Recharge Batteries in 30 Secs

An anonymous reader writes "NEC has developed organic radical batteries which are recharged in 30 seconds. Good news, they won't (probably) cost more than the current NIMH batteries." Why is it that I'm not holding my breath to have this technology in a laptop?

Comments

Moore's Law?

[coulbc]

So, 7.5 seconds in 18 months?

Re:Moore's Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we submerge the batteries under water, we'll get even faster discharge rates!

Re:Moore's Law?

[robslimo]

Hmm, they may have some competition on the speedy recharge front, Moore improvements yet?

350 F, 2.5 V UltraCapacitors in D cell size from Maxwell Technologies.

Re:Moore's Law?

[AKAImBatman]

So, 7.5 seconds in 18 months?

After which the electricity arcs from the wire to your body, thus killing you dead. Oh, and you'll have to replace a fuse. ;-)

Re:Moore's Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do batteries have transistors?

Re:Moore's Law?

[tzanger]

Try getting more than a couple hundred microAmps out of an ultrapacitor. The ESR on those buggers is horrendous.

Re:Moore's Law?

[robslimo]

Look again. 2.5V, 3906 W/kg, 20A rated.

And look at this one, 2,600 Farads, 2.5V, 600A rated (not a D cell package though).

Re:Moore's Law?

[blair1q]

350 Farads = 350 ampere-seconds or about 12 amps for 30 seconds. Better get the stove plug.

Re:Moore's Law?

[ZorinLynx]

One problem with capacitors is that their voltage goes down linearly with discharge. This means that at half charge, the voltage has dropped considerably.

This means the device has to be able to to contend with a steadily falling voltage supply. A flashlight running on a few of these would get steadily dimmer from the very moment you switch it on.

This applies to all capacitors. Also, even 350F doesn't come close to the capacity of even and old-school NiCd D battery!

-Z

Re:Moore's Law?

[tzanger]

Wow. I stand corrected. Thank you for pointing that out!

Re:Moore's Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia... they do! :-)

Re:Moore's Law?

[Short Circuit]

Not linearly. It's inversely proportional. Check out the RC Time Constant.

Re:Moore's Law?

[martyn s]

Well inverse proportionality is even worse than linearity, as far as consistency of voltage is concerned.

Re:Moore's Law?

[PingPongBoy]

Capacitors???????

Quite the controlled discharge

v = C q(t) = - R dq/dt for a resistive load

q = - R/C dq/dt = ( V0 / C ) e^(-tR/C)

V across the load = v - Cq = v - V0 e^(-tR/C)

P = V^2 / R

Can a capacitor power supply run a computer? P4s consume a lot of power so R wouldn't be that big - the output voltage of the capacitor could fall rapidly.

BTW aren't capacitors used in power supplies to offset fluctuations in source voltage as the load changes?

Re:Moore's Law?

[Merovign]

Is it me or does 60x172mm seem to be about the right
size for a slightly bulky lightsaber? :)

Re:Moore's Law?

[Short Circuit]

Certainly true, but that doesn't mean that the amount of energy available is necessarily significantly less.

For a normal application, a voltage regulator would be used to keep output at or below 1.5V (instead of 2.5V, to which the capacitor would ideally be charged), and most devices can continue to operate at considerably less than the voltage rating of the batteries that are used to power them.

Re:Moore's Law?

[Tree131]

unless of course that water was purified to be free of minerals and radicals :)

Re:Moore's Law?

[ZorinLynx]

Voltage regulators waste a lot of power.

For instance, if you have a 6V voltage regulator fed by a 12V supply, and you're consuming one amp at the 6V output, your device is using 6 watts, and the voltage regulator is dissipating 6 watts as heat.

Not fun at all. Not only do you need a big heatsink on the voltage regulator, but half of the battery's energy is wasted making the room warm!

Bad News . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . they're only available in "A" and "B" cells.

Stefan

Re:Bad News . . .

[Tuxedo Jack]

But will they hunt viruses and stop them from spreading?

Re:Bad News . . .

[Sir Pallas]

Considering the number of times I have to recharge the batteries in my camera, I'm not that upset. A simpler, quicker, longer lasting recharge is a godsend for that silly battery sucker. If NEC is converting existing facilities, who's to say that they won't start making larger products? But even if they don't, my (mayhaps future) electric razor will be much happier, and much more organic.

Re:Bad News . . .

[Mikkeles]

Hey, I can use my radio again ;^)

Re:Bad News . . .

[BiggyP]

i'd be careful, this simply means that it'll be beter able to rot your brain!

Re:Bad News . . .

[Paladine97]

So does that mean we'll see AA and AAA batteries?

I want a good AA replacement for the Energizer NiMH batteries I use now for my Wavebird controller. Maybe it's just the way I charge them, but I get 3-4 hours at a time, not the 80 that the article states.

It's a pain to be playing a game and about to do something cool when your input goes dead and you end up getting whacked.

Re:Bad News . . .

[iamhassi]

"Maybe it's just the way I charge them, but I get 3-4 hours at a time, not the 80 that the article states."

re-read the article:
"It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player."

So that 80 hours means nothing in real world use, they just threw that in there to sound cool. They could have equally said "200 hours running a LED pen light" to sound more impressive, but they probably used MD players because:
a) they're fairly common and joe-schmuck is familiar with MD players (because they're sold at Walmart)
b) MD players already have a incredibly long battery life, 42-56 hours

Re:Bad News . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

>they probably used MD players because:
a) they're fairly common and joe-schmuck is familiar with MD players

Not in america, they're not. Who the hell uses MD? All I see is CD, CD-MP3, Flash-MP3 and HD-MP3 players.

Oh, and cassette tape.

Re:Bad News . . .

[ryanwright]

I want a good AA replacement for the Energizer NiMH batteries I use now for my Wavebird controller. Maybe it's just the way I charge them, but I get 3-4 hours at a time

WTF? I have four Wavebirds. They saw almost daily use for several months. I've had to replace the batteries once. If I had to estimate, I got several dozen hours worth of play out of a set of AAs. I now play only a couple of hours a week and haven't changed the batteries in six months. Still going strong.

Something's wrong with your batteries.

Re:Bad News . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a casette tape?

Whoa ... misread that one

[drizst 'n drat]

Now I know why I use glasses ... thought it said "orgasmic radical batteries". Whew! Was wondering about the charge my laptop was about to get!

"NEC has developed organic radical batteries"

[laetus]

Somehow I get a picture in my mind of Japanese engineers studying how Berkeley hippies have the energy for university classes AND for protesting every cause under the sun. :)

Re:"NEC has developed organic radical batteries"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no mystery. Choose the right major at UCB, and you can get 2 credits just for voting for Kucinich.

Re:"NEC has developed organic radical batteries"

[rritterson]

It's easy- we're solar powered.

(berkeley is one of the best places in the world for solar radiation collection you know)

Re:"NEC has developed organic radical batteries"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they DID mention "resin".... ;)

--A. Hippie

Re:"NEC has developed organic radical batteries"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if anybody's in need of some battery (a la nightsticks), it's those stupid, smelly hippies.

Heat

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

I saw no mention of the level of heat generated when charging a battery this fast. I haven't worked out any equations, but I was under the impression that there was a certain amount of heat generated per unit of time when charging / discharging batteries.

Re:Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

heat would indicate inefficiency - sopose they found some way of increasing efficience and thus less heat...

Re:Heat

[lcsjk]

You're right. I should stop there to be funny, but since you mentioned it, the battery heat is due to the internal resistance of the battery. If it is low, the power (current squared times resistance) will be low. Note that the article ended with reference to being able to limit the current from the battery, and that makes me think the internal resistance is low, and therefore, low charge/discharge power for heating.

Re:Heat

[pclminion]

Depends on the internal resistance of the battery. You can measure the internal resistance by shorting the battery through an ammeter and measuring the terminal voltage. Terminal voltage when shorted, divided by current through the ammeter, gives internal resistance.

Now, take the square of the charging current and multiply by the internal resistance. This gives the heat dissipation in watts.

The article gives no real numbers, but let's assume the battery can supply about 5 amp-hours. To get a full charge in 30 seconds, you would need a charging current of 600 amps (!!) Heat dissipation would be 360000 times the internal resistance of the battery -- in order to dissipate fewer than 10 watts the internal resistance would have to be less than 0.000028 ohms.

At 0.000028 ohms, and a made-up terminal voltage of 7 volts, you could draw 250000 amps out of such a battery when shorted. Jesus Christ. But those numbers came out of my ass. We need real values...

Re:Heat

[oolon]

I think you thinking of the power transmission equation that says, the best power transfer for DC is "50%" and this is when internal and external resistances are the same. This however assumes its a "normal" resistance, switched mode power supplies (for example) break these rules. When charging however the battery is receiving the power, so any heat generation would be an inefficany in the chemical reaction. Only when discharging would this 50% power supply rule possably apply, hopefully the discharge would not be done in 30 seconds! Interesting though looking at my laptop battery which is 12V 1800mAh W=VA 21.6 Watts per hour assuming so a 30 second charge would require a 2.5 KW supply.... an if it was 80 times as good a 200KW supply.. Assuming 100% efficency!

James

Re:Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

...you're assuming the battery is charged at the same voltage it presents, which isn't necessarilly true.

Losses are I^2*R. If the battery can be charged at a higher voltage, heat loss does not have to be an issue. It's hard for me to imagine how such a system might work chemically, but I wouldn't say it was impossible. (Perhaps you could charge the battery by presenting a high voltage at the terminals and use an internal converter with an ultra-low source resistance. Who knows!)

I have no idea, I just wanted to point out the feat doesn't have to be impossible.

Re:Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

> You can measure the internal resistance by shorting the battery through an ammeter and measuring the terminal voltage.

Kids, don't try this at home. By actually shorting the battery, some rechargable ones can heat up so much that they explode.

A better idea is to connect a small resistor to the battery and measure the current and the voltage with the load.
resistance = (voltage_idle - voltage_load) / current_load

Re:Heat

[AgBullet]

"..in order to dissipate fewer than 10 watts the internal resistance would have to be less than 0.000028 ohms.

At 0.000028 ohms, and a made-up terminal voltage of 7 volts, you could draw 250000 amps out of such a battery when shorted. Jesus Christ. But those numbers came out of my ass. We need real values..."

0.000028 ohms of sounds really fantastic. you'd be lucky to get .0028 ohms. ah well, guess if all else fails we could use them as tea warmers, you know, check them in a cuppa, let them short themselves out and bring your tea to a boil.

hey, they're organic right?

Re:Heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it would have to something sustainable now wouldn't it?

It wouldn't do to develop a battery that can be charged in thirty seconds if was going to meltdown your laptop in the next 6...

John

Re:Heat

[Civil_Disobedient]

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I like the way you think!

Re:Heat

[WhiplashII]

Just FYI, the 50% rule is for maximum power transfer. You can get higher efficiencies by delivering less than maximum power.

bunny?

[Anonymous Coward]

30 sec to charge--but how long do they last?

Re:bunny?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

"It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player, compared with around an hour needed by conventional rechargeables, the company claims."

The article also mentions that the batteries are also capable of discharging a large amount of power, which would allow them to be used in appliances requiring more power than a typical battery can provide - but obviously for a shorter period of time.

Re:bunny?

[MoonBuggy]

In a break from /. style I actually RTFA - it says 80 hours of MiniDisc use.

If that's accurate I want one for my iPod, I guess with less drive spinning than an MD it'd last even longer?

Re:bunny?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully longer than the attention span of morons who can't read entire articles.

Re:bunny?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, an MD gets about 40 hours on a single AA battery (at least according to Sony). So your iPod would probably get at most double the life of what it normally runs for.

I'm still waiting for my OQO...

Re:bunny?

[CastrTroy]

Acutally, I have a minidisc, and standard alkalines give about 50 hours of listening time. Rechargables give about 30 hours. This is all with a single AA battery. This is a big improvement on battery life, but for some reason i doubt the ipod gets comparable battery life on comparable batteries.

Re:bunny?

[edbarrett]

it says 80 hours of MiniDisc use.

(I'm not attacking you) It says 80 hours of continuous MD operation. It doesn't say the disc was spinning all that time. Goddammit, PR flacks, how many hours of standard, 1x portable CD player spin time is that? How many continuous hours can I leave my incandescent flashlight on? Give me a statistic that means something!

Re:bunny?

[rastakid]

In a break from /. style I actually RTFA - it says 80 hours of MiniDisc use.

But keep in mind that current MiniDiscs (well, the ones from Sony) have battery runtime of 36 hours with a single normal penlite battery.

Re:bunny?

[SeaFox]

(I'm not attacking you) It says 80 hours of continuous MD operation. It doesn't say the disc was spinning all that time. Goddammit, PR flacks, how many hours of standard, 1x portable CD player spin time is that?

Uh, Minidisc players spin contantly, just like portable CD players, and spin faster when they are reading ahead for their anti-skip (just like portable CD players). Minidisc is an audio format just like Audio CD, not merely a data storage format like a hard drive based player has.

Finally...

[winkydink]

...a use for those outlets in airplane bathrooms.

Re:Finally...

[AbbyNormal]

Nope, I distinctly remember them saying there is NO smoking in the bathroom.

Yeah, that wouldn't look suspicious at all either... Carying a big bulky bag with wires coming out of it, into the bathroom.

Re:Finally...

[freuddot]

How about shaving ?

Ho.. wait.. this is slashdot, nevermind. ;-)

Re:Finally...

[abram10]

Those are for plugging in reading lamps (or, maybe, for vibrating toilet seats)!

Re:Finally...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

hey, I do have to shave (mostly because if my beard becomes too long it starts to be annoying)

To those who are still to young to shave:
Be happy, be very happy. Shaving is annoying and a waste of time. It's not cool. It's just plain annoying and boring after the second time.
So enjoy while it lasts, 'cus when it starts, you're stuck with it for the rest of your life.

Re:Finally...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

It's very entertaining to tape some copper wires in someones (someone you don't like, and who, preferably, doesn't have a gun, baseball bat or any sharp or heavy objects) bag before they leave on their flight.

It's a great practical joke, even the judge agreed on that before sending me off to jail.

Re:Finally...

[pclminion]

Which leads to the slightly offtopic question... Where does the power come from on board an airplane? A huge bank of lead acid cells?

I somehow doubt they have found a way to attach an alternator to a turbojet axle :-)

Re:Finally...

[Tony Hoyle]

You could get power in a similar way though... a small airduct with a turbine capable of generating mains voltage or thereabouts, connected to a recharge circuit (so you don't lose power when the plane lands..)

Re:Finally...

[AbRASiON]

This man speaks the truth.

