When Tesla suddenly ran into a very public problem with its batteries, it installed Semantria in minutes
and other components needed for tiny lithium-ion batteries. Other projects include printed sensors fabricated on plastic patches that athletes could one day wear to detect concussions and measure violent impacts.
while fossil fuel-or battery-powered unmanned aircraft are expensive to run and possess a shorter range.
and onboard battery storage that allows the planes to fly at night. The drones are huge aircraft the smaller model,
Also since lithium-ion battery costs have dropped, electric car prices have dropped also, meaning that there are now several electric cars with price tags around $30, 000.
#Israeli startup Storedot charges smartphone batteries to full in 30 seconds Storedot It possible that youl be able to plug the smartphone in
according to a report by the Wall street journal. An Israeli startup by the name of Storedot revealed the technology at Microsoft Think Next Conference using standard smartphone batteries,
Fast battery chargers already exist, but theye expensive, unwieldy things for special batteries. Storedot, however, claims that its technology will only cost around twice as much as traditional chargers.
Batteries traditionally charge quickly during the first 80 percent of the charge, but slow to a trickle for the last 20 percent
so as not to overload the battery. Storedot has apparently found a way around this limitation,
and that itl even work with existing technology. Unfortunately, production won even begin until sometime in 2016.
and TVS by attaching resonator coils to batteries and an electric car refueller is reportedly in the works.
which have so far been held back by limited battery lives. he idea of eliminating cables would allow us to redesign things in ways that we haven yet thought of,
AA-sized wirelessly rechargeable batteries. For Hall, the applications are endless: always say kids will say:
#Tesla s plans for world s largest battery factory will be a game changer Tesla motors, the electric car maker, hasn blazed just its own trail
the battery. This week Tesla revealed more details about its plans to build a massive the largest of its kind in the world battery factory in the U s. that will produce enough lithium-ion batteries by 2020 to outfit 500,000 electric cars.
While Tesla only released a few details of the plan, the company said that by 2020 the battery cell output of the factory would be 35 gigawatt hours per year,
and battery pack output would be 50 gigawatt hours per year. Let put these production numbers in perspective.
As Tesla has said itself its cars are constrained by global battery production, and it would need to use all of the batteries produced for electric cars in 2013
(and then some) to make those 500,000 per year by 2020. According to Navigant Research analyst Sam Jaffe, Tesla already used half of all the batteries made for electric cars in the world in 2013 for its Model S car (22,477 cars sold.
In terms of global lithium ion and advanced battery production beyond just for electric cars Tesla so-called igafactoryis still massive;
it jaw-dropping actually. According to Navigant figures, battery factories in the world produced close to 27 gigawatt hours of advanced batteries (the vast majority of these,
over 90 percent, are lithium-ion batteries) in 2012. The bulk of those batteries 23 gigawatt hours were for consumer electronics,
like our laptops and cell phones. Given Tesla production goals outline above, the planned factory would more than double the current entire world lithium ion battery production.
Of course, global lithium ion battery production would also ramp up outside of Tesla as well as more gadgets and cell phones are sold
and more devices get connected. And now if you look beyond just batteries, Tesla factory could be the largest factory of any kind,
anywhere in the world in terms of inputs in and outputs out, said Jaffe, though he notes that such a thing is pretty hard to measure.
The country that made the most advanced batteries in 2012 was produced China, which about 13 gigawatt hours of batteries.
Chinese batteries traditionally have been the cheapest in the world, but theye also been of lower quality compared to those made in Japan, Korea and the U s. However, battery expert and founder and CEO of battery startup GELI,
Ryan Wartena, told me that he seen the quality of Chinese batteries go up substantially over the past year.
Chinese battery giants also have been trying to boost production as well, and Chinese lithium battery manufacturer Thunder Sky Group had been looking to build a battery factory in Russia working with Russian state run agency RUSNANO this would have been the largest lithium ion battery factory in the world (I not sure of the current
status of this factory). The second largest producer of batteries in the world in 2012 was Japan, with about 7 gigawatt hours.
