Lower capacity in the same form factor, but inputs are common and cheap as dirt and will be able to do the hard work of supporting grid scale battery storage. We've learned that there are many applications that do not need to capacity of lithium.
> Natron says its batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, a level of immediate charge/discharge capability that makes the batteries a prime contender for the ups and downs of backup power storage. Also helping in that use case is an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.
So you take up more space, but the storage system is better in every other way (agility, conflict mineral free, longevity, cost). Feels like this puts a nail in the coffin of fossil generation.
Edit: Assuming 1 cycle per day, that is a lifetime of ~137 years. More aggressive cycling is still very favorable.
From everything I've read about existing Lithuum battery storage, this is already their strongpoint. Is it helpful to be 10x faster that the current speed?
Instead of stopping to charge my car for half an hour (up to 80%), I can stop for 5 minutes?
Sign me up.
there are available li-ion batteries with a charge and discharge rate of '15c', which is to say, 1 hour ÷ 15 = 4 minutes. they are used in drones. (there are some advertised as '30c' but i suspect those are maybe just a fraud? like the notorious amazon million-lumen flashlights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceA5xL6ggEw) if they really reach '150c', you could discharge 10% of the battery in 2.4 seconds, which is closer to a firework rocket engine than a conventional battery. but, a rocket engine that you can recharge 50000 times
a charge rate of '150c' would mean you could charge the battery halfway in 12 seconds, and there are a lot of scenarios where that would be useful
you could imagine '150c' batteries displacing much larger supercapacitors from many uses, rather than displacing conventional batteries. the number given in the article of 70 watt hours per kilogram is, in si units, 250kJ/kg. if you divide that by the 24 seconds implied by '10 times faster than lithium-ion' you get a power density of 10.4 kilowatts per kilogram. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_density says supercaps are in the 15 kilowatts per kilogram range. quadcopter drone electric motors are typically in the neighborhood of 4–5 kilowatts per kilogram, so this would make the drone battery much smaller than the motor instead of bigger
more likely, though, it's a press release lie, where they're saying something that's technically true (there are lithium batteries with a '1c' charge and discharge rate, which have higher energy density than the higher-powered ones, and their batteries reach '10c', i.e., 6 minutes) but creates a false impression of something that would be a huge breakthrough if it were true
We ended up sizing our batteries to meet wattage demands for our appliances. I wish we had ~ 2x as many kWh as we do. Anker has a home battery whose main selling point is that you can add kWh without adding peak wattage.
For use in vehicles, faster charge rates are a big win. Faster discharge probably doesn't matter much for cars (0-60 times are already ridiculously low). They might for drones / planes though.
These aren't for laptops or cars.
Though they seem to trying to increase energy density, so they can become for cars. But not there yet.
Unless he means that a pound of lead is heavier than a pound of feathers.
Otherwise agreed, I'm very happy with form factor of 5-10 year old phones.
In the article it says, that they are using a "patented Prussian blue". Isn't CATL also using Prussian blue in their first generation sodium batteries?
The fact it supports more cycles and tolerates a broader temperature range than Lithium counts points towards safety too. Lithium isn't happy above like 30 Celsius, which a fast charging portable device can _easily_ reach.
Sounds pretty bad for people living in warmer climates then, as they tend to be above 30 celsius anyway. ;)
As a data point, the ambient temperature right now where I live is 33°C. I just walked home from a quick grocery trip a couple of blocks away. And that's not an atypical temperature (at least for the warmer months of the year; we're supposed to be in the colder months now, but the climate's been all wonky lately).
If my phone's battery didn't like ambient temperatures above 30°C, it would have failed long ago. There's no air conditioning in the street.
I don't think the battery is a big block of pure sodium. That would be unsafe.
The battery electrolyte contains sodium ions, but the same is true of salt water and Gatorade.