Oh at 16 how I wanted to be like the cool kids growing goatee's (nearly type goatse every time i type that damn word)

However now that I have to every second day at least - with my fair skin type - it's just a recipe for pain - plus the DAMN SHAVER MARKET - disposable razors or replacable (shick / gilette) are really tapping our wallets.

Re:Finally...

[mikechant]

Laser hair removal is very effective and these days targeted at men as well as women. If I remember right it's about $40 per session (but varies quite a lot), one 30 min session per week for about 6 months (typical male growth) giving a total of about $1000. It would probably pay for itself in saved shavers etc. in 5-20yrs depending on the expense/longevity of your shaving method but in s(h)aved time it would start paying immediately...

The field is huge ...

[gustgr]

Not only at the laptop but that would be really usefull at cellphones and nobreaks (!?).

Source

[viniosity]

NEC has developed organic radical batteries

Is it powered by coffee too?

Re:Source

[Graemee]

No it's powered by soy & hemp products

Re:That's great!

[Anonymous Coward]

RECHARGE in 30 seconds, you illiterate moron.

Memory Effect solution maybe?

[va3atc]

The company will initially try to commercialize the technology for using the battery as an emergency power source for computers, according to sources at NEC.

You mean so I can even get first posts when the power is out?

Though I'm curious with something...
Will this be plagued by the Mysterious Memory Effect of Rechargeable Batteries?

Re:Memory Effect solution maybe?

[lcsjk]

The effect is not mysterious and only occurs on NiCads for all practical purposes. It has to do with surface buildup effects on the plates. It is also fully reversable for batteries that go through a full discharge and recharge a couple of times. (At least that's what the battery manufacturers say!)

Re:Memory Effect solution maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you one of those dumb fucks who think that Lithium based batteries suffer from memory issues?

no fucking wonder your lithium based batteries die on you...you fucking discharge the entire battery before you charge it again which is what kills the battery, unlike NiMH based batteries which do have memories and should be discharged fully.

you dumb fuck.

Re:Memory Effect solution maybe?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Will this be plagued by the Mysterious Memory Effect of Rechargeable Batteries?

It's hard to tell from the article, but the chemistry sounds more like that of Nickel Metal Hydride than Nickel Cadmium. So I suspect memory effect will be absent or very small.

Re:Memory Effect solution maybe?

[va3atc]

Awesome, I did some googling and found this site that backs up his statement.

Lithium based batteries do not suffer from memory effect. Very cool if I could get this in my UHF radio ;)

Snippet from page for the lazy

Lithium batteries are the only true ' no memory ' batteries. These batteries will never need to be discharged.

Re:Memory Effect solution maybe?

[canajin56]

Yeah, no memory effect. That's because they continuously degrade regardless of what charge/discharge scheme you use. My laptop batteries are L+, and only last a few years before you need to dispose of them. Right now, one of them reads 0.0%, and after 24 hours of charging, it will still read 0.0%

Remember the first Mars rover a few years back? It only ran for a few months because its Lithium Ion batteries died. This was anticipated, and they were amazed it took so long before it died.

Also, remember the fiasco over the iPod batteries? They are Lithium Ion batteries, and they only last 18 months (And also cannot be replaced since they are internal)

So, while Lithium batteries may not have a memory effect, they don't last very long, either.

Re:Memory Effect solution maybe?

[gabebear]

iPod batteries are internal, but can be replaced, Apple will replace them for $50, or you can buy batteries from 3rd parties and do it yourself if you are brave enough to open it up.

Sounds good... but

[deadmongrel]

I don't know much about batteries but there is a certain number of charging cycles the rechargable batteries can handle and after which they die(or performance becomes poor). I wonder how they address this issue.

Re:Sounds good... but

[MoonBuggy]

It's a non-issue with most existing batteries, so I guess these are similar. Batteries aren't that expensive and you'll get 1000+ charge cycles from them. That equates to several years of standard use from something that costs less than a can of coke, if these become unusable considerably faster than normal they wouldn't risk the bad publicity until they'd fixed it.

Re:Sounds good... but

[Polo]

I think even if these lasted only 100 cycles, the convenience in many cases would override the bad publicity.

Heck, people are buying batteries today that last only ONE cycle.

Re:Sounds good... but

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries aren't that expensive and you'll get 1000+ charge cycles from them. That equates to several years of standard use from something that costs less than a can of coke

Have you seen the price of NiMH batteries lately? Unless you mean a 12 ounce can of cocaine, you are clearly delusional.

Re:Sounds good... but

[MoonBuggy]

AA batteries in discount stores are about 0.60 each, and a can of coke is about 0.50. Seems even enough to me.

Re:Sounds good... but

[jskiff]

You must be new here...

iPod's Dirty Secret

Re:Sounds good... but

[MoonBuggy]

The iPod battery does last for a few years under standard use, just like most other batteries. The reason there was all the fuss about it was back then there was no way to replace them - that's why it was a problem. It was known it would die, but the fact that it killed the iPod and there was no way to fix it (unlike most appliances where you just slide the back off and put a new battery in) was why people had a problem.

Re:Sounds good... but

[whathappenedtomonday]

a certain number of charging cycles

you are probably referring to the memory effect

Re:Sounds good... but

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I doubt it. Memory effect happens when a battery isn't completely discharged before recharging (except for lead accu's, differend story there) and results in losing capacity. But in many cases this is reversable. This isn't a issue anymore in modern batteries.

The limit on charging cycles is a result of the ageing of the battery.

Does anyone know how the chemistry of those effects work?

Re:Sounds good... but

[SnappleMaster]

/agree 100%

The big problem with today's rechargeables is you have to plan ahead. When the rechargeables in my Rio are dead I need to have a fresh pair charged. If I've forgotten to put a pair in the charger... ARGH.

I still cannot believe that adults are buying non-rechargeables these days. Then again, I can't believe all these fricking morons who drive giant over-sized SUVs and pick-ups either. Environment-friendliness seems to be dead (and I live in the Pacific Northwest, where I would expect better!)

Is this still a battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like a slow discharging capacitor.

Re:Is this still a battery?

[PhuCknuT]

It's a battery, it stores the energy chemically. Capacitors store it as an electric charge.

Re:Is this still a battery?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Like a goldcap? Those are only usefull for very small currents, like keeping a real time clock chip going when the power's off.

NEC Develops Fastest Rechargeable Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

April 2, 2004 (TOKYO) -- NEC Corp has developed a battery that can be recharged only in 30 seconds, company sources said. Called an organic radical battery, it can be recharged to the same level of power as that stored in nickel-hydrogen cells, which are widely used in digital cameras, portable MD players and other electronic devices.

It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player, compared with around an hour needed by conventional rechargeables, the company claims.

Because of its ability to recharge faster, the new battery, which stores power in a special resin, is expected to make radio-controlled toy cars, shavers and other products much more convenient to use.

The battery can also discharge power in a short time, making it useful in applications requiring a large amount of power.

NEC believes the battery can be used as an emergency power source for computers in case of blackouts as well as in hybrid cars driven by a gasoline engine and electric motor.

The company plans to convert existing production facilities into ones able to manufacture the new product. The company expects the price of the new battery to be about the same as nickel-hydrogen cells when mass production starts, since it does not contain any expensive materials.

NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell.

The company will initially try to commercialize the technology for using the battery as an emergency power source for computers, according to sources at NEC.

Re:NEC Develops Fastest Rechargeable Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone been able to verify this? I find nothing on the NEC website, and the date in the byline (2 Apr) makes me just a little suspicious...

Re:NEC Develops Fastest Rechargeable Battery

[Anonymous Coward]

"NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell."

Why do I get the feeling that, if this ever becomes commercially practical and available, somebody will quickly try to figure out a way to circumvent the "prevention of excessive discharge of power"? :-)

Re:NEC Develops Fastest Rechargeable Battery

[asavage]

The ability to discharge in a short time is a mixed blessing. Shorting this battery could be a lot more dangerous.

Nice, but not a radical change.

[Maestro4k]

In the article it says they recharge in 30 seconds, compared to 1 minute for other rechargeable batteries. (At least the type they're comparing these to.) It goes on to say it'd make radio-controlled cars, etc. more convenient to use.

The only problem is that even with the current technology it takes more than 1 minute to run those batteries down. Pretty much anyone using rechargeables has at least one extra set so that there's always a fresh pair to swap to when the ones you're using runs out. In that scenario even halfing the recharge time doesn't matter a bit.

Still this is a nice breakthrough, but what we really need are batteries that last even longer than current ones. Those will make a huge difference!

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[5lash]

dude its compared to 1 HOUR for conventional batteries

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[de_boer_man]

Actually, it says that it takes conventional rechargeable batteries one hour, not one minute, which is 120 times faster. That's a significant advance in my book.

If I can run my RC car for 10 minutes and recharge it in 30 seconds, that's good enough for me.

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[JesseL]

Reread that. It says 1 hour for other rechargeables. I'd say a 120x imrovement is pretty good.

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[grawk]

Were you reading the same article I was?

It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player, compared with around an hour needed by conventional rechargeables, the company claims.

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[dave420]

errr.... 1 hour, dude.

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[Maestro4k]

• Were you reading the same article I was?

  • It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player, compared with around an hour needed by conventional rechargeables, the company claims.

Bleah, I did misread that. Still, it's not a terribly big change for most applications. I use rechargeables for my wireless optical mouse and portable CD players. I generally get upwards of 16 hours playtime on a single charges on the CD players. That's not 16 non-stop hours though, so it generally lasts me several days. The mouse lasts a couple of weeks at worst, a month at best generally. I've yet to have a problem with the recharge time, and the charger I'm using actually takes more like 8 hours to recharge. I still have batteries charged-up and ready long before I need them.

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Pretty much anyone using rechargeables has at least one extra set so that there's always a fresh pair to swap to when the ones you're using runs out. In that scenario even halfing the recharge time doesn't matter a bit.

Actually it's vs 1 HOUR so it's a factor of 120 reduction (as others have pointed out).

The real point, though, is that they've got the charging time down to less than the time it takes to swap in a fresh set of batteries. So no need to swap any more. Just do a "pit stop" with the fat electric cord in place of the fat pump hose. B-)

(Unfortunately that won't work for a REAL car, which will take a bit longer to charge even if the batteries are capable of better. You're looking at something like a thousand megawatts to charge one of those in a minute. Even if you included a small nuke plant at each filling station, the mag fields around the charging cables might bend the sheet metal. B-) )

Re:Nice, but not a radical change.

[grawk]

So the applications you're using rechargables for aren't the ones that this is ideal for.

It sounds ideal for combat robot batteries (where you have a limited amount of time to charge and have high current drain), camera flashes, cellphones, pdas, ups, etc, where the rapid recharge could make it so you wouldn't need to have multiple sets of batteries with you. I'd love to be able to recharge my cellphone in the time between flights, etc.

Good vs Bad

[Dark Lord Seth]

Good news, they won't (probably) cost more than the current NIMH batteries.

The bad news is that they start to pulsate gamma radiation, require the sacrifice of an unborn child conceived during a full moon and each recharged battery causes an angel to lose his or her wings.

Please, think of the angels!

Re:Good vs Bad

[Ithika]

Please, think of the angels!

And this from someone who calls himself Dark Lord Seth...

Re:Good vs Bad

[eclectus]

The bad news is that they start to pulsate gamma radiation, require the sacrifice of an unborn child conceived during a full moon and each recharged battery causes an angel to lose his or her wings.

Great. Where's the average slasdotter going to get an unborn child conceived during a full moon?

Re:Good vs Bad

[WolfWithoutAClause]

and each recharged battery causes an angel to lose his or her wings. Please, think of the angels!

I'm thinking. Oooh. Wingless angels. Can I have one of the females? "Research". Honest.

Re:Good vs Bad

[falconfighter]

I hear they have a surplus over in Asia

Re:Good vs Bad

[itwerx]

Please, think of the angels!

And this from someone who calls himself Dark Lord Seth...

Even fallen angels need their wings!

Re:Good vs Bad

[Rick.C]

Where's the average slasdotter going to get an unborn child conceived during a full moon?

That's Phase-2 of NEC's evil marketing plan.

Sell the batteries at a loss and make up for it in sales of UCCDFMs.

I'll take two, please.

Re:Good vs Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the full solar eclipse and some random mystic alignment of the planets.

Great Marketing??

[bp2179]

The company plans to convert existing production facilities into ones able to manufacture the new product. The company expects the price of the new battery to be about the same as nickel-hydrogen cells when mass production starts, since it does not contain any expensive materials.
NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell.

so...the batteries will be cheap, but the recharger will be the moneymaker? Am i correct in my assumption.

Re:Great Marketing??

[Golias]

It would be too easy to make a generic charger without violating patents. Chargers are just AC - DC step-down transformers. All you need is two leads, the correct voltage, and enough amps. Radio Shack will probably end up stocking them for $30 each.

If the battery will be cheap, it's because it will be cheap to make, not because it's a loss-leader to sell chargers.

Re:Great Marketing??

[lcsjk]

Did you get your statement and question mixed up?

Re:Great Marketing??

[soramimicake]

so...the batteries will be cheap, but the recharger will be the moneymaker?

Otherwise known as the "Sell the blades cheaply and make money on the razor" anti-strategy.

Mis-targeted?

[guido1]

The company will initially try to commercialize the technology for using the battery as an emergency power source for computers, according to sources at NEC.

I'm suprised the first thing they're shooting for is the UPS market. I would have thought a bigger market would have been standard-sized batteries (AA, AAA, etc)

The article itself mentions many other uses, including RC cars, digital cameras, etc...

Guess they know their market better than I do.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[Anonymous Coward]

we're consumers, and we're happy to discard products.

if everyone went about thing based on efficiency and cost effectiveness duracell wouldnt be making 16xbattery packets since we wouldnt need them as we all have rechargables.

clearly this is not the case, and the market has demonstrated a preference for wanting batteries as a commodity rather than a tool.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[LoudMusic]

I'm suprised the first thing they're shooting for is the UPS market. I would have thought a bigger market would have been standard-sized batteries (AA, AAA, etc)

The article itself mentions many other uses, including RC cars, digital cameras, etc...

Guess they know their market better than I do.

They may, but I have to agree with you. UPS, laptops, things like that don't need this near instant recharge. Laptops are fast enough at 20 to 30 minutes. But RC toys have always taken fooorreeevvverrrrr ... and somehow they seem to take longer the younger you are (: I've also found that my Dewalt cordless drill / driver eats batteries like they were cupcakes or something. I've often found myself with two dead batteries in the middle of a project. There is a 15 minute recharger, but it costs so much. The batteries themselves need to charge faster.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[pavon]

I think this might have something to do with that decision:

NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell.