South korea follows with about 2 gigawatt hours. The U s. had about 1. 2 gigawatt hours
and that following the attempts of Obama stimulus package to boost battery production in the U s. through companies like A123 Systems and LG Chem.
So as you can see, Tesla plans to generate 35 and 50 gigawatt hours per year in cells and packs, just in the U s,
. all of a sudden tilts the world lithium ion battery production in favor of the U s.,which has never been much of a battery manufacturing powerhouse.
No doubt, all of the states in the running including Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New mexico will be vying for those 6, 500 jobs.
Tesla factory will also be a competitive threat to Chinese battery production dominance and will help lower the overall price of lithium ion batteries globally. ust the threat of (Tesla CEO) Elon musk building this huge factory will lower prices,
says Wartena, as the companies will be willing to lower their margins to compete. Like Tesla has done with many of its strategies
it taking a novel approach to working with partners to build the battery factory. Tesla is selling debt (convertible senior notes) to the tune of between $1. 6 billion to $1. 8 billion to fund part of the battery factory,
but Tesla said its partners will likely poney up the extra $2 billion to $3 billion (though,
it could be even higher). Panasonic is Tesla chief battery supplier, but in recent months Tesla has also beentalking with Samsung SDI for batteries.
Traditionally auto makers have multiple suppliers for core components so that they can get the best price and use the other suppliers as leverage.
It should be noted that Tesla hasn confirmed that Panasonic is the battery supplier partner for the planned factory.
Musk even told Bloomberg that the Panasonic deal wasn done 100 percent. Essentially Tesla is keeping its options open for other suppliers to come in
and it using an unusual way of working with Panasonic. Navigant Jaffe called the method unique combination of carrot and stick.
Tesla said that it intends to use some of the battery output for stationary energy storage, which means batteries used for buildings, the grid and even homes.
As wee reported before, Tesla and solar financier and installer Solarcity (Musk other energy company) have been quietly selling small volumes of Tesla batteries as energy storage paired with Solarcity solar projects.
If Tesla is able to reduce the cost of lithium ion batteries by a third with its new factory,
it could make energy grid storage much more economical. Batteries for the grid at current prices are largely too expensive for most projects.
There a handful of companies that are trying to innovate around using batteries for grid storage
but if Tesla could get the battery price low enough it can potentially disrupt grid storage, too.
Lower-cost lithium-ion batteries could make clean energy much more viable. Pairing battery farms with wind and solar panel farms would enable clean power to store energy
when the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down. The end goal for Tesla is that cheap batteries could help Tesla deliver its $35, 000 third generation electric car.
It might not be able to get to that price with battery cost reductions alone, but it gets Tesla a whole lot closer t
#Autonomous drones flock like birds Autonomous drone flock The first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock has been created by Hungarian researchers.#
#The team watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest,
zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control.
because they can move through more than a kilometer of soil with the energy of an AA battery."
#Imergy Power systems develops high-performance flow batteries Imergy Power systems has achieved a milestone in energy storage by developing a process for producing high-performance flow batteries with recycled vanadium from mining slag oil field sludge fly ash and other forms of environmental waste.
Other manufacturers of vanadium flow batteries build their devices with virgin vanadium extracted from mining. It must then be processed to a 99%plus level of purity.
Through an extensive R&d program, Imergy has developed a way to produce flow batteries with vanadium at a 98%purity level that can be harvested from environmental waste sites.
and processing vanadiumhe principal active ingredient in many flow battery electrolytesy 40%relative to competitors. As a result of this technology and other developments, Imergy will be able to lower the cost of its flow batteries from $500 a kilowatt hour, already an industry benchmark, to under $300 per kilowatt hour.
Imergy flow batteries from low-grade vanadium will also be capable of storing more energy per kilogram than conventional vanadium flow batteries by more than twice, giving cell phone operators, solar power plant developers, microgrid owners
and other customers more flexibility and capacity for managing outages curbing peak power or reducing demand charges.
It opens unique possibilities for 3d imaging and exact modeling of geological materials in oil and gas exploration, composite materials, fuel cells and electronic assemblies.
