—and are filled with an electrolyte. The aggregate effect of the chemical reactions taking place within the electrolyte creates a flow of electrons between the anode and the cathode, resulting in the discharge of electricity.

Milczarek and Inganäs combined lignin derivatives with a polymer known as "polypyrrole" to make their test cathodes, which varied in thickness. The insulating qualities of lignin derivatives combined with the conductivity of polypyrrole create a composite material that effectively holds an electric charge, according to the scientists, whose research appears in the March 23 issue of Science.

The inspiration for the research came from the process plants use to convert light energy to stored chemical energy. In photosynthesis, electrochemically active molecules known as quinones transport electrons and protons, Inganäs explains. Animals also make use of quinones in metabolism, "to build the pH gradient which drives synthesis of ATP, or adenosine triphosphate," he adds. If nature could create such a renewable metabolic process, the professor of biomolecular and organic electronics reasons, why not consider it as the basis for charge storage in a renewable system?

The researchers have much work ahead of them, and Inganäs cautions that it is premature to compare their prototype battery system with inorganic two-electrode batteries fabricated with metals. "There are many things to do in order to improve the charge density of the electrode, which is what we are doing now," Inganäs says.

The biggest disadvantage to the proposed approach, however, is that the electrodes lose their charge within hours when they are idle. The researchers hope that different types of lignin derivatives could solve the problem. Given the diversity of plant life on this planet, there is no shortage of samples for the researchers to study.

http://www.indiegogo.com/magnetic-battery

What the Magnetic Battery is:

By using concepts from circuitry, electromagnetism and physics, I have designed a device that accepts either heat (modified thermocouple) or AC electricity, converts it into magnetic energy and stores the energy in a high density magnetic field (B flux).

How it will be made

The exoskeleton (chassis) will be made of a soft iron alloy to prevent EMR (electromagnetic radiation) from being emitted under unwanted circumstances and nullifying any energy that is stored.

By using rectifier circuits, inverters, transformers & one-way gates (not a comprehensive list) will provide means to harness, transport and release megawatts of electrical energy; however, the innovation is what's inside the chassis (patent pending).

What is needed to make this?

The materials that I need are mainly transition elements and alloys that I will need to melt & forge myself. Most are inexpensive, but one compound in particular is rare in its' purest form.

I will also need to purchase several pounds of graphite to form the mold of the chassis, and upgrade some equipment to assemble the components.

Why this Should be made

Modern electrolyte batteries store a nominal volage & current, which is not sufficient for nano-robotic induction, vehicles or spacecrafts.

Imagine a modern electric car for example: Current battery banks consist of dozens of large (and low amp) 12volt batteries; this device could fit into a socket, emit electricity and not release any hazardous materials or radiation. It could store more than 700 times the amount of energy than the 12v battery alternative. Granted, this device won't be rated to operate at such low voltage, and due to another innovation, a higher voltage of current will allow for greater capacity than what I previously mentioned!

The design can be scaled to mostly any size, with exponential storage ability.
Besides, longer-life batteries means less toxic material in landfills, and less chemical pollutants from manufacturers!

How long will it take to make this device?

After gathering & testing components, and melting/forming the chassis, assembly will take roughly a month to complete the device.

Spread the word!

1. By liking this page (see above media links) and sharing the official Facebook or Twitter links, more people can learn about this device.
2. By commenting, Indiegogo lists this page farther up on the featured list, which helps gain more sponsors.
3. Although $5,000 is the minimum [and a modest] amount for materials, any additional funds will be invested for greater efficiencies in the applications. Only You can contribute and invest in this project; not to mention benefiting from the perks!

I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and every effort to further this project!
Your greatest fan,

Harrison King

Flexible Battery Technology Hits Highest Density Yet

Megan Treacy

August 13, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/flexible-battery-technology-hits-highest-density-yet.html

© Keon Jae Lee/KAIST

New flexible battery technology from researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has hit the highest energy density yet for this type of battery. The bendable, thin-film, lithium-ion battery could be used in things like e-paper, wearable electronics and improved piezoelectric devices for harvesting energy from movement. Imagine flexible gadgets that could be powered by bending them.