It looks like right now the battery is good for high amp charge/discharge but they still need some work to safely power low amp devices.

From the discussions below, one also gets the impression that this thing needs one hell of a charger to charge it in thiry seconds which would explain why they are still working on a home charger.

But this looks really promising. Other documents mention that organic radical batteries are being researched because they are more enviromentally friendly , and because they could have a better energy density. And now this article says they have quick recharge and near capacitor like discharge capability, and are competitively priced. I don't know how many of these properties this particular battery has, but it would be pretty amazing if it had all of the above. You'd think that they would have mentioned it in the press release though, so I have to assume not.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[Anonymous Coward]

They may be using the UPS market to get a foot in the door and start gaining revenue. The AA, AAA, etc. battery market already has giant producers who will try to quash any intrusion into their market. Hopefully after this company gets a large enough following for the UPS market, they will start to produce the smaller batteries.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[harrv]

UPS units tend to be heavy and large. Maybe NEC is targeting that market because they haven't found a way to move this battery technology to smaller devices yet?

Re:Mis-targeted?

[mblase]

The article itself mentions many other uses, including RC cars, digital cameras, etc...

To heck with that. I want to know if the technology scales well enough to be used in cars. If I could recharge my Walkman in thirty seconds, I'm sure it could recharge an electric automobile in the same time it takes me to fill up at BP-Amoco.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[CharlieHedlin]

Did you miss that this was NEC? They don't have to work like a small startup.

Re:Mis-targeted?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with replacing standard cells is that a standard cell is rated at 1.5V, although you can get away with a NiMH putting out 1.2V because no standard cell stays at 1.5V very long anyway.

However, you can't make a 2.5V (to pick an arbitrary number) cell into a AA because nothing could use it. Regular devices that use custom batteries (digicams, RC cars, laptops, iPods) would have no problem with it, though.

aQazaQa

Conversion ratio?

[TheDigitalOne]

Unless they have a 100% conversion of source electricity to storage these batteries are going to have very limited capacities. Imagine how much heat a 1200mAh battery would give off if only 90% of the charge is actually stored and the rest goes to waste heat during that 30 second charge cycle.

Re:Conversion ratio?

[isorox]

A 1.5V battery? About 20W.

Re:Conversion ratio?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Unless they have a 100% conversion of source electricity to storage these batteries are going to have very limited capacities.

Since the primary limit on charging rate is heating, and these devices apparently include an organic component and probably a water-based electrolyte, I suspect that they have VERY little loss during the charging cycle. B-)

yeah!

[Allowee]

It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player, compared with around an hour needed by conventional rechargeables, the company claims.

I've been waiting a long time for this...

My batteries are always dead when I need them and when I don't have an hour or two to recharge them

Re:yeah!

[68K]

Ah yes, those iPod's are a pain in the ass sometimes, aren't they? :-)

Possibly some safety issues

[PIPBoy3000]

From the article:

The battery can also discharge power in a short time, making it useful in applications requiring a large amount of power.

One of the nice things about current batteries is that you can't get them to discharge very quickly. Shorting these out might cause excessive heat issues.

Re:Possibly some safety issues

[RedHat Rocky]

What? I take it you're referring to carbon-zinc batteries, ie your standard AA, AAA etc.

Those don't even come close to the power discharge they're referring to.

Example, if you short a nickle cadnium cell you'd better be ready when the wire welds itself to the cell because of the current draw. Nicad + short = bad.

Re:Possibly some safety issues

[kfg]

One of the nice things about NiCads is that you can get them to discharge very quickly, making R/C racers stuck with the bloody things.

These batteries will absolutely revolutionize R/C car racing, virtually obsoleting fuel cars, except for those that get off on the sound.

Extrapolate.

Yes, that causes issues. I once saw a guy cut a screwdriver nearly in half when he acidentally shorted his pack (on the other hand being able to make an emergency spot weld from a battery pack could be held to be a virtue in some situations).

And I've seen battery packs that were pushed so hard that their solder connections melted.

But racing is like that, and there are other applications where a high discharge rate is the primary virtue being looked for.

KFG

Re:Possibly some safety issues

[spotteddog]

Actually you can get lots of current (and heat up the battery pretty good) from current NiCd and Nimh cells.

Don't believe me - go ahead and short a fully charged cell. Put one (especially the 9V type) in your pocket with some loose change or keys. You'll feel it in a hurry (if your pants don't catch fire first).

Re:Possibly some safety issues

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I once succeeded in shorting a 12V 7.5Ah lead accu through a PCB. In short: this PCB had a track about 1.5cm width. This track, among several others, was completely gone. The battery only touched the board for a fraction of a second, but totaly vaporized a copper track 1.5cm width over a length of nearly 3cm.
Never underestimate the power in a lead accu.

Re:Possibly some safety issues

[babyrat]

One of the major drawbacks of current batteries is that you can't get them to discharge very quickly.

Hopefully these batteries will allow more applications to become feasible, like LIPOs are doing for RC airplane applications...

Re:Possibly some safety issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. 12V lead acid (at least the bigger ones, like a car battery around 50+Ah) will easily melt a wrench in no time, and cause a nifty arc while doing it.

You don't want to short these babies, or mess around them too much, 50Ah at 12V is a whole lot of energy.

fast discharge too...

[Polo]

So fast discharge is allowed as well...

At first, I thought of quick-charging camera flashes. Maybe even video with flashes? But then I started thinking about railguns and emp devices...

Re:fast discharge too...

[pogle]

Cattle prods come to mind...

Re:fast discharge too...

[infinite9]

But then I started thinking about railguns and emp devices...

That's ok as long as you stop thinking about flashing and discharges.

Re:fast discharge too...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually pretty easy to make yourself a taser starting with some wire and a capacitor from a disposable cam.... hmmm...

Re:fast discharge too...

[pogle]

But the 30s recharge means that my people shocked per hour ratio could improve drastically!

Re:fast discharge too...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or starting your car when the main battery dies. Just put in 10 AA batteries, and there you go...

Heck, these may even make a more lightweight, compact, and (presumably) safe alternative to completely replace regular car batteries at some point.

Re:Recharge in 30 sec

[cybermace5]

Actually, being able to drain batteries very quickly is an advantage. Nickel-cadmium batteries are popular in R/C applications because of this. With a lower internal resistance, these batteries will be able to provide a massive jolt of power.

Every advantage comes at a cost

[zuikaku]

The battery can also discharge power in a short time, making it useful in applications requiring a large amount of power.

... but ...

NEC is ... working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell.

So, it can be used to discharge a great amount of power, but the trick is keeping it from doing so when you don't want it to!

Re:Every advantage comes at a cost

[d60b9y]

NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell.

I think this is the bit that could be the technological stumbing block. What they mean by 'excessive discharge' is pretty vague, I don't want one of these batteries near any of my gizmos if there's a danger of it overloading and frying the components.

Re:Every advantage comes at a cost

[shawnce]

Remember don't taunt the happy fun ball.

Re:Every advantage comes at a cost

[Inebrius]

I wonder if a diode (to allow quick charging in one direction) and a resistor (to limit the discharge - increasing internal resistance) would work.

If these were built in as part of the battery, it would make it safe.

Re:Every advantage comes at a cost

[basking2]

I have a hunch this might be excessive leak of potential without a load on the battery. If you have any unused AA batteries from the early 80s, they are probably dead now by normal, natural leakage inside the battery.

Re:Every advantage comes at a cost

[Judebert]

That heavy discharge capacity is exactly what you want when you're drag racing an electric car. Check out NEDRA to see what I mean.

Cars

[crow]

The recharge time was one of the big obstacles to electric cars. While the future seems to be fuel cells, this may give auto makers a reason to look at electric again. Of course, there are still issues with batteries for cars (weight, cost, life expectancy, etc.).

Re:Cars

[Fortress]

It seems to me that the limiting factor with recharging electric cars wasn't the batteries but the current supply. I think some of them had a 120v charger that would take all night and a 240v 3-phase charger that did it in 4 or 5 hours but required professional installation and wasn't very useful anywhere but at home.

Re:Cars

[dave420]

You forgot one issue hampering electric cars - republicans.

:-P

Re:Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was the Stonecutters (aka the No Homers)

Re:Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot one issue hampering electric cars - republicans.

Yeah, because they have a monopoly on cronyism and protecting the industries in their own districts. Sure.

Or maybe you meant that people with capital to invest, but nitpick on that whole "economically viable" issue tend to be republican.

Re:Cars

[dave420]

No, I'm talking about the money-fuelled politicians who are in the oil companies' pockets, like - oh - george bush and dick cheney...

When politicians have a conflict of interest, something's horribly wrong. George is a walking conflict of interest. He's a Christian first, President second. He's a businessman first, President second. Can't you see he's not fit for office? Or, maybe you like pissing your wages up the wall supporting his hair-brained ego trips...

Re:Cars

[computechnica]

And I'm sure there aren't any democrats out there that have not accepted campaign contributions from oil companies.

Re:Cars

[SubtleNuance]

The other is the weight and capital in the oil industry. The same oil industry that is loath to see its power in the marketplace removed and installed in the Electric Companies (yes, i know gas/oil is used to gen. elec, but it dosnt HAVE to be, nor is it always)

The Shells of the world cant have all that Capital (stations, processing plants, transport) made obsolete through a purposefull transition to electric vehicles.

Short and Sweet: The obstacle to Electric Personal Transport is vested Capital -- NOT technology.

Re:Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

When politicians have a conflict of interest, something's horribly wrong.

Not really. When politicians have a conflict of interest, that's the real world. When they engage in cronyism, that's where the problem comes in.

Can't you see [Bush]'s not fit for office?

Not really relevant. Your claim implied that only republicans are susceptible to the lure of oil money. Or perhaps have something against electric cars. Or something of that nature. I simply pointed out the incongruity of such a simplistic view.

Re:Cars

[mpthompson]

Recharge time of an electric car is an obstacle with consumers, but I also believe range is just as much an issue. Even if an electric car can be recharged in 10 minutes or so (I'm not sure it would be possible with this battery given the current requirements and number of batteries in an electric car), the ability to drive a relatively short range (typically 50 to 75 miles) on a charge remains a problem. If the consumer fails to charge the batteries and gets stuck it probably involves getting a tow rather than a gallon a gas.

However, as others have pointed out these batteries may be well suited for electric hybrid vehicles where you want to the ability to quickly charge and discharge a battery several times a day.

How long with it be 80 times though?

[oolon]

I wonder what the polerisation and memory effects will be though. Most rechargable devices are pretty good (have acceptabl life times) when new, 6 months in the battery usage level has falled to almost unacceptable levels. As an example Sony only waranties batteries for 1 month! If they offer 80 times more storage but die off to 1 times storage in 6 months, this would infact be worse, because devices would be made to "use" the extra power.

James

Picture

[Fortress]

You can see a picture of it here:

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/FR/TNKS/TNKSHM/newpr o/

Re:Picture

[blair1q]

They'd better paint Mr. Yuck on those or a lot of geriatric astronauts are going to poison themselves.

Re:Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

While waiting for the picture of the new battery to load, I realized that at that very instant in time, I had hit rock bottom. It hurts. :(

battery can also discharge power in a short time

[Omega1045]

So is CERN going to replace the capacitance trees with a bunch of these little batteries to power their super-collider?

Innovation

[tsanth]

I'm sure that, even if the batteries come out in only one cell size, that people will be ripping them apart and adapting power supplies for their phones and laptops soon thereafter. My point: I'm not too worried about not getting these kinds of cells for any of my appliances because I'm sure that there's going to be someone there making it for me anyway.

Current draw?

[Polo]

I wonder how much current draw battery chargers would use?

I can imagine that it would be significantly more than the 1.5A my 4xAA 30 minute charger uses.

Re:Current draw?

[Fortress]

Should be 60 times as much, given that it's doing the same job in 1/60th the time. Assuming same efficiency and battery capacity.

Re:Current draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, but so what? 30 seconds charging time is worth it.

Re:Current draw?

[Polo]

...and doing the math that would be 90 amps.

So I wonder if they make those little T-splitter-thingies for dryer-type 220v electrical sockets? ;)

Re:Current draw?

[Fortress]

Even a dryer outlet wouldn't cut it. I think they're 30A/240V, which would translate to 60A/120V. I guess the charger will require either a new circuit in the house or a capacitor to store the charge. Wait a minute, a charger for the charger?

Because...

[Trolling4Dollars]

Why is it that I'm not holding my breath to have this technology in a laptop?

Because carrying around a human being in a por with life sustaining fluids being pumped in through tubules and feeding a fake virtual world to imprint on his consciousness until he realizes that he's not living in the real world after taking the right pill is just not as portable as today's batteries. ;P

Re:Because...

[Trolling4Dollars]

Damn. That was supposed to be 'pod' not 'por'. Oh well... I have FAILED IT yet again.

Re:Because...

[Progman3K]

Dude, I like The Matrix too, but you're REALLY reaching here.

Maybe time to go outside and play? ;-)

Re:Because...

[Tlosk]

You know that in the original script the humans were used for processing power, organic servers if you will.

The change to humans being used as energy sources was forced upon the Brothers by the studio as the studio felt the common movie goer wouldn't be able to grasp the concept and felt it should be dumbed down, regardless of the fact that it now makes no sense.

What about the electric Car.

[jellomizer]

The article states it is good for Hibrid cars what about electrical ones. I thought a Major problem with electric cars is the time it takes to recharge thus making them impractical in long drives.

Re:What about the electric Car.

[cgenman]

Well, that would be assuming you had recharging stations along the way. As you don't the limited battery capacity is really the limiter of the distance an electric car can go. Hybrid cars, on the other hand, recharge and exhaust batteries repeatedly in any given drive. The ability to absorb a large amount of energy and return it at will would be ideal.

Re:What about the electric Car.

[Spolster]

In the short-term you are correct, but a major limiting factor for the introduction of electric cars is that no one wants to wait for an hour to recharge their car half-way through a long journey. Until an electric car can be recharged in the same amount of time as it takes to refuel a petrol or diesel car people are going to be put off by the inconvienience of long recharge times - this technology looks like it could solve that problem. Now, it doesn't mean that widespread use of electric cars is imminent, but it's one less hurdle on the path to their adoption.

Re:What about the electric Car.

[Judebert]

Actually, I'm building an EV right now. (You can check out my conversion diary at my website.) With big enough chargers, we can charge modern batteries quite quickly; one hour is enough to get 80% charge, and the other 20% can be obtained in two more hours. The two problems are the heat (you can boil/melt your battery pack) and the low current capacity of most wall outlets.