I think the industrial source of their sodium is sodium hydoxide, a common industrial feedstock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide
Seems like sodium is better "hidden" in the cathode/anode so it won't react witth the air so quickly as lithium when battery innards are exposed.
Also it's my understanding that neither sodium batteries nor li-ion batteries have metallic sodium/lithium in them (besides small amounts which build up in heavily used li-ion cells or something).
There could be a market for power tools, where having more batteries of lower capacity for the same price can be desirable.
Also maybe for hybrid vehicles.
For people who wear slimmer-fitting clothing, this matters. Also, it’s more about the weight: you want a phone light enough that holding it up isn’t tedious.
(There are lighter alternatives, but I bought the steam deck specifically to financially support Valve's Linux gaming efforts)
10 years ago we already had the tech for smaller phones (and yes the battery life was fine, 1-2 days typical). Just check out any flagship from the 2010-2015 era, e.g. https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9500_galaxy_s4-5125.php
If people actually care about slim, light phones... why has almost every company stopped making them?
It’s not the sole factor. But ceteris paribus, most consumer prefer a thinner, lighter phone.
Not as much of an issue with loose men's chinos, but definitely an issue with standard slim men's jeans, as well as with a slimmer-cut chino.
And if you want to see if a fatter phone is easier to hold, that's what cases are for. You don't need them to make the phone fatter.
In reality, most thin phones aren't all that thin anyways once people put a protective case on them, as many (most?) people do.
I just commented on this last night, in fact. Wife's phone half out of her pocket, and it's a smaller iphone than my brick of a 1+, but my phone sits midway down my thigh in my pocket.
I make no judgement on the pants people wear (or don't).
E-waste laws at some point will become inevitable, so planned obsolescence will be under scrutiny. Devices will have to have a minimum design life etc. Moreover, user-replaceable batteries—whether long life or high capacity—are likely to be mandatory as a result of such legislation.
My old Nokia used to have a replaceable battery which also served as the back of the phone, a quick release button meant the battery could be replaced within seconds.
Manufacturers can't use the argument that it can't be done because it was common practice with Nokia 20 years ago. Nowadays more modern design practices will make that even easier to implement.
The problem is water resistance. Your old Nokia (except the indestructible 3310) was dead if you managed to let it fall into water, most phones up until the end of the headphone jack had the same problem - and secure-boot stuff has made it virtually impossible to recover data if the phone doesn't boot up any more.
Water resistance and non-sealed phones don't really mix, unless you're going for really bulky things like the CAT lineup or Samsung's Active Tab series.
Sealing a battery compartment in a way that doesn't hinder replacement is a solved problem, they do it to diving watches that are actually waterproof at depth, not merely water resistant.
And phones cannot be completely sealed. That's why none are really waterproof (and warranty doesn't cover water damage). The biggest issues are speakers and microphones, getting the sound through and keeping the water out requires some compromises. Then there is the port(s), SIM tray, buttons, barometer,... By comparison, a battery cover is easy.
They do exist, but usually (at least for Samsung and CAT, I owned both brands) come at the cost of flimsy backplanes that come loose when falling and/or are prone to break off the tiny snaps when you need to access the SD/SIM card or battery.
For me, that they come loose when falling is actually a feature. The energy of the fall has to go somewhere, and having that back cover and sometimes battery fly off means that energy is not dissipated elsewhere where it could be more damaging.
Right, splash resistance through to full hermetic sealing is well developed engineering, so it's a non issue. That's not to say one has to go to extremes for a phone. For example, there's no reason why a phone cannot be constructed in a modular fashion where the key electronics is essentially sealed against the ingress of moisture and its peripheral connections, jack, mic, speakers, battery connectors are part of the case.
For maintenance, simply snap out the electronics and put it in a new case. Similarly, jacks are easily made waterproof with connections going through hermetic seals. Diaphragms on mics and speakers can actually be part of the seal and so on. Compromises can be made to suit the circumstances, and none of this is complicated manufacturing.