The center is working on something like Big data for smart batteries turning these mysterious devices into information centers that according to doctoral student Mohammad Rezvani can tell their users
The University of Cincinnati's smart battery team with the Twike. Photo: Jim Motavalli) The big drawback of the Twike is the price around $27000 for the base model
and battery assist) that can reach 52 mph and cruise up to 300 miles on a charge.
It's also possible to extend the range by adding extra e-bike type li-ion battery packs.
The smart battery research at the University of Cincinnati is interesting. According to Jay Lee the IMS director the cells in a battery pack typically degrade
(and charge) at different rates and that throws off the efficiency and longevity. If every part of the pack can be monitored with the kind of Big data equipment that now hugely in vogue one bad apple won spoil the whole bunch
Another use for the Smart Battery Watchdog Agent Dr. Lee said is to plot the optimal route to where youe going based on your past driving behavior the availability of charging stations along the way and other factors.
Robotic bug springs to life The latest advancement in robotics may not look like much just a few small batteries attached to a flat sheet of paper
and then batteries are lifted off the ground, onto the back of what now looks like a small robotic bug.
which are connected to the batteries carried on the bug's back, the researchers said. Also on the robot's back is programmed a microprocessor
and is powered battery. The user can select among six different grips. The arm's development would not have been possible without a host of technological advances
Panasonic Eco Ideas House, with solar, a fuel cell, battery backup and a plug-in Toyota prius, has stood long next to a company headquarters in Tokyo,
A 9. 5-kilowatt solar array, backed up by a 10-kilowatt-hour lithium battery and a 10-kilowatt DC car charger.
Improved batteries and solar cells could be produced, and biofilms with enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of cellulose could be used for the conversion of agricultural waste into biofuels.
Messing s animals formed persistent memories for fears, objects, places and movements across a battery of behavioral tests.
potentially delivering hydrogen for fuel cells in mobile phones, computers or even cars. Edman Tsang, a chemist at the University of Oxford, UK, who also works on storing hydrogen in liquids including methanol2,
That means that it may be possible to combine a methanol-hydrogen reaction with a fuel cell that guzzles up the gas to produce electricity.
hydrogen fuel cells are twice as efficient as fuel cells that directly run on methanol, for instance. Not everyone agrees with Beller and Tsang.
batteries will be key to energy transport and to small-scale storage of electricity from solar panels. Long-term, large-scale storage of wind energy could best be achieved by simply storing compressed hydrogen underground.
but is used in everything from stainless steel to rechargeable batteries. Rare-earth elements are concentrated much less at around 0. 1,
enhance battery technology and expand the use of biofuels, among other clean energy efforts. The ultimate goal:
#Cool new material could make fuel cells cheaper It not enough for a new alternative energy technology to work.
That been a high hurdle for devices called solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCS) that convert fuelsuch as methane and hydrogenirectly to electricity without burning them.
a materials scientist and fuel cell expert at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who was involved not in the work. think it going to generate a lot of excitement. fuel cell works much like a battery.
and his colleagues have found a way to boost the power from BZY fuel cells. The researchers suspected one problem with the BZY membranes was in the way they were made.
the sweet spot temperature targeted by the fuel cell industry. Oayre and Haile caution that the new advance won revolutionize the SOFC industry overnight.
Commercial devices, by contrast, work by wiring many such devices together into what known as a fuel cell tackthat generates more power.
If future BZY-based SOFC stacks work as well as the individual devices, then it could finally produce the tipping point the fuel cell industry has been looking for n
and minerals that could act like batteries allowing electrons to flow and bring energy to any potential organisms.
#Beating battery drain Stream video on your smartphone or use its GPS for an hour or two and you ll probably see the battery drain significantly.
As data rates climb and smartphones adopt more power-hungry features battery life has become a concern.
Now a technology developed by MIT spinout Eta Devices could help a phone s battery last perhaps twice as long
The primary culprit in smartphone battery drain is an inefficient power amplifier a component that is designed to push the radio signal out through the phones antennas.