Up until now, these thin-film batteries have employed flexible organic materials that were low performing or polymer binders that were too bulky and limited the battery's density. The new battery developed by the KAIST researchers uses inorganic thin films that have a high energy density and, according to the KAIST team, performs just as well as bulk batteries.

Gizmag reports:

The batteries are built by sequentially depositing several layers – a current collector, a cathode, an electrolyte, an anode, and a protective layer – on a brittle substrate made of mica. Then, the mica is manually delaminated using adhesive tape, and the battery is enclosed between two polymer sheets to improve mechanical resistance.

Bending the battery affects performance, but not to disastrous levels. With the battery constantly bent at a radius of sixteen millimeters (about the same curvature of a fifty-cent coin) the discharge capacity drops by about seven percent after 100 charge-discharge cycles, compared to a three percent drop when the battery is not bent. Voltage was shown to remain almost constant, dropping by a very modest 0.02 V after the battery was bent and released 20,000 times.

The researchers say this battery tech could be commercialized within a year. Right now they are working on a better manufacturing process that includes an automated way of delaminating the mica. That would speed things up and allow for mass production of large area flexible lithium-ion batteries. The researchers believe that stacking the thin-film batteries could lead to even greater energy density.

Below is a video of the bendable battery lighting up an LED.

http://youtu.be/qws9XeKW3ws

US Military Collaborating With Italian Energy Dept. on Excess Heat Production

July 12, 2012

http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/07/us-military-collaborating-with-italian-energy-dept-on-excess-heat-production

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is reporting in its Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Submission that it has been carrying out research with the Italian Department of Energy. The full document in PDF format can be read here.

On page 51 of the document there is a 2011-2013 budget line of $32 million for, “Fundamentals of Nanoscale and Emergent Effects and Engineered Devices”. One of the accomplishments in this section for 2011 is:

Continued quantification of material parameters that control degree of increase in excess heat generation and life expectancy of power cells in collaboration with the Italian Department of Energy. Established ability to extend active heat generation time from minutes to 2.5 days for pressure-activated power cells.

On the next page, one of the listed goals for 2012 is:

Establish scalability and scaling parameters in excess heat generation processes in collaboration with the Italian Department of Energy.

Excess heat generation is what LENR/Cold Fusion research has always been about, and it’s interesting to see that there is activity and seeming progress in this field within DARPA. Also very interesting here is the involvement of the Italian Department of Energy. We have seen the fingerprints of Italians on many LENR projects, and now they are helping a US military research team. There has to be a lot of interest within DARPA about the activities of Rossi, Piantelli, Defkalion and the many others involved in this field — I’m sure lots of interesting conversations going on between the Italians and Americans!

Thanks to Next Big Future for unearthing this interesting detail!

GreenWin on July 13, 2012 at 4:02 am

Yes, DARPA, SRI and Energetics have all been working with US government funding and the Italian ENEA for the past ten years. ENEA makes no bones about it. They have published a 230 page document titled Cold Fusion – the History of Research in Italy

“Together with ENEA, Energetics and NRL (The US Naval Research
Laboratory), we have just finished Phase I of what may prove to be a
milestone forward step in condensed matter nuclear research. The team
has successfully replicated at SRI experiments initially performed by
Energetics in Israel. Our results were reviewed two weeks ago by DARPA
(The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Washington DC)
and other government scientists. We reported very high levels of power
gain (heat out / energy in) and high levels of reproducibility that were not
imaginable as little as a year ago. A full report on this phase of activity is
now complete and I will submit it formally next week to my DARPA
contract manager. In addition to the obvious contributions of Energetics
and superwaves, a very large part of what must be considered a major
scientific success is due to the control of palladium metallurgy developed
and exercised by Dr. Violante at ENEA Frascati. This contribution is
recognized not only at SRI but also at NRL where new collaborations are
developing, and now at DARPA. Dr. Violante and I have worked in
formal collaboration between SRI and ENEA now for over a decade. I
hope this is only the beginning.”

http://old.enea.it/com/ingl/New_ingl/publications/pdf/Cold_Fusion_Italy.pdf

There is little doubt the collective knowledge on LENR has not been revealed. And that Rossi’s latest claims pale compared to what’s on the way.