Making phones more robust against the environment makes sense, it would not only extend their life but dovetail neatly into Right-to-Repair laws—laws which I reckon will eventually become inevitable.
Phone manufacturers will be dragged kicking and screaming but they've already had it too good for too long at customers' expense.
There are lots of things left to make grid battery storage cheap.
As well as the cells needing to be engineered to be cheaper, there are lots of changes to the battery packs that can be made, together with changes to inverters.
For batteries, I'd like to see research into less consistent manufacturing and higher failure rates. Current packs the entire pack is unusable if just one cell fails in a way that leads to lots of heat production. If pack balancing circuits had the ability to take a cell or a parallel group of cells 'out of circuit' while still using the rest of the pack, then battery lifespans could be dramatically increased and it would be possible to manufacture cells far cheaper.
For inverters, we should go for a direct-to-10kV inverter process. No transformers. At 10kV, currents are far lower and therefore wires can be far thinner (and cheaper).
Consider making batteries ~15kV too - that reduces by ~30% the amount of expensive silicon needed, together with big reductions in copper costs, at the expense of extra design effort for much higher voltage batteries. At these higher voltages, you'd either use oil cooling, or you'd have ~10 separate coolant loops, one at each ~1500 volts of potential.
Beyond that, all the complexity is in software. Software needs to monitor cell voltages and currents to detect a self-heating cell. Software then needs to stop balancing that cell up (ie. let it discharge). At the moment the cell voltage hits zero, software needs to close the 'short' across the cell, permanently taking it out of the circuit.
This design might occasionally prevent charging the entire battery for a few minutes during this process. Specifically, when a cell is midway through being taken out of circuit, it can only be discharged, and would be dangerous to recharge.
But a few minutes of downtime per year seems acceptable to me.
For land and sea transport it's mostly volume/kWh.
For electric aircraft it's kg/kWh.
I wear an Apple Watch. On my wrist, is a small, Lithium-ion battery, that contains a great deal of power.
That power is trickled out, over time.
If it were to all release at once, I'd no longer have a left hand.
Packing all that energy into smaller and smaller form factors, increases the risk; no matter what tech we use.
Energy is energy. When it comes out quickly, we call those "explosions."
I once bridged a ~2,500mAH 18650 battery that was in my bag when my keys created a circuit between the anode and the cathode. The result was a small fire inside my bag that was quickly stamped out. Now, if I'm carrying batteries capable of dumping a lot of current quickly, I use cases.
What excites me most about this new battery tech is home and commercial backup energy storage that's much 'greener' and cheaper than lithium. There is a lot of space in rural and grid settings, so the density of Li-Ion isn't really needed.
I was really talking about how much energy potential is stored in batteries. In batteries, the energy is generally stored as potential chemical reactions, so it isn't realistic to have a flash-boom.
Supercapacitors, on the other hand, may have more of a boom potential.
if you'd like i can go dig out a 26650 that i have where i dropped it and the board part popped off; but i am sure there are websites with pictures already.
I was walking out of my building with a group of folks after work and some woman said, 'Excuse me sir but there is smoke coming out of your bag'.
Well, super interesting.
At first I doubted because the apple watch has very little energy, then I looked it up. Turns out the biggest ones have 2Wh worth of power. Doesn't seem like much until you consider that 2Wh is roughly 6000J. Bullets are launched in the neighborhood of 1000J.
We've already got LED bulbs, heat pumps, and energy-efficient appliances.
Washers and dryers still have to spin and agitate. Dishwashers still have to shoot jets of water. Ceiling fans still need to move air.
And with the switch to electrification (cars, stoves, dryers, hot water heaters) electricity usage will increase, fortunately, to replace polluting gasoline.
So I think future technological progress really is going to come down to increased battery capacity, not decreasing energy usage.
Ultimately, the simple fact is that solar power isn't generated at night.
We will end up with an LLM live training on your watch.