Still, I'd love to have these batteries. With their severe discharge capabilities, I could be breaking axles drag racing at NEDRA activities. Watch out, Wayland!

Re:What about the electric Car.

[juhaz]

Even if the batteries themselves could be recharged in 30 seconds, it would probably be rather ... problematic for the recharging station itself to put up with that kind of power demands on such short time.

Re:What about the electric Car.

[solasola]

The quick recharge rate is only one of the advantages of this battery type which makes it ideal for electric and hybrid cars. The other is the relatively high energy density. I don't remember which site had this info but this new battery has about 250 Whr/kg density. Electric cars would have acceptable ranges at 300 Whr/kg which is not far from the capabilities of the organic radical battery. Together with an efficient solar cell, this battery would make an electric car VERY efficient. See some more info about this here: http://www.benerridge.freeserve.co.uk/ecot.htm

Hot!

[jmckinney]

Ow! Hot! Hothothothot!

I know why

[QuantumFTL]

Why is it that I'm not holding my breath to have this technology in a laptop?

Hmm... Lets look at the numbers here... I'll use the numbers for my trusty 17" powerbook.

The power supply for charging the battery puts out about 60 Watts of power. The article mentions that instead of taking an hour to charge, these batteries only take half a minute. That's 120 times the power, which means the total power used by a charger for my laptop using these batteries would be...

7200 Watts! Holy hairdryers batman! With power consumptions like this, your athelon wouldn't be the only thing that's ON FIRE in your laptop!

And remember where we like to keep our laptops!

Cheers,
Justin

Re:I know why

[Hal-9001]

The power supply for charging the battery puts out about 60 Watts of power. The article mentions that instead of taking an hour to charge, these batteries only take half a minute. That's 120 times the power, which means the total power used by a charger for my laptop using these batteries would be...

7200 Watts! Holy hairdryers batman! With power consumptions like this, your athelon wouldn't be the only thing that's ON FIRE in your laptop!

You assume that all of the power used to charge the battery is dissipated as heat. If that were the case, rechargable batteries would be useless since that would mean the battery didn't store any of the energy you put into it. I think I agree that your qualitative conclusion, though; a 90% efficient rechargable battery would dissipate 720 watts of heat, which is still quite a bit of thermal energy.

Re:I know why

[QuantumFTL]

7200 Watts! Holy hairdryers batman! With power consumptions like this, your athelon wouldn't be the only thing that's ON FIRE in your laptop! You assume that all of the power used to charge the battery is dissipated as heat. If that were the case, rechargable batteries would be useless since that would mean the battery didn't store any of the energy you put into it. I think I agree that your qualitative conclusion, though; a 90% efficient rechargable battery would dissipate 720 watts of heat, which is still quite a bit of thermal energy.

Just for the record, I was going for a +5 funny. Not sure I'll make it though.

I never actually made reference to how much of the heat would be dissapated, however even 5% would be a rediculous amount of heat. If I'd have had the actual numbers I could have done thorough analysis... stupid reporters!

Cheers,
Justin

some calculations

[thorgil]

my laptop battery is a 4400 mAh at 14.8 V
4.4 Ah * 3600 sek *14.8 -> 234432 Ws
(Whow a palindrome number... coool)

divide this at the recharge time
30 sek
~ 7.8 kW

I live in an appartment.
My outlets cant handle that much..

+ Needs heck of an transformer to handle that effect. /T

Re:some calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

Theory time, maybe they'll use a big fat capacitor to warm-up the recharger. You'd need to have that recharger plugged in for a while to get those 30 second recharges. This would also discourage the curious from popping the cover on the recharger lest they want to risk blowing a few fingers off from an accidental short. Next question, are there any home-use capacitors capable of holding that kind of load?

Re:some calculations

[bobthemuse]

30 sek
~ 7.8 kW I live in an appartment.
My outlets cant handle that much..

Just because they have a 30 second recharge time for a particular capacity, doesn't mean that *every* capacity battery will charge in that time. I somehow doubt that their first development batteries store 4400 mAh. Just judging by the size of the picture, their storage density would have to be more than twice that of existing laptop batteries. Think first, then post.

Re:some calculations

[Rich0]

In other words you have to recharge your recharger for an hour before you can charge your battery in 10 minutes...

Not that this is really a problem - since your recharger doesn't have to be mobile. I just liked the irony of how that sounds...

Re:some calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can charge your charger and take it with you to re-charge your battery

Re:Recharge in 30 sec

[Achoi77]

I'm more concerned about how much power is going to be needed to fully charge one of these babies.

And also how long will the batter life last? I don't wanna change batteries on my cellphone/laptop more than I havta change my underwear.

Also, if this thing catches on, could this be used in electric cars, maybe as the 'oil for the new millenium'? All we could have to do is charge every once in a while, and change batteries every weekend.

NIMH?

[abram10]

Is that National Institute of Mental Health (I'm serious; I don't know what it means. (I know it's NOT that!))?

Re:NIMH?

[Anonymous Coward]

NiMH = Nickel Metal Hydride

Re:NIMH?

[Ithika]

I think he means NiMH, as in "Nickel Metal Hydride" (I think that's the spelling anyway.)

Re:NIMH?

[The I Shing]

NIMH stands for "Not in my house," like when someone wants to build a landfill in your living room.

Re:NIMH?

[Jim Morash]

NIMH?

I'm afraid it's secret.

actually, it stands for Nickel-Metal Hydride

Re:NIMH?

[Anonymous Coward]

NIckel Metal Hydroxide. AN alternative to Nickel-Cadmium batteries developed in the last decade. More environmentally friendly.

Re:NIMH?

[Rick Genter]

NiMH = Nickel Metal Hydride. It is the technology used in many of today's rechargeable batteries.

Personally, I'd be more excited if a company announced a battery that would run a laptop for 80 hours.

Re:NIMH?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nickel Metal Hydride

Re:NIMH?

[Figaro]

Nickel Metal Hydride = NiMH

Re:NIMH?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nickel Metal Hydride is what it means!

or Not In My Hair for the pr0n concious

Re:NIMH?

[doppleganger871]

And another reply, let's see how long we can make this sucker...

Ni-Kel Met-Ul Hi-Dreyed.

Re:NIMH?

[goodhell]

(OK off-topic I know, but ahhh childhood memories)

I know, tons of people have told you the right answer. But reading your post reminded me of 'The Secret of NIMH'. I loved that cartoon! Still do as a matter of fact. Kind of a dark cartoon for a kid.

It was based on 'Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH' by Robert C. O'Brien.

Re:NIMH?

[digital bath]

I loved those books when I was a kid. I used to love the movie, too.

On a whim I downloaded it and watched it, only to realize how stupid it really is. Oh well, there goes another childhood memory.

Re:NIMH?

[tongue]

Actually i just watched it the other day, and I still think its a classic. perhaps a bit juvenile in spots, though that can be forgiven since it was a movie aimed at, well, juveniles--kids even. i thought it might even be a little heavy for the sub 8yo crowd, given that at least three characters actually die violently (not counting the mice from nimh, excluding jonathan frisby and the fat mouse whose name escapes me.)

yes, i'm enjoying my unemployment check.

Re:NIMH?

[Rainox]

Nickel-Metal Hydride battery.

Re:NIMH?

[abram10]

Oh, yeah! I read that in sixth grade. THe movie was nothing like it, but it was pretty good.

By the way, I knew what NiMH is. It just looked weird in all caps.

Its just too much power

[Anonymous Coward]

Women across the world will no longer have any use for man. 30 Second recharge cycles on their "digital modulation devices" will soon leave man completely obselete.

The analogue male will fall asleep at culmination with little memory or interest for the female species, the digital representation complete with organical radical power supplies will be available for use 15-30 seconds later with no signs of fatigue.

Hopefully someone soon will be able to design a recharge device for the human male. Until then Man is obselete.

Yikes!

[dpbsmith]

If we assume that these batteries have a capacity of 1000 mah, which seems like a reasonable figure since they say they can power an MP3 player for 80 hours, then charging it in 30 seconds implies that during the charging process it is accepting 120 watts.

a) That's not going to be any tiny little wall transformer doing the charging.

b)I sure hope they have the safety and quality assurance issues worked out, because if it doesn't shut off at the exact instant when the battery is fully charged, that 120 watts is going to go somewhere.

It might not be much more dangerous than a firecracker but I suspect it could be pretty dramatic.

Re:Yikes!

[jone1941]

Read the article again, it isn't an MP3 player, it is a minidisc player. That is a huge difference. My lowend mp3 player runs for ~10hrs on a single AA battery, compare that to a minidisc player that runs for ~50hrs on a single AA battery. There is a world of difference between these two devices.

Re:Yikes!

[Rich0]

He said 1000 mAh. That is about what a AA NiMH battery holds. Actually, the ones I buy hold 1600-2000mAh - they're the better quality ones, but nothing you can't get at Walmart.

You could probably get 1000mAh into a AAA battery if it were well-designed.

So yes, his concerns are valid.

And if you wanted to charge a car like this, you'd need one heck of a charger!

Re:Yikes!

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the key word here is 'can'

Re:Yikes!

[Raven42rac]

One would assume it would go to ~90% then trickle until it reaches 100%.

Re:Yikes!

[barawn]

NiMH batteries are actually very low energy density: an alkaline battery has like 3400-4000 mAh (for low discharge currents - an alkaline's main problem is its high internal resistance, which means pathetically low energy density for high discharge currents).

Lithium batteries have the energy density of alkalines (3000 or so mAh), and even higher discharge currents than NiMH, but not rechargable in the AA packages (Yes, lithiums are best for digital cameras).

AAA alkaline and lithiums will easily hold 1000 mAh - without even being well-designed (NiMH AAAs typically hold between 400-700 mAh).

Re:Yikes!

[evilviper]

NiMH batteries are actually very low energy density: an alkaline battery has like 3400-4000 mAh

I don't believe that at all. I know the 1100mAH NiCad batteries I bought may years ago would last just as long as Alkaline batteries, in low or high-drain devices. My Sony CD player that was rated as 20 hours on 2 AA battiers ran for about 19 hours on two 1.25V 1100mAH NiCads. So, I assumed Alkalines are ~ 1200mAH.

This theory is only further supported by my 2000mAH NiMH batteries working in my portable devices for nearly twice as long as the rated Alkaline battery life.

If you've got somee evidence, other than just your word, please prove me wrong.

Why UPS units need this...

[Baron_Yam]

If you've ever had the misfortune of keeping a server up and running while there is major construction going on nearby, you know you can get multiple blackouts of varying duration.

I like to use a UPS to support a server to the last safe second with enough time for an orderly shutdown... but I can't, because I need to know the UPS will last through at least two consecutive blackouts without time to recharge.

Now, with a 30 second recharge, servers under my care could survive twice the blackout duration without increasing the risk of a sudden shutdown.

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Wakkow]

"I need to know the UPS will last through at least two consecutive blackouts without time to recharge."

Why not use UPS's with double the VA rating than the ones you currently have?

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Baron_Yam]

It's not that I'm trying to get a specific length of time out of a given UPS, but that I'm trying to get the *maximum* time out of *any* UPS.

Having to use only 1/2 the runtime against the possiblity of consecutive blackouts bugs me.

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Cecil]

That's terrible for the batteries you know. SLA batteries are notorious for poor full-discharge performance. You can get deep-cycle batteries which work better with long discharge cycles, but even these will last longer if you only discharge them as much as necessary.

If you really need maximum uptime, you should be using a generator. Large up-front cost, but it'll save you many batteries and headaches in the long run. UPSes are intended to prevent the power from being suddenly interrupted. They are not backup power supplies, even if they are frequently marketed as such.

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Baron_Yam]

During the Great North West Blackout, my UPS kept my home server running for almost 10 hours; an old UPS with no functioning data connection to the server, the server didn't know to shut down and I forgot.

I'd plugged an extension cord in and was using it to play DVDs on my laptop when the 'low battery' alarm went off. I missed the end of 'Spaced Invaders' and had to sit in the candle-banished darkness with the rest of the shmoes.

So, in some cases, a UPS *can* be a backup power supply, but only if the admin isn't an idiot!

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh. and you think your power supply from upstream (wall outlet?) will give you the suffient throughput to fill up your ups in 30 seconds? :)

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Beatbyte]

Why not use UPS's with double the VA rating than the ones you currently have?

When he was building his new batteries with this technology, he accidentally burnt down his money tree :-(

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Jason Hood]

That sounds like a great idea until you realize how much current would be needed to recharge a battery that recharges in say a minute whereas under normal supply adequate power for 60 minutes to its users. That is more than 60x the normal operating current once that power gets turned back on and your battery starts recharging. Your equipment would still be running and your battery would be recharging at an astronomical rate.

You would have to have some serious power service to your home/office and to that power outlet. Imagine having 4 UPSs on a 20A line and they all kick on to recharge. I would think just one would flip a breaker a 20A line let alone 5.

I dont feel like punching numbers, maybe someone else will.

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[gunnmjk]

That makes me think about the possibilities. With batteries that can charge so QUICKLY, why stop at simply UPS for computers?
What if they made a battery large enough to be used as a backup generater for a hospital, for example. But why stop there!?

Instead of being simply a "backup" generator, why not have a massive battery, that powers the entire hospital? This battery could automatically do it's quick recharge at certain intervals to insure that the hospital has enough power to last for the next month or so.
Now, what if they placed these quick charge batteries in everything we need electricity for? Electricity grids would receive less stress throughout the day and would have to start operating more efficiently. Think of the possibilities there are.

Sorry, kind of a tangant, but the idea seems really cool

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Cecil]

I don't argue that they *can* be backup powersupplies. I'm saying that they shouldn't be, if you care about the rather expensive batteries. If you do it once, no big deal. In fact you may want to run them down from time to time just to get an idea of whether the batteries are going to need replacing soon.

On the other hand, if you're running them bone-dry more than once a month, I can nearly guarantee it'd be cheaper to get a generator. They're not designed to be run dry on a regular basis, and it will severely shorten the lifetime of the batteries.

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about recharging it with another of these UPS; 30 secs per recharge youll be running them forever

Re:Why UPS units need this...

[CharlieHedlin]

I solved the problem buy using UPS's that have a battery remaining readout instead of an on battery signal, and go to 10%, if the computer comes back on and then the power fails again, it shuts down as soon as it hits 10%.

Now to be able to charge quickly is still a good thing, but it doesn't seem like the best place for these batteries. I want them in my laptop.

Old press release

[guido1]

Found an old press release from '01 on NEC's web site documenting the discovery of this battery technology.

With this latest (today's) press release it sounds like they're finally ready for product.

Re:Old press release

[spotteddog]

Cool - 70Ah per kilogram. Makes all those power hungry mobile devices possible. Now they don't have to worry about processor power consumption, just cooling!!