ENEA: Italian National agency for new technologies
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ViolanteVevolutiona.pdf

August 9, 2012

U.S. Battery Maker Finds Financial Lifeline in China

By REUTERS

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/business/global/10iht-battery10.html

The struggling American battery maker A123 Systems, which got a quarter-billion-dollar green technology grant from the federal government, said a Chinese auto parts maker was looking to take a controlling stake in it.

Wanxiang Group plans to invest as much as $450 million, A123 said Wednesday, which would give the manufacturer the cash injection it needs to keep making batteries for electric and hybrid cars. A123 said last month that it had about five months’ worth of cash left.

A123’s chief executive, David Vieau, said Wednesday that his company hopes to do well in China, where there is a government-mandated expansion of the market for electric and hybrid vehicles.

Wanxiang’s chief executive, Weiding Lu, said in a statement that the deal would “help expand the company’s capabilities both domestically and internationally.”

A123’s earnings report Wednesday underlined the company’s downward spiral. It reported a second-quarter loss of $82.9 million, or 56 cents per share, and a 53 percent drop in revenue to $17 million.

Its cash pile was more than halved to $47.7 million at the end of the quarter, down from $113.1 million at the end of the first quarter.

A123 raised nearly $600 million from venture investors and an initial public offering in 2009. That year, it was awarded a grant under the $2.4 billion Electric Drive Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative.

Wanxiang, one of the largest nongovernment-owned companies in China, has annual revenue equivalent to more than $13 billion and supplies auto parts to many of China’s largest automakers.

But a foreign rescue of an industry favored by President Barack Obama has the potential to cause a political firestorm in a U.S. election year.

Already under attack from Republicans for backing green company flops like the solar panel maker Solyndra, Mr. Obama could face criticism for bankrolling technology that ends up in Chinese hands.

“This is a very troubling transaction that should be strictly scrutinized by the U.S. government,” said Michael Wessel, a member of the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which advises lawmakers on trade policy. “This is a critical sector and one that American policy makers have focused on in terms of future economic opportunity and job creation.”

A123 received the $249 million government grant in 2009 under an Obama administration initiative to encourage the development of green technology.

In 2010, Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited A123’s Romulus, Michigan, plant, where he applauded the company as being “a perfect example of what’s possible when the private sector, government and academia work together.”

But the advanced car battery industry has been hurt in part by too much capacity and weak U.S. demand for electric cars. At least two U.S. battery makers, one of which also received government backing, have failed this year.

Republicans including the presidential candidate Mitt Romney have blasted Mr. Obama for giving grants to help clean energy technology get off the ground. And the failure of two government-backed solar panel makers in the last two years has put the administration on the defensive.

The White House swiftly defended its policy after the A123 announcement.

The investment from China in A123 does nothing to damage a government program meant to promote domestic production of high-technology batteries, a White House representative said.

The government will not allow U.S. grant money to fund any facilities abroad, the representative added.

Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2011, left taxpayers on the hook for $535 million in loans. The company filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan in July.

Abound Solar filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in July.

The U.S. solar panel industry has blamed the failure of Solyndra and other companies on China’s flooding of the world market with cheap panels.

U.S. government officials may choose to weigh in on the planned investment in the battery maker, Mr. Vieau said.

A123 has battery contracts with the German automaker BMW, the Chinese carmaker SAIC and the U.S. start-up Fisker Automotive, and is slated to provide batteries for General Motors’ planned Chevrolet Spark EV.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/25-battery-breakthroughs-for-gadgets-electric-cars-the-grid

Nov 23, 2011

25 battery breakthroughs for gadgets, electric cars & the grid

By Katie Fehrenbacher

A lack of progress for battery technology is (arguably) the single biggest barrier for gadgets, electric vehicles, and the power grid. But there¡¯s hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs, universities and large companies working on battery breakthroughs. Here¡¯s 25 you should know about:

A lack of progress for battery technology is (arguably) the single biggest barrier for gadgets, electric vehicles and the power grid. But there continues to be innovation, like last week researchers at Northwestern University unveiled technology that can boost gadget battery life by ten and charge a battery in minutes instead of hours. And there¡¯s hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs, universities and large companies working on battery breakthroughs. Here¡¯s 25 you should know about:

1). Seeo: Seeo was founded in 2007 and formerly based in Berkeley, which is home to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Mohit Singh, Seeo co-founder, and his fellow co-founders, Hany Eitouni and Nitash Balsara, first developed the technology. The company has now moved to Hayward, Calif., and the company¡¯s innovation is to produce lithium ion batteries using a dry polymer electrolyte, instead of a more conventional liquid electrolyte (typically made up of a lithium salt in an organic solvent). The electrolyte is the medium that shuttled lithium ions back and forth between the cathode and the anode to charge and discharge the battery cell.