This means smartphone batteries lose longevity and base stations waste energy and lose money. But Eta Devices has developed a chip (for smartphones)
You can look at our technology as a high-speed gearbox that every few nanoseconds modulates the amount of power that the power amplifier draws from the battery explains Joel Dawson Eta Devices chief technology officer
Dawson says this could potentially double current smartphone battery life. Besides battery life Dawson adds there are many ways the telecommunications industry can take advantage of improved efficiency.
Eta Devices approach could lead to smaller handset batteries for example and even smaller handsets since there would be less dissipating heat.
The technology could also drive down operating costs for base stations in the developing world where these stations rely on expensive diesel fuel for power
At the time I was suffering as everyone else was from my iphone running out of battery at lunchtime Astrom says.
In the robot s watertight chamber are its control circuitry its battery a communications antenna and an inertial measurement unit
The rechargeable lithium batteries used in the prototype Bhattacharyya says last about 40 minutes. Since the robot can travel between half a meter
Their next prototype Bhattacharyya says will feature wirelessly rechargeable batteries. And modifications to the propulsion system she says should increase the robot s operation time on a single charge to 100 minutes.
and require heavy battery packs a design that would significantly impede mobility and is given likely infeasible the limited power resources available to astronauts in space.
Now MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they ve successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah a sleek four-legged assemblage of gears batteries
#Recycling old batteries into solar cells This could be a classic win-win solution: A system proposed by researchers at MIT recycles materials from discarded car batteries a potential source of lead pollution into new,
Battery pileup ahead One motivation for using the lead in old car batteries is that battery technology is undergoing rapid change, with new, more efficient types, such as lithium-ion batteries,
swiftly taking over the market. nce the battery technology evolves, over 200 million lead-acid batteries will potentially be retired in the United states,
and that could cause a lot of environmental issues, Belcher says. Today, she says, 90 percent of the lead recovered from the recycling of old batteries is used to produce new batteries,
but over time the market for new lead-acid batteries is likely to decline, potentially leaving a large stockpile of lead with no obvious application.
In a finished solar panel, the lead-containing layer would be encapsulated fully by other materials, as many solar panels are today,
The team work clearly demonstrates that lead recovered from old batteries is just as good for the production of perovskite solar cells as freshly produced metal.
and crawls away as soon as batteries are attached to it. The exciting thing here is that you create this device that has embedded computation in the flat printed version says Daniela Rus the Andrew
That technique passes successive frames of video through a battery of image filters, which are used to measure fluctuations,
But it could also lead to benefits such as smaller batteries and less hardware which would lower costs for manufacturers and consumers.
when Soljacic awoke at 3 a m. to the beeping of his cell phone running out of battery life.
which transfers energy from the adapter to the battery run 1, 000 times faster. f you can increase that switching frequency,
The switches then flip to another state to deliver small chunks of the DC voltage to the battery,
In that analogy, the bucket is the adapter that collects the water (electricity) from a full tank (outlet) and dumps it into an empty tank (laptop battery.
Using battery-powered bionic propulsion two microprocessors and six environmental sensors adjust ankle stiffness power position
In effect, they behave as rechargeable thermal batteries: taking in energy from the sun, storing it indefinitely,
These hybrid materials could be worth exploring for use in energy applications such as batteries and solar cells Lu says.
Electric car batteries are expensive and charging them requires plug-in infrastructure that s still sparse in the United states. Now MIT spinout XL Hybrids is upfitting (and retrofitting) gas and diesel commercial vans and trucks with fuel-saving add-on electric powertrains
whose batteries are charged through energy generated by braking. According to tests conducted by the startup the $8000 system which has been incorporated into hundreds of vans in the commercial fleets of Coca-cola
and don t need a large battery says Tod Hynes 02 co-founding president of XL Hybrids and a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of management.
The system s powertrain includes an electric traction motor a lithium-ion battery advanced power converters
When the vehicles brake a process known as regenerative braking captures the kinetic energy (usually dissipated as heat through friction) and converts it into electricity that charges the battery
Electric or hybrid fleet vehicles traditionally run on large batteries sometimes more than 100 kilowatt-hours (kwh) in capacity that cost upward of $40000.