My laptop battery will go from 0.4 kg and 4Ah to either 28Ah or it will go to 0.06 kg (I think the plastic battery case has more mass than that).

If we go the 28Ah route, the battery will last between 14 and 21 hours.

Re:Old press release

[cybermace5]

Well, there's bit of a problem with that calculation, the problem being that it's totally wrong.

70 amp hours a kilogram is at 3.5 volts. The battery pack in my laptop puts out about 14 volts. So to get the same voltage, you'll have to quarter the amp hours. So...17.5 amp hours per kilogram at 14 volts. At .4 kilograms, the capacity is now 7,000maH. That's pretty nice, assuming that maximum is actually possible, but it's not even twice the power density. Not anywhere close to the sevenfold power density you were hoping for.

Again, the storage ability is not incredibly amazing, the unique feature is the quick-charging and discharging. We'll still have to look to fuel cells in order to get our laptop battery lives up over a few hours.

Re:Old press release

[spotteddog]

I was going for sensationalism, but since you tool the troll bait:

My laptop uses a Li-ion battery now. Most lithium ion cells have a 3.6V nominal rating with a 4.2V full charge rating ( Panasonic ). This release claims 4V for the new technology. (FYI the new technology uses either a Lithium or graphite anode, and is based off current lithium ion technology.) Most likely both would use the same number of cells.

If they went for the greater number of charge cycles at maximum capacity, they would use a graphite anode. This reduces the voltage to 3.5V and might mean an extra cell is added to the pack.

The proper comparison should be Watt-Hours / kilogram. Then we don't care about the terminal voltage. For the new battery that works out to 3.5V * 70Ah/kg = 245 Wh/kg. For my laptop it is 14.4V * 4Ah / 0.4kg = 144 Wh/kg. A bit less than 2x. (By the way, watt hours / kg is a really weird dimension - it reduces to square meters per second.)

Either way, battery life would be greater for the same total battery weight. A more conservative estimate would be 4-6 hours. Still a big improvement. Add in the expected price to be equal, and the fast recharge time (you are not going to charge the battery in 30 sec - you'd pull way too much current doing it)

Re:Old press release

[cybermace5]

How is that not exactly what I just said? And I've never seen someone claim that they were trolling rather than admit they were wrong.

Some side effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Occasionally these organic radical batteries will burn down your SUV and they're constantly complaining every time you eat pork chops or wear fur.

Re:Some side effects

[doppleganger871]

Bahahahahahah!

-The Enemy Within-

perhaps you assume too much

[way2trivial]

it does not say it uses electricity to recharge.

perhaps a 30 second recharge means, opening a cap, dumping the contents, and refilling it.. (no heat involved)

note the words organic and resin

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[budhaboy]

Good point.

Consider this quote:

NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home

if it was electricity, wouldn't the creation of a recharger be trivial?

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[bobbozzo]

if it was electricity, wouldn't the creation of a recharger be trivial?

Unless it needs liquid helium cooling! :p

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Golias]

perhaps a 30 second recharge means, opening a cap, dumping the contents, and refilling it.. (no heat involved)

In other words, it's essentially an empty vessel which you drop a non-rechargable (liquid) battery into?

That would be far less impressive.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[nrlightfoot]

liquid helium isn't a good coolant, becuase it's heat capacity is very low. Liquid nitrogen is a much better coolant, and it's also much cheaper. Besides, that battery might not even work at 77k, much less at 4k.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[rgmoore]

if it was electricity, wouldn't the creation of a recharger be trivial?

Not necessarily; there are some practical problems with this kind of charger. Consider that a typical AA NiMH battery has a charging capacity of about 2 Ah at a voltage of 1.2 V. That's 2 Ah * 3600 s/h * 1.2 V = 8640 J. To charge that in 30 seconds, you need 8640 J / 30 s = 288 W, and that's assuming no losses anywhere. If you want to recharge 4 batteries at a time, you'll need a charger that draws 10+ amps of 120 VAC. A single D battery can have a capacity of up to 11 Ah, so you'd need about 1600 W to recharge one in 30 s. That means that a dual battery charger would draw over 25 amps at 120 VAC. Since most wall sockets are only rated at 15 amps, you'd need a dedicated circut for your charger! It's not an insurmountable problem, but it would make this style of battery a bit less practical.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Oculus Habent]

The concept is great, but this is a potential problem with widespread use. They say their first market is Uninterruptible Power Supplies. The short recharge time is great, except the load during that short time will be tremendous.

Your servers draw 100 amps max? When the power comes back on and all your batteries need to recharge at once, expect a serious spike. I'm not an EE, but if it takes 30 seconds compared to 8 hours, that's 960 times faster, which means 960 times the load per unit of time.

Accountants as hosting companies will cry every time the power flickers, as the demand charges shoot up 800%

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Annirak]

Perhaps, then the charger will store a large quantity of charge in high-capacity storag capacitors (you know... the multi-Farad ones) and then charge the batteries very quickly. Downside is you'd have to leave your charger plugged in while you weren't using it, and you could only charge a battery once in a while.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Anonymous Coward]

At 30secs I think I could charge one battery at a time?

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Sparr0]

If you know where to get AA batteries with 2Ah of capacity you are soon to be a rich man. The RC Plane community will beat a path to your door. FYI, AAs never hold over 1Ah, and usually far less than that depending on quality.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[rgmoore]

I think that you're thinking exclusively of NiCd batteries, which typically have much lower capacities than NiMH. Most AA NiMH batteries have a capacity in the 2 Ah range. They may not be able to discharge as fast as RC plane people want, though.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[neonleonb]

I am soon to be a rich man!

I found some here.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, at 288 watts and 1.2 volts. You probably need a cable as big as your big toe. You think the small button top of the battery can handle this current?

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.onlybatterypacks.com/

Plenty of 2Ah batteries. They weigh more though.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Ironsides]

ok, a couple of things.

Standard household breakers are rated at 20 amps, but they would configure these to use less than that. Also, your ovens, old microwaves and driers (some washers as well) have their own ciruit from the amount of current they draw. In a company that has servers that draw a lot of current, they are running special thick wire that supports extra current.

Accountants crying:
As long as the power isn't off for too long, the demand won't shoot up much. If the power is off for a second, it will take a milisecond or less to recharge. So it will NOT drive up the electricity bills any more than they were. Where this might be a problem is in tripping the local area power grid from too much load. We need a Power EE to answere that one.

Where this also might be a problem is what happens when you have these things in a UPS and a generator for extended power and a few aren't fully charged. The generator will crap out pretty quickly.

As to heat created, The amount of heat created will be equal to Volts*current-(Amount absorbed into the battery). Efficiency will be (Amount Abosorbed)/(Volts*Current). So if it has a high efficiency, there will be very little heat released.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[GoRK]

The other solution for a home-type charger would be to keep a large device like an ultracapacitor or big lead acid battery at the ready to deliver the juice when you need to charge a few batteries. This device could be charged at leisure. Getting enough energy out of a car battery, for instance, to charge a whole bunch of D cells is a pretty moderate cycle. They can deliver a lot of amps and they hold a lot more energy. It would last a long time. In an industrial application such as tool batteries at construction sites etc could be run with bigger, beefier chargers that draw directly from the grid.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[conan776]

No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need....

Flux-capacitor... fluxing...

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[fferreres]

I bought some Sanyo 2.8Ah batteries in MEXICO two months ago (Model N-3US, 14-16hs charge time at 280mA), and 2.0Ah some years ago. All of them Sanyo.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[lga]

That means that a dual battery charger would draw over 25 amps at 120 VAC.

Hopefully that will only hold up the launch in the USA, since most of the rest of the world uses over 220 volts. In Britain we have 230V 3KW sockets.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[clonan]

But, what if they included a similar battery in the charger.

Use the chargers battery to recarge the inserted batteries. When the recharger is idle it can store power in it's battery.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[cowtamer]

The best batterry I've found is Rayovac's 15 minute rechargable batteries that hold 2Ah.

http://www.rayovac.com/15minutes/qa.html#1

They do get kind of warm while recharging, but seem to last twice as long as Duracell's best Alkaline batterry in my digital camera.

Re:perhaps you assume too much

[Cyberdyne]

liquid helium isn't a good coolant, becuase it's heat capacity is very low. Liquid nitrogen is a much better coolant, and it's also much cheaper. Besides, that battery might not even work at 77k, much less at 4k.

If you just want to make/keep something "very cold", liquid nitrogen's much better: very cheap, and very effective. For some scientific applications though, you double-cool: put the subject in liquid nitrogen (which brings it down to 77k), then you cool the liquid nitrogen to 4k with liquid helium. (Used for direct cooling, the liquid nitrogen would be boiling, which screws up some experiments, including MRI scans IIRC; with liquid helium as well, the helium boils instead, keeping the nitrogen as a stable liquid.)

Laptop Charger 15,000 Watt

[jacksdl]

Is my math off here? 7 amp-hr 18 volt laptop battery recharges in 30 seconds. hmmmm...

To recharge we would (with perfect efficiency) need to charge at a rate of 840 amps for those 30 seconds.

18 volts x 840 amps = 15120 watts.

Just use the 480 volt outlet...

New Applications?

[cookie_cutter]

The write-up mentions how this will improve current battery using applications, but I'm wondering what completely new applications this might make possible, potential products which were completely infeasible with slow charge times.

Any ideas?

more info

[vittal]

http://www2.electrochem.org/cgi-bin/abs?mtg=012&ab s=0186&type=pdf
Abs. 186, IMLB 12 Meeting, (C) 2004 The Electrochemical Society, Inc.

Organic Radical Battery:
Transition-metal free Lithium-ion Battery

Kentaro Nakahara, Jiro Iriyama, Shigeyuki Iwasa, Masahiro Suguro and Masaharu Satoh

Fundamental & Environmental Research Laboratories
NEC Corporation

organic = gas?

[whitelabrat]

Isn't gasoline organic? Isn't a fuel cell "rechargeable".

That would be great if they made a battery that recharged off of human methane emissions... heh.

NiMH!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's Nickel Metal Hydride.

This would be...

[vsack]

A good compliment to my current laptop battery which, at 3 years of age, discharges in under 30 seconds.

Nickel Metal-hydride

[tsanth]

References here and here.

what about fuel cells?

[MoFoQ]

with fuel cells, it's just "pour". It's hard to beat that....(only batteries that charge themselves will beat pouring).

Of course, if it can be recharged in less than 30s, I wonder how much current the charger needs to do that. 1800mAh (capacity of most AA NiMH batteries) in 30secs would mean 1800mAh x 3600s/h x 1/30s = 216A. Or maybe instead of being continuous current, it's pulsed?

Either way, I'll wait until it's out on the market.

Re:what about fuel cells?

[smithmc]

Either way, I'll wait until it's out on the market.

Well, gee, so will everyone else, I'd imagine...

Re:what about fuel cells?

[MoFoQ]

"Either way, I'll wait until it's out on the market. ...before making snap judgments" is what I meant.....

Yay for R/C Helicopters

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been stuck with NiCad, NiMH for a while for Raido Control Aircraft... The Helicopters only get about 8 minutes of flying time on typical NiCads. Recently, LiPoly (That's Lithium Polymer) batteries were developed. They use the same technology of laptop batteries, but can discharge power at 5C or more, yielding flight times of 20-30 minutes. Unfortunatly, they cost about $200 on average... (High current is needed for the brushless electric motors that put out nearly 1 horsepower) The LiPoly's typically take 2 hours to charge to 80% charge of their energy density. The shorter flight times of NiMH wouldn't be bad if #1 they charged faster & #2 the could discharge faster. If your interested in electic helicopters and the like you can check out this site: http://www.ezonemag.com or http://runryder.com both have great info on electric models.

Elephant sized Bunny?

[Allen Zadr]

Article seems to speak nothing of the size of these things (I'm thinking BIG). Otherwise, since the marketing is looking at 'emergency' power, air batteries come to mind. Perhaps these things don't recharge very many times before dying a permanant death (less usefull than Nickel-Cadnium).

Re:Elephant sized Bunny?

[randmairs]

I read one of the abstracts on this battery at http://www2.electrochem.org/cgi-bin/abs?mtg=012&ab s=0186&type=pdf In the paper, it says that the specific capacity declines to 92% in one thousand cycles while the graph it references shows a decline to 92% in one hundred cycles. Either some one did not do a very good job proof reading their abstract or the decline stops at around 92% and stays there for another 900 cycles. If the later, then they have a really good technology going for them.

The specific energy works out to be 245Wh/kg. Which means that 2.2 lbs of battery could propel a small SUV that uses 300 Wh/mi 0.81 miles or 1100 pounds of battery could propel the car for 400 miles with the possibility of a quick recharge. This means we are getting closer to having viable electric vehicles. Cost of the battery will be the key.

The memory effect problems of nickel-cadmium batteries have been worked out.

Re:Elephant sized Bunny?

[Allen Zadr]

randmairs said: The memory effect problems of nickel-cadmium batteries have been worked out.

If that's true, that's really cool, but I thought that the memory effect proplems of Nickel-Cadmium were worked out by dropping the cadmium and adding Metal-Hydroxide.

s/athelon/Athlon/g

[Gothmolly]

Your post falls into the same category as those described by Schernau's Law (any use of the word " 'puter " automatically invalidates your post). Its Athlon. Not Athalon. Not Althalon. Not Athelon.

And "signing" your post with a real human name doesn't give it any more credibility.

Re:s/athelon/Athlon/g

[Anonymous Coward]

well I guess you told him. Feel better now?

You don't have to

[RAMMS EIN]

Well, just because you _can_ charge them in 30 seconds doesn't mean you _have to_.

Hey hey, all right!

[Douglas Simmons]

This is like flying your F-16 behind a KC-135R Stratotanker for a quick refill.

With all the improvements in technology, the only thing majorly lagging has been battery performance -- something critical as we're going mobile everything. The only reason I've never bought a laptop is because the damn things die so fast that there's basically no point when you can just wait until you get back to your desktop. All this fuel-cell/fission battery nonsense has struck me as vaporware at best, I hope this is for real.

My question is if a battery can be refilled that fast, how much juice is needed for the job? More than what a 12-volt adapter would put out? If it's small enough, you could conceivably put your own "Stratotanker" in your suitcase and refill your batteries on the road with no need for a power outlet.

Oh yeah, and all these silly electric cars could now become practical. You could recharge your vehical faster than a conventional gas pump. Way to go, NEC! Bring on the radical batteries.

Re:Hey hey, all right!

[rritterson]

Can you imagine the power drain a car would do recharging in 30 seconds!