Seeo¡¯s dry polymer electrolyte battery could lead to a longer battery life because it¡¯s not flammable like the liquid electrolyte and sustains virtually no loss of capacity under prolonged exposures to high temperatures. While Nissan and General Motors say the batteries in their electric vehicles are good for 100,000 miles today, Seeo¡¯s goal is to double that mileage. Using the polymer can also lead to a battery cell that can achieve 250 Wh/kg (a measure of energy density), compared with the less than 200 Wh/kg commonly found in lithium-ion cells today. Seeo recently started up a pilot production line that can produce 4 megawatt hours worth of battery cells per year. The company is backed by Khosla Ventures, GSR Ventures and a grant from the Department of Energy.

2). Pellion: This could be the world¡¯s first commercial magnesium battery, which could be developed with better performance and cost than current lithium-ion batteries. The company has an investment from Khosla Ventures and according to the ARPA-E site, Pellion was spun out of MIT, and ¡°will leverage high throughput computational materials design, coupled with accelerated materials synthesis and electrolyte optimization to identify new high-energy-density magnesium cathode materials and compatible electrolyte chemistries.¡±

3). Liquid Metal Battery: When Bill Gates backs your company, people pay attention. Earlier this year Gates gave Liquid Metal Battery seed funding for technology that sandwiches molten salt between two layers of liquid metal. The technology is the brainchild of MIT Professor Donald Sadoway (see our 15 Questions for the Don of Liquid Metal Batteries) and hopes to deliver a stable, low-cost, large-scale grid battery. The group has been building the battery at larger and larger sizes to prove the concept, from ¡°shot glass¡± scale, to hockey puck, to pizza, and eventually to ping-pong table-sized.

In addition to Gates, the project received an ARPA-E grant of $6.9 million, and Sadoway said the funds helped the team move much more quickly, including expanding company operations to hire more staff, students and post-docs. The project also received $4 million from oil company Total.

4). Sakti3: Sakti3, based in Michigan, is developing battery cells with a solid-state electrolyte, and is backed by Khosla Ventures, General Motors, and Itochu. Sakti3¡®s technology stems from research led by CEO Ann Marie Sastry, who heads up the University of Michigan¡¯s energy systems engineering program, and the tech is supposed to double the energy density of a battery compared with existing lithium ion batteries.

Planar Energy System's Thin Film Batteries

Last month Sastry said that Sakti3 is ¡°making battery cells on equipment that literally used to make potato chip bags, which is pretty cheap, but not low tech.¡± And the company hopes to have prototypes later this year.

5). Planar Energy Devices: Earlier this year the Economist noted that Planar Energy was about to complete a pilot production line that would print its lithium-ion batteries onto sheets of metal or plastic. The company makes thin-film batteries that are supposed to be able to charge in seconds, have a high energy density and capacity, last 400-500 life cycles and be safer than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

Planar was founded in 2007 as a spin-out from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the company is backed by Battele Ventures and Innovation Valley Partners.

6). Aquion Energy: Aquion Energy is using basic materials (sodium and water) that are widely available (and edible!) to build modular batteries that can provide a slew of services for a cleaner power grid at a relatively low cost. Aquion executives believe these bulk storage devices will help solar and wind power give expensive natural gas ¡°peaker¡± plants a run for their money as the go-to choice for meeting electricity needs during periods of highest demand.

Founded in 2007, the company is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Foundation Capital. Aquion hopes to break ground on a 500 megawatt-hour manufacturing facility during the second quarter of 2012, and bring this facility online in 2013. That will depend on financing, of course.