XL Hybrids installs small 1. 8-kwh lithium-ion batteries that provide a 20 percent fuel savings Hynes says.
With rising innovations in batteries and advanced power inverters and motors Hynes backed into a technological solution with retrofitted electric powertrains.
capstan-based mechanism ensures that the battery-powered device can lift two soldiers sometimes carrying 80 to 100 pounds of equipment swiftly along an attached rope, without jamming.
A lightweight, interchangeable battery capable of hundreds of feet of hoisting per charge snaps into the front.
as with conventional pulleys and winches, the rope fed through the APA weaves between a series of rollers that sit on top of a turning, battery-powered spindle.
Using drill batteries and other custom-designed equipment, the team completed a working prototype that achieved a 50-foot lift in seven seconds.
or battery packs, or other equipment, which the mobile cubes could transport. n the vast majority of other modular systems,
however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better,
Where most of its ultralow-power predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery
and it can power the device directly from the battery. All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability, and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
If the battery operates for too long at a voltage that either too high or too low, for instance, its chemical reactants break down,
#New manufacturing approach slices lithium-ion battery cost in half An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24m,
promises to significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable batteries while also improving their performance
says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a cofounder of 24m (and previously a cofounder of battery company A123).
The existing process for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, he says, has changed hardly in the two decades
In this so-called low battery, the electrodes are suspensions of tiny particles carried by a liquid
and pumped through various compartments of the battery. The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones:
In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles.
Chiang and Carter refer to this as a emisolid battery. impler manufacturing processthis approach greatly simplifies manufacturing,
and also makes batteries that are flexible and resistant to damage, says Chiang, who is senior author of a paper in the Journal of Power Sources analyzing the tradeoffs involved in choosing between solid
and flow-type batteries, depending on their particular applications and chemical components. This analysis demonstrates that
while a flow battery system is appropriate for battery chemistries with a low energy density (those that can only store a limited amount of energy for a given weight),
for high-energy density devices such as lithium-ion batteries, the extra complexity and components of a flow system would add unnecessary extra cost.
Almost immediately after publishing the earlier research on the flow battery, Chiang says, e realized that a better way to make use of this flowable electrode technology was to reinvent the lithium ion manufacturing process. nstead of the standard method of applying liquid coatings to a roll of backing material,
thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent.
Bendable and foldablein addition to streamlining manufacturing enough to cut battery costs by half, Chiang says,
the new system produces a battery that is more flexible and resilient. While conventional lithium-ion batteries are composed of brittle electrodes that can crack under stress
the new formulation produces battery cells that can be bent, folded or even penetrated by bullets without failing.
This should improve both safety and durability, he says. The company has made so far about 10,000 batteries on its prototype assembly lines, most
of which are undergoing testing by three industrial partners, including an oil company in Thailand and Japanese heavy-equipment manufacturer IHI Corp. The process has received eight patents
By 2020, Chiang estimates that 24m will be able to produce batteries for less than $100 per kilowatt-hour of capacity.
when is it better to build a flow battery versus a static model. This paper will serve as a key tool for making design choices
and go-no go decisions. iswanathan adds that 24m new battery design ould do the same sort of disruption to lithium ion batteries manufacturing as
one of their biggest limitations is the capacity of their tiny batteries to deliver enough power to transmit data.
At the moment, the coin-sized batteries used in many small electronic devices have limited very ability to deliver a lot of power at once,
Small batteries are suited generally poorly for such power needs, he adds. e know it a problem experienced by a number of companies in the health-monitoring
So an alternative is to go to a combination of a battery and a capacitor, Hunter says:
the battery for long-term, low-power functions, and the capacitor for short bursts of high power. Such a combination should be able to either increase the range of the device,
The new nanowire-based supercapacitor exceeds the performance of existing batteries, while occupying a very small volume. f youe got an Apple Watch and
because other energy storage technologies such as fuel cells, batteries, and flywheels tend to be less efficient, or simply too complex to be reduced practical
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