It takes 5-6 gallons of gas to generate that much energy, without the cost of converting it to electricity. That's a load on the grid for sure.

Even with 100% efficiency the current is so huge

[poszi]

that the chargers for this kind of batteries would be enormous. 1000mAh charged with 100% efficiency for 30s requires 120A. This is like starting a car engine. No reasonably portable charger can provide this current.

Depends on the battery charging efficiency.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I saw no mention of the level of heat generated when charging a battery this fast. I haven't worked out any equations, but I was under the impression that there was a certain amount of heat generated per unit of time when charging / discharging batteries.

That depends on the efficiency of the charging process in the battery.

The heat generated is the main limit on charging rate, so I suspect that these puppies have VERY little internal loss when being charged.

The result will be that even when packaged you won't have a lot of problems with charging heat. If they don't get hot enough to damage the "organic resin" in their own guts, your nearby circuitry should be safe.

This also implies low losses for the total cycle. That will be very good for the automotive application. As will the lack of anything rarer than Nickel in their construction.

Nickel-cadmium would have been much better than lead-acid for automotive starter batteries - but that never took over for that service. That's because, if you wanted to put a NiCad starter battery into every car in service even back in the '60s there just wasn't enough readily-minable cadmium reserves known to do the job. It only appears in nature as an impurity in zinc. (So don't even think of making enough NiCad batteries to replace the engines).

Re:Depends on the battery charging efficiency.

[Annirak]

in the '60s there just wasn't enough readily-minable cadmium reserves known to do the job

How about the "little" issue with battery memory? Car batteries are float charged. And they're used as filtering for the incredibly noisy electrical environment of a car.

NiCd batteries will lose all ability to retain a charge if you put them in a float charge scenario, and they'll be mighty poor at starting a car if they're used any other way.

The lack of available cadmium may have a lot to do with it, but I think battery memory also played a major role.

Interesting?!?!

[Lord Kano]

STFU!
RTFA!

In 30 seconds of reading you can find out that NEC estimates up to 80 hours in MD players.

LK

My Organic Batteries

[Analogy Man]

It takes me about 10 days of listening to rolling surf sipping rum drinks with little umbrellas to recharge my organic batteries.

Re:My Organic Batteries

[Antity-H]

Wow, gotta tell me what your retailer is !!
My organic batteries require me to absorb food three times a day and power down about 8hours to recharge :(
So please, please tell me where I can find the like of yours !

What about expanding the upper limit?

[Have Blue]

How big are these batteries compared to standard laptop cells? Would it be possible to expand in the other direction, by keeping the charge time around today's levels but greatly increasing the discharge time? I wouldn't mind charging my laptop for the usual 3 or 4 hours if I can use it for a day or more without having to plug in again.

Accding to Wikipedia...

[Savage-Rabbit]

so...the batteries will be cheap, but the recharger will be the moneymaker? Am i correct in my assumption.


The proper format for this sort of troll is:

1. Design cheap rapidly rechargable battery.
2. Design obscenely expensive recharger.
3. Patent it back to front to ensure monopoly.
4. ???
5a. Profit!

If Microsoft,SCO or RIAA are involved you might consider using:

5b. World domination, elimination of democracy and the enslavement of mankind!

What about all that current?

[AtlanticGiraffe]

Somebody mentioned heat generation. What about other issues regarding the current? If that much energy were to be drawn from a single power socket in my house in 30 seconds, something would break. Even if it had wires thick enough and some cooling unit for the battery, a fuse would break. How do they deal with this?

Re:What about all that current?

[babyrat]

They would simply charge the battery at a lower current - as someone else pointed out, just because you can, doesn't mean you have to.

And charging a couple of AA's in a minute wouldn't be a problem with standard household current. It'd work for me - especially for things like my mp3 player and bicycle light that don't have super large capacity batteries.

For my RC Airplanes I'd be happy with something that charged at a rate close to the discharge rate so that only two sets of batteries would be necessary to fly 'forever' without having to wait for batteries to charge.

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[G4from128k]

To get a full charge in 30 seconds, you would need a charging current of 600 amps (!!)

But those numbers came out of my ass. We need real values...

Yes, the recharge current for a 5 Ahr battery would be at least 600 Amps. If the laptop battery runs at 14 volts, that means that one would need at least a 8400 watt recharger - a solid 70 Amps on a 120 AC circuit.

As for heat, its more likely that the battery will dissipate a percentage of the input as heat. My understanding is that batteries are only about 80% efficient during a recharge -- suggesting that the fast-charge batteries will dissipate at least 1680 watts. In reality, cell resistance will make this even worse.

Ultra fast charging is a nice idea, but, except with very small batteries, this is not at all practical.

Amperages?

[Spazmania]

30 seconds eh? My laptop battery (HP Pavilion Notebook) delivers 11.1 volts and holds a charge of 3.8 amp-hours. Lets do a little math.

3.6 amp-hours * 3600 seconds/hour = 12960 amp-seconds
12960 amp-seconds * 11.1 volts = 143856 watt-seconds

As a US resident, I'll be charging from a 120 volt source. I'll skip the AC to DC intricacies and for the sake of simplicity I'll also assume a 1:1 charging efficiency (i.e. no energy lost to heat).

143856 watt-seconds / 30 seconds ~= 4800 watts
4800 watts / 120 volts = 40 amps

Now, your typical household circuit is 15 amps. Try to charge that laptop battery in 30 seconds and you're going to throw the breaker.

Re:Amperages?

[AtlanticGiraffe]

That's exactly what I thought. Typical household circuits simply cannot do that. So, will I have to go downstairs and plug my laptop right into the breakout box, to a special plug marked "50A"? Then there's always the plug for the oven in the kitchen. That should have a few extra amps. But even if I get enough power, how will the wiring in this thing not melt with all that current? Those who have installed serious car stereo systems should know what kind of wiring it takes to move 40 amps. That stuff is never getting into my laptop, or any laptop for that matter!

Re:Amperages?

[RedWizzard]

The press release talks about MD players. Nowhere does it say they expect to be able to recharge a laptop battery in 30s. Your calculation is all well and good, but completely irrelevant.

Re:Amperages?

[Anonymous Coward]

11.1 volts to power a MD player seems a bit excessive. Let's say you have a 1850 mAh battery at 1.2 volts, a typical NIMH AA battery. By the same method of calculation, that would create a 2.2 amp current draw, which is still quite high for a little battery. I would be pretty concerned about it overheating or exploding. Still, that's a lot more reasonable than 40 amps.

laptop fuel cells are supposedly imminent

[openSoar]

Samsung is promising this one sometime this year - 10 hours on a single shot of methanol - if only i could do the same ;)

Linkized

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www2.electrochem.org/cgi-bin/abs?mtg=012&ab s=0186&type=pdf

Eh?

[zeet]

If it's a 1.5v battery, 120A is 180 watts. That doesn't strike me as a terribly large amount of power. Besides, if it were, why not charge the batteries in two minutes instead? Then you only need 30A.

Re:Eh?

[tomstdenis]

180W can be over 100C [hint: an 80W Athlon can hit over 100C].

That may be bad for a battery to be running that hot.

Re:Eh?

[karnal]

But not all 180W is dissapated into heat. A good majority of that power would be put into storage inside the battery.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

To carry 120A you'd need about a 6 gauge wire. The voltage and watts don't matter. Seriously.

Re:Eh?

[tomstdenis]

I'm sure it would actually. hell a 150mAh charger produces [I'd guestimate] about 20C of heat over ambient in my AA NiMH. So chances are good that a 120Ah charger would produce much more heat.

Let's not forget that the battery actually resists being charged [hence the heat]. So it's not like you can just dump a shitload current on a battery and have it all absorbed instantly....

Tom

Re:Eh?

[pedrop357]

Great, now I have to watercool my battery charger?

here is the catch

[Anonymous Coward]

"NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell."

Yeah, and if you can slow down a lightning bolt you can solve the energy crisis. I knew there had to be a catch in there somewhere. As someone else here suspected, this seems to behave more like a capacitor than a battery (although it isn't really storing the energy the way a capacitor does).

All well. :P

Rayovac IC-3 NiMH -- 15 minute Charge

[yetiman]

I use them in all of my portable devices (mp3 players, digital camera, minidisc, discmans etc) and they are by far the best battery I've ever used.

Full charge in 15 minutes, or i believe it's a 75% charge in eight minutes. I know wal-mart carries them...check them out.

Re:Rayovac IC-3 NiMH -- 15 minute Charge

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the iC-3 15-min rechargeable AA cells have 2000 MAh capacity!! I have a r/c truck which runs on 4 AAs.. My friend has the same vehicle, and he purchased a 7.2V hop-up NiMH battery pack. The iC-3 AAs I'm using have 2000 MAh (4 cells, 6V total) compared to his $50 hop-up pack with 1600MAh (6 cells, 7.2V total) and my car still runs circles around his!

--A. Weasel

Re:Rayovac IC-3 NiMH -- 15 minute Charge

[geniusj]

I have these batteries as well.. Amazing.. The interesting thing to me was that you can charge both regular NiMH and IC-3 NIMH batteries with their charger. However, when charging IC-3 batteries you get a nice loud fan that goes until it's charged (15 minutes).. And when you take them out they are practically burning up :).. Good stuff though. I personally got mine at RadioShack

Sorry, it was too easy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're only changing your underwear on the weekends, it's obvious why you have time to post!

Can we use it...

[Le'BottomEh]

Is it powerful enough to power a flux capacitor?

Dr.Brown? Your thoughts please...

Larger Applications

[Bruha]

NEC believes the battery can be used as an emergency power source for computers in case of blackouts as well as in hybrid cars driven by a gasoline engine and electric motor.

Can you imagine the fuel economy of a car with a small gas motor that can fully recharge your batterypack in a few seconds?

Also the post said I doubt that would be in a Laptop. We'll from the above statement it looks like it will make it into laptops.

Personally I cant wait. And these would be great for UPS's also.

Also what about electric tools such as table saws which would run a nil risk of cutting the cord and shocking someone.

Re:Larger Applications

[pclminion]

Can you imagine the fuel economy of a car with a small gas motor that can fully recharge your batterypack in a few seconds?

You don't have to imagine it. Cars in Germany get 60 or more miles to the gallon.

The way the US is so obsessed with hybrids, when there are perfectly conventional alternatives that get even better mileage off diesel fuel, is really ridiculous.

It's a freaking crime against the earth, really.

Re:Larger Applications

[doppleganger871]

Diesel fuel is just more power per volume... which is why it's more efficient. I agree, i'd love to see more diesel vechiles here in the US. I loved seeing the video of the 7000lb ford super duty truck beat the pants off of a Mazda rx-7. Of course, it had a cummins diesel in it, not an international.

But, anyhoo, diesel is becoming the hot-rodder's dream. Not only can you get oodles of torque and hp out of them, when you do, you often keep the same fuel economy, or increase it.

Imagine what a small 4-cylinder diesel with a large intercooler, turbo, and propane injection could do in a small vehicle, like a Jeep Liberty.

200HP isn't that far to reach.

Re:Larger Applications

[adamdeprince]

A gallon of diesel fuel isn't the same as a gallon of gasoline. Diesel fuel has more calories in that gallon. The production and combusion of that single gallon of diesel fuel is far more damaging to the environment. The concern over mpg ratings isn't over a lack of store space for the fuel - mpg ratings for diesel are not any more comparable to mpg ratings for, say for sake of arguement, natural gas at STP (in its gasious form, room temp, etc) or electric cars (look, zero fuel volume = infinite mpg!) The "proper" way to look at this issue is in terms of calories per mile, with handicapping for other side effects. It isn't too uncommon to see alternative fuels expressed in terms of mpg-gasoline equivalents ... something that isn't really that accurate because gasolines vary a tad in theri caloric content. 60mpg diesel is about the same as 54 mpg gas (well within the same ballpark as hybrids). Kudos to those who get such vehicles, but realize that such a vehicle is no alternative to a hybrid - they are slower and dirtier. I wouldn't go so far as to call a hybrid a crime against the earth ... that category is for Hummers. But I would call your 60mpg diesel a crime against pedestrians and anybody behind you.

Based on...

[BJZQ8]

Based on my R/C experience with Li-Poly batteries, I don't want to be around when one of these new batteries explodes...or, as some of the battery literature puts it, "violently decomposes."

Buchanan ate my homework

[Doc Ruby]

How do you turn in your homework without a paper receipt?

Great news!

[Mitchua]

Great news for all the single ladies out there :-)

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[pclminion]

If the laptop battery runs at 14 volts, that means that one would need at least a 8400 watt recharger - a solid 70 Amps on a 120 AC circuit.

I'll point out that home circuit breakers blow around 10 to 15 amps, so it would be physically impossible to run such a charger off a normal house circuit (and illegal and dangerous if you modified the fuses to allow it).

battery technology

[Cynikal]

i remember readng an article once that said if battery technology had advanced over the last 50 years as fast as electronics has (smaller/more power) that by today, a battery the size of a watch battery would be able to power your house.

its nice to see any kind of advancement in the powercell area

power to the people

[Doc Ruby]

Direct solar power. Battery is for the cops.

Takes a Real Genius to figure this out

[Anonymous Coward]

"The battery can also discharge power in a short time, making it useful in applications requiring a large amount of power."

Looks at the facts: very high power, portable, limited firing time, unlimited range. All you'd need is a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.

Not so hot.

[Fzz]

1200mAh. 1.2V. OK, so P=VI and P=E/t, so E=VIt.
Thus the battery holds about 1.2 * 3600 * 1.2 = about 5KJoules.

90% charge efficient means 500Joules as heat.

E = c * m * delta_T
where c = specific heat capacity, m = mass, delta_T = temperature change.

According to Sony, a AA battery is 30g. I don't know what the specific heat capacity of a battery is, but metals are between 0.1 and 0.9, and water is 4. Lets assume it's 1.0 J/gK.

delta_T = E/c*m = 500/(1.0 * 30) = 16 celcius.

That's about 30F for those of you who like odd units. Not such a big deal.

Of course the 90% number is drawn out of the air.

Re:Not so hot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to celcius, I don't think Fahrenheit is an odd unit at all. Now celsius, on the other hand ...

Re: What about plain electric vehicles?

[SirASCII]

I read all the threads about hybrid vehicle's, but in all actuality it sounds like you could use this technology to fully power a vehicle. It will have side affects, as in taking power off of the grid (as well as getting the power on to the grid in the first place), but we still have to look at our oil consumption... We could just pull up to a recharging station and recharge in the same amount of time as it takes to pump gas.

Actually, fast discharge technically called a...

[MickLinux]

... bomb. I wonder if they are recasting a bug as a feature. It would be oh, so appropriate on Windows machines, I think.