7). QuantumScape: QuantumScape is an early stage battery startup that is commercializing technology from Stanford University, and which was founded, and is being led by Infinera co-founder and CEO Jagdeep Singh, and backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Khosla Ventures. The stealth company is trying to create batteries that have the density of fossil fuels, and could one day change the economics of electric cars and grid storage. The company¡¯s technology uses a new method for stacking trace amounts of materials together, which can lead to high energy and power densities, and also higher cycle life than standard lithium ion batteries.

8). ActaCell: ActaCell is a four-year-old company, which is working to commercialize low-cost, high-power, lithium-ion cell materials, and is based on research out of the Material Science and Engineering labs of professor Arumugam Manthiram at the University of Texas at Austin. The company is working on materials for battery anodes (which draws in lithium ions when a battery recharges) and cathodes (which draws out current), and is also conducting research on battery cell and pack designs, and has built a module for demonstration in hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicle applications.

Last month ActaCell said it started the process of scaling up its nanocomposite alloy anode material. ActaCell is backed by Google.org, DFJ Mercury, Applied Ventures (Applied Materials¡¯ venture arm), and a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

9). Boston-Power: Boston-Power once dreamed of building a lithium-ion cell battery factory in the U.S., but recently announced that it¡¯s lined up $125 million in funding and will shift a big part of its business to China, thinning its operation in the U.S. by about 35 percent. The factory near Shanghai will be able to produce 400 megawatt hours of battery cells, or 18 million battery cells, per year.

Boston-Power was founded in 2005 and sells both laptop batteries and batteries for electric cars. It¡¯s electric car battery is supposed to be able to provide 50 percent more usable energy density by volume compared to competitors, have a 10-year lifespan and can operate at a wide-ranging temperature, down to -40¢ªC.

10). Atieva: Atieva was co-founded in 2007 by former Tesla Motors VP Bernard Tse and the company is working on software for monitoring individual battery cells, mechanical packaging and controls for vehicle battery packs. Using commodity cells, Atieva aims to produce customized packs primarily for smaller, independent car companies and recently won support from Chinese bus companies. The startup is backed by Beijing¡¯s China Environment Fund III, Venrock, Mitsui & Co, and JAFCO Asia.

11). EnerVault: While most of these battery companies make lithium ion batteries or mobile batteries for gadgets and cars, EnerVault makes flow batteries, which are large tanks of liquid batteries that are used to provide energy storage for the grid. EnerVault has completed the design of its prototype battery and is counting on a demonstration project next year to help the company launch its technology into the market in 2013.

Flow batteries separate the energy storage materials and electrolyte from the cells in which the electrochemical reaction occurs. The design involves two big tanks, each of which contains a different mix of energy storage material and electrolyte. EnerVault¡¯s design fills one tank of electrolyte with iron (the energy storing material) and another electrolyte tank with chromium. Pumps send the solutions from the tanks into separate chambers of a cell to generate electricity.

12). Envia: Envia develops low-cost cathode materials for vehicle lithium ion batteries and other energy storage applications, and the company is also expanding its focus to include anode technology. A battery is made up of an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, with electrolyte in between. Lithium ions travel from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte, creating a chemical reaction that allows electrons to be harvested along the way.

Envia is backed by GM Ventures, Asahi Kasei, Asahi Glass, Bay Partners, Redpoint and Panagea Ventures. The company also raised $4 million grant under the Department of Energy¡¯s high-risk energy tech fund, ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy).

13). Better Place: Better Place hasn¡¯t developed a new battery chemistry technology, but it¡¯s been working on a breakthrough business model around electric car batteries. The company is launching its first networks in Israel and Denmark and is selling electric charging and miles as a service with a highly-subsidized electric car. Better Place has launched battery swapping stations and electric car charging stations all over the these two countries and is essentially adopting the cell phone and minutes business model for EVs.

Coda sedan

14). Coda Automotive: Electric car maker Coda Automotive has long emphasized how important batter management systems are, from air and liquid cooling systems to software to manage the charge. A couple months ago it bought battery management startup EnergyCS for its electronics and software that manage the charge and discharge of the energy from the battery pack. Coda told us last year that its battery management system was more sophisticated than Nissan¡¯s for its electric LEAF. Along with EVs Coda plans to sell energy storage systems for uses such as supplying backup power and banking renewable energy and has a partnership with Chinese battery maker, Lishen.

15). Amprius: Amprius makes lithium-ion batteries with four times more energy density (the amount of energy that can be stored in a battery of a given size) compared to today¡¯s state of the art technology. The key, according to Amprius, is a silicon nanostructured anode, or a material that draws in the lithium ions when a battery recharges. Amprius is backed by Google¡¯s former CEO Eric Schmidt, VantagePoint Venture Partners, and Stanford University.

16). AES: Power company AES doesn¡¯t make batteries, but it has been pushing the edge of using lithium ion batteries for grid storage and recently scaled up a 32 MW lithium-ion battery project in conjunction with grid operator PJM in West Virginia.

17). Next-Gen Sodium Grid Battery: Sodium sulfur batteries (NAS) are pretty much the cheapest form of battery for energy storage on the power grid, and power companies in Japan have been using hundreds of them for years. But a project from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and battery and electrochemical company Eagle Picher Technologies plan to use an ARPA-E grant to develop a next-generation sodium battery here in the U.S. for the power grid. The battery will be a planar-shaped sodium beta-battery that is supposed to be less expensive and with a 30 percent higher energy density than standard NAS batteries. Eventually the battery could cost $200 per kWh compared to the current costs of NAS batteries that are closer in the range of $500-$600 per kWh.

18). Contour Energy Systems: Contour Energy Systems, which was spun out Caltech and formerly known as CFX Battery, sells disposable coin cell batteries, with one of its first products being batteries that are specifically engineered to make 3-D TV glasses last longer than competitors. The company says its batteries will outlast standard coin cell competitors, such as Energizer, by about 60 percent, and its technology uses the volatile element fluorine that could deliver longer lasting, higher power batteries for devices spanning from smart meters to pacemakers, and — potentially years down the road — electric vehicles and laptops.

19). PolyPlus: An 11-year-old company named PolyPlus, which hails out of Lawrence Berkeley Labs and has a grant from the Department of Energy¡¯s high risk early-stage ARPA-E program, has been working on batteries made of lithium and seawater (or just plain tap water for that matter) as well as batteries made from lithium and air. The water battery can achieve awe-inspiring energy densities (the amount of energy that can be stored in a battery of a given size) of 1,300 wh/kg (for small batches), and potentially 1,500 wh/kg at larger scale production. For comparison, standard lithium-ion batteries have closer to 200 wh/kg to 400 wh/kg. PolyPlus says one day its air battery could make electric vehicles with ranges from 300 to 500 miles.

20). Incremental development, not huge leap: Last year Paul Beach, president of battery company Quallion, gave a fascinating talk about the differences in progress between batteries and IT: ¡°Moore¡¯s Law has delivered a 10,000 times improvement over the years for chips, while historically batteries have shown a 3 to 4 times improvement,¡± said Beach.

Customer rides of the Model S Beta

Quallion works on these tiny improvements, including creating ¡°ultrasafe¡± batteries, developing battery management systems for high voltage and high density batteries, and creating batteries with a wide operating temperature range.

21). Quantance: Quantance isn¡¯t a battery maker, but it¡¯s a chip company that makes an analog radio chip that helps boost the signal that a cell phone delivers to the base station and thus enables the battery in cell phones to last longer. Really? Cell phone companies care that much about extending mobile life, and not using new battery chemistry? Yes, yes they do.

22). Tesla Motors: Electric car maker Tesla also doesn¡¯t make batteries, but it¡¯s innovation is that it packages together small format batteries — the kind found in laptops and gadgets — into a battery pack that it can use for its EVs. Tesla commonly buys bulk batteries from Asian battery makers like Panasonic, and has been able to benefit from the economies of scale of these players. Next year it will launch an EV with a range of 300-miles.

23). 24M: 24M, which stands for the material concentration 24 molar, was spun out of lithium-ion battery company A123 Systems in mid-2010, and has plans to work on advanced non-traditional, lithium-ion based storage technology that uses a semisolid energy storage material, compared to the traditional use of solid materials. 24M raised $10 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners, and won a $6 million grant from ARPA-E. The company has plans to work on a system for vehicles and grid storage that combine aspects of lithium-ion batteries and flow battery technology.