More predictions come true...from Demolition Man!

[fikx]

The article sais "...the new battery, which stores power in a special resin,...." that sounds liek the "capicitance gel" mentioned in the movie for the cars to run from. Just like the Arnold going into government, this too comes true!

Also, thinking about some of the posts about the discharge rate and EMP guns, rail guns, etc. That sounds liek some SciFi Ive read too. Something about weapon cells built into clips like bullets today....or maybe we've finally figured out what a "pulse rifle" is powered by (Aliens :)

Re:That's great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure he was pointing out the lack of battery lifetime in the story, you retarded monkey.

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[silverhalide]

I'll point out that the vast majority of household supplies have 240V / 2-phase power available, such as the power supplied to your dryer. At 240V, about 30-35A is drawn, which isn't too unreasonable a load for a 240V receptacle. (Your typical dryer or electric water heater pulls this much power).

What is the storage life of a charged cell?

[KJSwartz]

I tried to download the PDF file from the electrochemical society, but it obviously suffered from the Slashdot Effect. My question is how long can a charged cell maintain a decent charge when unused and disconnected from any circuit? I've seen my smart NiCd batteries work decently after being shelved 2 months.

Any such battery stat as a Shelf Half Life?

I am holding my breath!

[dwalsh]

"Why is it that I'm not holding my breath to have this technology in a laptop?"

Let's see why not:
HHHMMMFFF!!! ...

#@*( NO CARRIER

Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It seems to me that the limiting factor with recharging electric cars wasn't the batteries but the current supply.

Yep.

If you want to pull up at the pump and charge an electric car in about the same time as a gasoline car of similar range, you're talking about something like a thousand megawatts.

But the charging rate is a major breakthrough on another front: Regenerative braking! These new batteries can accept essentially all the power from stopping the car, to give it back for restarting it. That's MAJOR!

Electirc motors/generators can easily have inefficiencies in the small single-digit percentages. The rapid charging rate doesn't just mean the batteries can "drink the firehose" of energy from stopping a car, but that they can do it with VERY little loss (since the limit on charging rate is heating from losses).

With an electric transmission and a set of these batteries for "peaking" you could make a car that runs on anything but mountains with an under-20 horse engine and gets phenomonal MPGs.

Battery Recharge Time

[thepr0fess0r]

All these assumptions are made presuming that the battery will be recharged by a convential current flow recharger. There is nothing that suggests that the charging isn't done with some electric/magnetic field mechanism instead (read: alignment of magnetic domain, redistribution of charge in a lattice, etc...)

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[zorander]

Well, 30 seconds for a laptop might not be so reasonable, but how about ten minutes? It seems that if the technology is there for such an ultrafast recharge, it should be possible to slow it down (obviously only very special 120VAC outlets in the US will allow you to draw 70 amps). This would knock down our consumption to a much more reasonable 3.5 amps for ten minutes. Still quite a few watts, but not as unreasonable.

Also, laptop batteries have multiple cells. Perhaps they could be charged in series in an ordering such that adjacent batteries were not recharged in direct sequence, spreading the 'hot spots' out over time.

There seem to be a lot of ways to potentially slow down the recharge to make the technology more reasonable/scalable, while still having a relatively fast recharge. I'd love to be able to recharge my laptop in the ten minutes between classes, or go halfway in five. It would extend my percieved battery life incredibly. Getting to an outlet for a few minutes at a time is easy. An hour or two is more difficult, as lecture halls aren't wired.

I like the direction this is going...

Brian

Battery Life Time

[basking2]

I haven't seen anyone ask this. All the the other batteis lose their ability to hold a charge. My questions are:

1. How many recharges can this take?
2. Will a deep discharge break it?
3. How much power is leaked across it when on the shelf? How much trickle charge do I need to float it at for an emergency supply?
4. What exactly does it do when I short it? I doubt this is answered anywhere, but I'm tossing it in incase someone who's really up on this reads past.

Thanks!!!

Re:Even with 100% efficiency the current is so hug

[lcsjk]

My AA NiMh is 2100 mAH and that is based on a discharge time of 20 hours. If the charge effeciency is 95 percent (2100/.95) the charge to be returned to the battery will be 2211 mAH or 2.211 AH. That is 2.211 amps for 60 minutes, 22.11 amps for 6 minutes, or 221.1 amps for .6 minutes (36 seconds). Now if the internal resistance of the battery is .01 ohm, the power dissipated during the charge time will be (I^2 x R). For 36 seconds the power is 221.1 x 221.1 x .01 = 489 watts. If I am off by a factor of 10 in resistance the power is still 48.9 watts for the AA battery and 36 seconds recharge time. My camera uses four of those batteries.

and the discharge rate?

[MTNhike]

So is the discharge rate just as quick? I hate short-lived batteries (or power-hogging devices).

Size

[heldlik]

I wonder what size these batteries can be made into, that is if this can be matched into powers required for running electric cars etc. then 30 seconds is equal to filling petrol, thus perhaps possibly maybe electric cars that can start equal an petrol car in performance, and usability. I'd say this is a small revolution? but what do I know?

Re:Capacitor

[A55M0NKEY]

I wonder when they'll be able to make capacitors capable of storing quarter-shrinking power using this technique.. They'd be small because they aren't really capacitors but high amperage batteries...

Phasers here we come

[IneffibleMind]

Hmm, seems to me that these super rechargable batteries might just be useful in stun guns and other non leathal weaponry.

Needs Lightning Bolt to Recharge It

[Wingsy]

30 seconds huh? Do the math.... a typical NiCd A battery has around 1.6 amp-hrs capacity. These cells have a little more, but we'll call it the same. To charge this battery requires 1.6 amps for 1 hour (a little more for inefficiencies), or 3.2A for 30 mins, 6.4A for 15 min, etc etc etc, or ONE HUNDRED NINETY TWO AMPS FOR 30 SECONDS. Now, tell me why I'm not believing this.

Re:Needs Lightning Bolt to Recharge It

[ELiTeUI]

Yes, and 192A at 1.5v is ~288W. There should be no problem producing 300W for 30 seconds from a 120VAC power source.

Re:Needs Lightning Bolt to Recharge It

[EmagGeek]

You're not believing it because as the drain increases, so do the losses across the internal resistance of the battery... doubling the load cuts the time to less than half... even more so as current increases because the resistive losses in the battery increase with the square of the current. If you dead-short a 1.2V NiMH battery with an internal resistance of about 300mOhm, you'll get something like 4 amps, losing all 4.8 Watts in the battery...

Re:Needs Lightning Bolt to Recharge It

[aXis100]

Exactly. Modern CPU's can pull in the order of 100 amps.

You might have fun getting that sort of current into a regular battery nipple, but having a battery with those capabilities would be great.

I'm not holding my breath either

[mnmn]

In fact, I'm letting it go. I'm not even buying a laptop yet, because 4 hours per charge is far from enough for me. Thats like compile the Linux kernel a few times and youre out of juice.

I know Transmeta-based laptops can go 7 hours and picturebooks can go 10, but thats pushing it. I'm only looking forward to fuelcell laptops, I'll carry a gallon of methanol with me and head for the peaceful mountains to code.

Till then, theres not much hope for laptops going strong for a long time.

Are you guys nuts?

[Anonymous Coward]

30s to recharge a battery doesn't mean anything. Time it takes to recharge depends on the capacity of the battery.

Everybody here's applying this 30s recharge time to laptop batteries. It's probably going to take significantly longer to recharge a laptop battery, since those batteries are typically like 6Ah. The battery that the press release talks about is prolly like 0.6Ah.

Still since charge time is directly proportional to capacity, and 30s * 10 == 300s == 5min, which is pretty unbelievable...

Re:Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[doppleganger871]

Yea, but I only hit the brakes a few times in my 16 mile commute from home to work. It's back country roads, and lots of farms. I'll stick with internal combustion for now. Unless one stop from 65mph to 0 will recarge them enough to get me back home, I'll let the 8 little pistions do their job nicely.

Wipeout time

[NiteHaqr]

It mentions use in Electric cars.

Imagine having "recharge" lanes on the roads.

Basically like the re-charge pit lane in the Wipeout games.

Take the slow lane, put an induction charger in the road-bed, stick a 60 km/h limit on it and the regarce point only needs to be .5km long. Run solar panels along the edge of the road, wind generators in the central area where the barriers are and it would be pretty cheap to travel - I mean imagine a very thin (1 unit) but very long (say 100 units/km) windfarm along every major highway and byway.

Re:Wipeout time

[Enigma_Man]

Wow... That's some interesting thinking right there. What a neat concept (though I was thinking more along the lines of F-zero when you mentioned it, hehe).
-Jesse

Good News, Bad News.

[curtlewis]

Batteries that recharge in 30 seconds!

Good news, they cost the same as current rechargeables.
Bad news, that 30 second charge is only good for 5 minutes of use.

I see great applications for this.

[djatari2600]

If putting nuclear reactors in giant robots isn't feasible, and the amount of power lines they seem to run into... I need to lay off the Robotech, I think.

Basically everything :)

[JaredOfEuropa]

Although my cellphone and PDA get a few hours in their cradle every day and thus are usually fully charged all the time, it'll still be useful to be able to fast-charge them.

But the technology will really shine for applications with a large power drain. I'd love to have such a battery for my dive-light (quick-charge between dives aren't practical with today's battery technology), or for my RC heli... I'll just need a few minutes at the charger between flights. And it'll be great for power tools on batteries... somehow a single charge is always juuuuuust a little less than what you need for the job.

founding fathers....

[zogger]

... and the mothers and chilluns, all ate "organic" and were beyond radical, they were "terrorists" and their "protests" against "the establishment" involved the selective application of Pb based "packets" using the "flashmob" techniques of the day.. It was an effective strategy.

If you are against organic and radical, it makes you un-USA patriotic, IMO.

Hmmmm

[Remlik]

"NEC Corp has developed a battery that can be recharged only in 30 seconds"

Note: It doesn't say it HAS to be recharged fully in 30 seconds. I would imaging that as the size and capacity of the battery is scaled up the recharge times get longer. I don't remember them stating the size and cap of the battery mentioned.

"The company expects the price of the new battery to be about the same as nickel-hydrogen cells when mass production starts, since it does not contain any expensive materials."

Am I the only one who reads this as...

"The new batteries only cost us a quarter to produce but since you are all used to paying through the a~~ for them we will rape you for the current price."

Re:Hmmmm

[KD5YPT]

The company meant, the battery was proceed with the same material as the normal nickel-hydride cells with no extra expensive materials. I think their 30 seconds time might refer to the normal AA battery... maybe.

Instant Recharging

[jazman_777]

I just use a Tesla coil. Voila! Instantly recharged.

Re:Even with 100% efficiency the current is so hug

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got some 2000mAh NiMH AA batteries from rayovac that recharge in 15 minutes. These things get HOT. You can still touch them without getting your fingers burnt, but it's on the threshold of being painful to touch.

Re:puter

[TwistedSquare]

Whats wrong with puter? Or is it better as pooter?

Re:Recharge in 30 sec

[bender647]

Actually, being able to drain batteries very quickly is an advantage.

Finally, I can answer emails and weld half-inch steel with my PDA.

Battery Weight?

[dismissedasdrone]

Wonder how heavy this battery will be? 30 second recharge won't mean much if it adds 1/4lb to yr minidisc player.

Practical uses.

[Mateito]

From the Article:
> The battery can also discharge power in a short
> time, making it useful in applications requiring
> a large amount of power.

Like... um... tasers?

Acutally. Maybe now we are getting closer to a working lightsaber.

Re:Practical uses.

[KD5YPT]

Hm... lightning gun in UT2004. Or the shock rifle... or laser pistols...

Re:Practical uses.

[EmagGeek]

Tazers are very LOW power.... but very high voltage... the current is in the range of microamperes..

Re:Practical uses.

[cavac]

Think big - think railguns.

Or electric chainsaws. No more stops at the local gas station while you saw yourself through urban history. Just pick up power-packs and/or recharge quickly while passing a power outlet. No more waiting for Doom 3D. Just make your own :-)

Or what about protable particle accelerators like they used in Ghostbusters? Just remember: Never cross the rays unless fighting against something really big :-))

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad. At my school, there were power outlets and Ethernet ports for everyone built right into the desks in virtually every classroom.

Pardon my redundancy, but:

[Spamalamadingdong]

Also, laptop batteries have multiple cells. Perhaps they could be charged in series in an ordering such that adjacent batteries were not recharged in direct sequence, spreading the 'hot spots' out over time.

That's counter-productive. Assuming a reasonably constant charging resistance (as opposed to a fixed conversion loss of a chemical reaction), your power loss in the battery is I^2*R, and the total heat dumped into the battery during the charging cycle is I^2*R*(Q/I) = QIR (where Q is the total charge the battery takes, in coulombs or ampere-seconds).

The total heat lost to resistance is proportional to the charging current, so you would be better off using the same power to charge your entire battery string at a lower current than to charge cells individually at higher current. The higher voltage probably makes it easier to make a high-efficiency charger also.

On another note, I can't help but notice that this is another development from NEC, which developed the proton-polymer battery. I have heard nothing about the proton-polymer battery since the press release some years ago, and maybe this is why: the resin technology is better suited for typical uses.

Dude 1: What happened to your hair?

[cpopin]

Dude 2: Rapid Discharge Syndrome.

240V anyone ???

[Anonymous Coward]

One another reason for US to go to a higher voltage. Also power losses should be lower.

Double 110/240V wiring shouldn't be a problem.

Re:240V anyone ???

[pedrop357]

Never thought of that. I just thought of something, off topic though: Are there more injuries/deaths in countries with 220/240 service? From what I understand, 15mA@120V can cause serious injury if the current passes through the right area, so I have to wonder what 15mA@240V would do.

Re:240V anyone ???

[lga]

Are there more injuries/deaths in countries with 220/240 service?

I would guess that we are more careful about power in countries with higher voltages. Certainly in the UK we have much more robust sockets and plugs, with shutters operated by the earth pin to prevent things being inserted by kids/idiots. Do people have a more relaxed attitude about 120v power?

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[Ba3r]

The real trick for laptop batteries is not getting them to wither away until they can not hold a charge longer than 3 minutes. My toshiba portege is effectively a mini-desktop with lots of cables draped about because its battery is essentially useless now.

Re:Heat and internal resistance

[BlueArcus]

You might be right that the article is implying that the batteries have a low internal resistance. However, that shouldn't be difficult to solve simply by adding a resistor to the battery itself!

I think it's more likely that the reference to limiting the rate of discharge was referring to the most notable limitation of current high current drain rechargeables (ie NiMHs)... this is that they discharge on their own without being loaded quite quickly.