24). Leyden Energy:Leyden Energy has developed a lithium-ion battery containing salt in the liquid electrolyte in order to build more high temperature-tolerant and longer-lasting batteries. It cells for laptops can run over 1,000 cycles and three years, and a supplier called Dr. Battery is currently offering Leyden-embedded laptop batteries with a 2-year warranty.

Leyden is also interested in developing cells for the transportation market. Leyden has raised $38 million in venture capital since its inception in 2007 from New Enterprise Associates, Lightspeed Ventures and Sigma Partners.

25). A123 Systems: While public A123 Systems has been struggling in recent months, it¡¯s managed to win over some electric car and grid players with its lithium ion battery tech, including Fisker, GM for its Chevrolet Spark, and China¡¯s top wind maker Dongfang Electric Corporation.

August 31, 2012

Standards for Fast Charging Are Getting No Closer

By KEN BELSON

Bradley Berman
INCOMPATIBLE The CHAdeMO fast-charge plug, left, with the SAE combination plug

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/automobiles/standards-for-fast-charging-are-getting-no-closer.html

WITH a steady flow of battery-powered vehicles arriving in showrooms, and charging infrastructure plans being announced almost daily, it would seem that the initial beachhead for electric vehicles is well established.

Yet the prospects for long-distance travel by electricity continue to be limited. Until a mechanism for replenishing a car’s batteries, either by charging them quickly or swapping them altogether, is in place, the appeal of electrics will be constrained. Even with cars for sale that offer 300-mile batteries, a cross-country vacation in a purely electric car remains impractical.

Several fast-charging solutions — typically, systems that can restore a battery to 80 percent of its capacity in 30 minutes or less — are already available, but the connectors and software used in these direct-current chargers are largely incompatible. As standards wars go, the debate over which will become the de facto industry leader is a small-scale version of the epic battle between Betamax and VHS or Apple versus Microsoft.

For drivers, this means that not only must they locate a high-speed charger when they travel, but it has to to be a specific type of charger — a factor that could hurt already struggling E.V. sales.

That incompatibility appears to be growing. In May, the Detroit Three and five German carmakers, including Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, said they would create a charger with a two-prong connecter that could provide a fast direct-current charge, or a slower alternating-current charge, in a single combined plug.

The announcement angered companies here that have backed a rival technology. For several years, Nissan, Mitsubishi and many charger makers have developed a technology called CHAdeMO, which is installed in at least 1,500 fast chargers globally. Any new standard, these companies say, is unnecessary and ultimately destructive.

“CHAdeMO is already a very proven technology,” said Hideaki Watanabe, vice president in the Zero Emission business group at Nissan. “I don’t know why we need another standard.”

Adding to the confusion, Chinese electrical vehicle makers are creating their own fast chargers to be used in their home market. Tesla, the California-based maker of electric cars, has developed its own chargers as well.

The differences between standards are not insignificant. Cars like the Nissan Leaf have individual sockets for the different levels of charging.

The American-German technology, which is based on the SAE J1772 standard used in slower AC chargers, would allow carmakers to install only one combined socket on the car.

“We think that it is a convenience factor,” said Kevin M. Kelly, a spokesman for General Motors, who said the new fast chargers would not be ready until at least next year, when a Chevrolet Spark E.V. is to go on sale. Whatever the merits, the dueling standards are likely to create headaches for governments and companies that have already installed CHAdeMO fast chargers.

“We already picked a winner; we picked CHAdeMO,” said George Beard, who helped install an array of chargers, including two fast chargers, on Electric Avenue, a showcase street in Portland, Ore. “If I was a consumer and I had type A and couldn’t use type B, I’d be furious.”

With no group willing to concede, all eyes are on an otherwise obscure technical committee of the International Electrotechnical Commission. The committee is reviewing the standards, and in the coming months is expected to approve one or more of the fast charger standards.

Tesla, which just introduced its Model S sedan, may well have the biggest stake in the matter. Yet it is also going its own way, developing a fast-charge system that it says can provide enough electricity in 30 minutes to power a car for 150 to 160 miles.

All Tesla Model S cars with the 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack come equipped to use the Supercharger, which will be installed along major routes, according to Christina Ra, a spokeswoman for the company. Tesla Superchargers will initially be compatible only with Model S vehicles, though that may change, she said.