That's why, having being left unattended for a fortnight, very many digital cameras will only ever take three shots before giving up the ghost.

Recharge times are crucial in the few applications they mention, but the discharge problem is the big usability issue for high capacity high current drain rechargeable technologies. Let's hope they come up with something.

Electric cars, part II

[srussell]

All of the posts so far about the application in electric cars have been about the recharge time, which is indeed interesting. However, the overlooked potential of these batteries is the variable discharge time.

Electric motors are better than internal combustion engines at producing low-RPM torque. All of the torque of an electric motor is available at 0 RPMs. IC engines have to rev up before most of their torque is available, which is why we have clutches. One limitation of how much torque an electric engine can apply is how much current you can supply it with.

A fast-discharge battery could be really useful in an electric car.

Hah thats nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Green Lantern can recharge his battery in an instant! What was that song again "In the blackest hour..."

recharger

[Elracim]

I guess you could just have a recharger with an internal lead-acid battery that sits plugged in all the time. That would be reasonably convenient (weight aside), and would get rid of the problems with high currents while charging.

Then my batteries charge in 10 seconds

[roystgnr]

I use a system almost like the one you guys describe, except instead of a giant capacitor I have a spare set of batteries, and instead of using it to charge the drained batteries, I just take it out of the charger and put the drained set in its place. Voila, I have a new fully charged set of batteries in about ten seconds.

Man, I'm way ahead of the technology curve.

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[saskboy]

Some things you just can't slow down to make them more stable. For instance, an airplane.

Perhaps these batteries either charge very quickly, or not at all?

Re:Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Yea, but I only hit the brakes a few times in my 16 mile commute from home to work. It's back country roads, and lots of farms. I'll stick with internal combustion for now. Unless one stop from 65mph to 0 will recarge them enough to get me back home, I'll let the 8 little pistions do their job nicely.

But you're burning a bunch of gasoline to push those eight pistons and all their associated bearings around when most of the time you could get away with two of 'em.

Suppose you could do your commute at 60 MPG instead of maybe 15 and still be able to accellerate from 0 to 65 spinning the tires the whole time whenever you needed to - and you or your spouse could also get 60 MPG while on a shopping trip or going into a city for entertainment. Would you want to switch then?

Electric cars not mentioned

[heroine]

30 seconds is faster than it takes to refill a gas tank. Why don't they mention electric cars? Probably because the batteries are larger and heavier than any conventional battery and have a limited number of recharging cycles.

Where does the power come from on an airplane?

[WayneConrad]

1. Ground power. The airplane can plug into ground power when it's on the ramp to avoid drawing on the storage batteries when neither the APU nor the engines are generating electricity.

2. Storage batteries. For emergencies and for use during preflight until the APU gets going.

3. APU. A small turbine that drives a generator to provide electricity during preflight or in emergencies. Can also provides bleed air for starting engines.

4. Generators or alternators driven off of the engines. There is a gearbox attached to the engine that takes power off of the shaft and delivers it to things like generators and hydraulic pumps.

ARG"!!

[imsabbel]

And in the summer the black car is hotter then the cool one.
Units are supposed to be used in sensible ways .LERN them.

Check my math: 125 mAH?

[WayneConrad]

I'm trying to compare these to the other types of batteries I might want to use on my next electric RC plane.

A Farad is is when a coulomb of charge causes a potential difference of 1V.

A coulomb is 1 Amp-second.

So 450 Farads is 450 Amp-seconds @ 1V,
which is 450 W-seconds, which is 125 mAh.

Have I got that right? If so gives these batteries, which weigh 60g, a density of 2 Wh/kg, which doesn't make them that good for RC planes. Lithium ion's density is 150-200 Wh/kg; NiHM's density is 60 Wh/kg.

Two Words:

[ElAurian]

Laser Pistol.

Bzzzow! Zap! Vaporise! Muahahahahaha!

Bolder Battery

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

There was an outfit in CO a few years back which was making lead-acid dry (paste, not liquid) cells using a process which maximized the surface area of the lead.
They also had extremely low internal resistance, so could take a charge essentially as fast as you could put the coulombs in. Like these cells, the lead-acids also had very fast discharge ability.
It's been a few years since I was in touch with anyone there, so I don't know what's become of them.
By and large, the most promising clients were big automakers and the military, since it's hard to break into the consumer markets -- it's hard to compete on price with NiMH.

Re:Bolder Battery

[timeOday]

By and large, the most promising clients were big automakers and the military, since it's hard to break into the consumer markets -- it's hard to compete on price with NiMH.

But the article says this technology IS price competitive, yet makes no mention of automotive applications!? This seems to address one of the major problems with electric cars - the 8 hour pit stop.

Re:Cars::corrupt politicians

[xxdinkxx]

And I'm sure there aren't any democrats out there that have not accepted campaign contributions from oil companies.

actually.. there is his name is Dennis J. Kucinich

To the contrary - it's actually a problem!

[CrystalFalcon]

If you look at handheld power tools, you'll find that almost none of them use NiMH or LiIon batteries we're used to in electronics. They still use NiCd.

Despite the environmental issue.

Despite the fact that the batteries suck and die, even! Nickel-Cadmium are a pain to recharge to not have them wander off into la-la-land.

And you know what? Because NiCd batteries still are the best we got when it comes to low internal resistance, meaning quick discharge. Power tools tend to NEED quick discharge. You don't care if you need to change batteries every 30 minutes as long as you have the tool in hand without power wiring.

Electronics, on the other hand, need long battery life, and so live in another world.

The possibility of quick discharge is a feature, not a bug.

Explosion Hazard

[black_widow]

You can measure the internal resistance by shorting the battery through an ammeter and measuring the terminal voltage.

I think I'll go short the battery in my car and measure the resistance with my Fluke. Anyone want to tell me how long I have to make the measurement before the battery explodes?

I would guess 15-25 seconds, depending on the device used to bridge the gap. If I laid a nice big wrench across it, I bet it would work nicely.

I'm not sure if the initial sparks would cause a reflex reaction, so I'll do it blind-folded.

Terminal voltage when shorted, divided by current through the ammeter, gives internal resistance.

Now, take the square of the charging current and multiply by the internal resistance. This gives the heat dissipation in watts.

The fun part will be seeing if I can do the math before the battery explodes!

Re:Explosion Hazard

[pclminion]

I wasn't seriously suggesting that anybody attempt anything. I was trying to explain how the math works.

You can also measure the resistance of your body by sticking paperclips into the wall receptable and measuring the time it takes for you to catch on fire.

Re:Explosion Hazard

[Short Circuit]

My biological father had a metal bar fuse itself to the terminals of his car battery...The battery didn't explode, but it wasn't really worth anything afterwards, either.

Had a great handle, though. ;)

Get the facts straight

[Johan Veenstra]

You say it would take a thousend megawatts to charge a car in one minute.

Well let's calculate:

1 x 10^9 watt x 60 seconds = 6 x 10^10 Joule
Your average car (at it's top efficiency) would need about 6000 liter of fuel to produce the same amount of (useable) energy.

Something doesn't compute.

So you're off by at least a factor 100 (if a car can hold that many batteries), now we're down to about 10 megawatts. Not beyond the realm of possibilities.

UPS Devices

[fdicostanzo]

Hmm. Imagine these become popular as UPS devices (computers, buildings, etc). Then, there is a huge blackout that drains them down. At that point, the power comes back on.

Suddenly, there is a massive surge far greater than the power usage before the power outage as all these UPS devices suck down power trying to recharge in 30 secs.

Wham! There goes the power again. Rinse. Repeat.

Recharge Batteries in 30 Secs

[just_cc]

This ist that what i need for my digital-cam. I hate it to charge batteries in 1 or two hours. If you need fully charged batteries they are mostly empty and then you can wait and wait and wait ...

Re:Heat: some real numbers

[Lehk228]

Actually Rayovac already sells 15 minute NIMH "AA" batteries for use in digital cameras and stuff like that. The charger has a fan to keep the batteries from overheating

Environmental Concerns?

[phorm]

With the concerns over the damage that chemicals, etc in batteries cause to the environment, how do organic batteries fit in? I'd think that, having less/no chemicals they might be more environmentally safe. But I wonder about the weird organics.

Organic=Living, so could the cells in these batteries create weird bacteria or other things that might not be very good for organics. With all the "organic" products out nowadays (OLEDS for example), how do they interact with other organics during a leak scenario - safe or more harmful?

If we could dump the lead/acid batteries for a nice organic one that would sure be a nice thing for our city landfills...

How to destroy a meter

[frovingslosh]

You can measure the internal resistance by shorting the battery through an ammeter and measuring the terminal voltage. Terminal voltage when shorted, divided by current through the ammeter, gives internal resistance.

If you short the battery you will likely destroy the meter, and maybe the battery as well (particularly if the internal resistance is low). And if you short the battery then by definition there will be no terminal voltage, any that you do measure is a result of minimal internal resistance of the meter, not the battery!

There are plenty of valid ways to determine battery internal resistance that actually work and do not involve destroying the equipment. This isn't one of them.

Re:How to destroy a meter

[pclminion]

You're not going to destroy an ammeter by doing this with an alkaline battery, which is the only type of battery I've done this with.

Regardless, that was not the point of my post.

Not exactly.

[zeet]

Yeah, but on the 120V side it's only an amp. Bingo, 20 gauge wire. On the battery side, the wire only needs to be inches long. In fact, it'd be so short that you can probably cheat a little and use 8 gauge.

power and projectile

[frovingslosh]

But then I started thinking about railguns and emp devices...

If they do it right we can use one cell to fire the railgun. Then that cell, discharged, moves up and becomes the next projectile to fire, while the next cell feeds from a magazine to power the device.

Re:power and projectile

[Polo]

How about a reverse railgun? Maybe the cell also contains a magnetic coil while the railgun contains a bunch of stationary magnets. The trigger just shorts the cell to it's coils which using some minor disposable circuit throws itself out of the railgun.

Who knows? I'm not an ee.

think before you calculate

[frovingslosh]

You live in an apartment and your outlets "can't handle it". So what! These batteries solve the very problem that everyone is pretending they create.

Problem: The batteries can recharge in 30 seconds, but that would draw way too much power through the circuit breaker and the wire in the wall,

Solution: Now how are we going to get all of that current quickly and safely? Hey, the batteres not only can charge quickly but can drain quickly. And they don't have to charge quickly, it's just that that can . So the solution is pretty simple; we take a few of these inexpensive batteries and keep them in the charger, letting them slowly charge there. From there they can quickly charge other batteries without drawing a lot of power from the wall.

Of course, if you aready have a charged set in the charger you might be tempted to just swap the sets and avoid the quick charging cycle all together. This would work fine in some cases, but the ability to charge quickly might give you a handy way to recharge without even removing batteries (if the device were correctly designed for it), would give you a way to recharge sealed devices like the iPod (which should never be built in a way the batteries can't be replaced, but that's another issue), and would let you recharge different size batteries (a recharger with extra D cells in it could also recharge AA, AAA, and C cells, for example).

better be a lot more

[frovingslosh]

If we assume that these batteries have a capacity of 1000 mah, which seems like a reasonable figure

It better be a lot more than that, since AA NiMH cells currently have as much as 2300 mah capacity (maybe more, I haven't looked in a few weeks) and these are much larger D cells.

You're right - I was off by about two orders.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Something doesn't compute.

So you're off by at least a factor 100 (if a car can hold that many batteries), now we're down to about 10 megawatts. Not beyond the realm of possibilities.

Let's try ballparking it another way:

- 300 mile range at 60 MPH. (300 minute run time - ignore initial start)
- 1 minute charge time
- 20 hp at cruising speed.
- 3/4 KW/hp. (within a couple percent)

300/1 * 20 * (.75 * 1000) = 4,500,000 W

Yep, I was off by a couple orders of magnitude.

(One of 'em was probably from assuming the engine was running at 200-300 hp rather than 20 during the cruise, which is silly since you don't flat-out the engine during cruise. But I don't know where the other one came from.)

OK, so you only need 5 megawatts per pump if you want to have a one-minute fill time, or 1 megawatt per pump for a five-minute fill. That's still a lot of power though. Rule of thumb is one house is a kilowatt average so it's the power feed of between one and five thousand houses PER "PUMP".

(Note also that a 50 minute fill is still 100 KW, or 100 times the typical prime-time power requirements of a single-family dwelling. An overnight (8ish hours) fill of one car is still ten times the house's typcial load. But if you have a short commute and thus only need to "fill" a family car once or twice a week - and leave them on charge overnights - you can probably get away with it without upgrading your neighborhood power grid.)

Fortunately the REAL solution is likely to be using the batteries for "peaking" in a hybrid car, with a small fuel-powered engine or a tens-of-KW fuel cell providing the basic generation.

Even a portable fuel cell should beat a fuel-powered steam generation plant in efficiency. So you don't need to upgrade the electric grid or change the basic liquid-fuel distribution system (though you might want to add tankage for a special formulation for the fuel cells). This makes for an easy, gradual changeover.

Finally, the car I've always wanted looks possible.

holy shi........t

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because its capable of charging in 30 seconds doesn't mean that it has to! Talk about being bullheaded with all this amperage overdrawing.

Re:Obviously

[WTFmonkey]

This guy walks up to a hooker and asks, "How much for a blowjob?"

She looks at him, and answers, "A hundred bucks."

Well, dude yanks down his pants and start jerkin' off... the hooker, surprised, says, "Hey, what gives?"

And the guy says, "For a hundred bucks, I'm not giving you the easy one!"

If its any consolations to you...

[mynameis (mother ...]

(One of 'em was probably from assuming the engine was running at 200-300 hp rather than 20 during the cruise, which is silly since you don't flat-out the engine during cruise. But I don't know where the other one came from.)

Your original calculation explains why we wont have radical-polymer powered boats that travel any speed...

Though the mental imagry of pulling your dandy Cafe up to the local Nuke plant and having them hook up some nice fat cables...
Water boiling around the hull...
Beverages approaching orbital velocity...
Passengers having 30 second long metaphysical experiences...
And let's just hope nobody had their keys in any inopportune location...

Re:bunny? 370

[gabebear]

well depends

the earlier iPods have a 1200 Mah @ 3.7V lithium battery, the newer ones have 850 Mah @ 3.7V and the mini's are even smaller. I have an ipod with a 1200Mah battery and when it was new I got around 12hours, now(about 1.5 years later) I'm getting more like 4-5, it's probably about time I change the battery.

A standard Alkaline AA is 2800Mah @ 1.5V and NiHM's are usually arounf 2000Mah @ 1.5V.

Assuming you are using 2 AAs, you are getting about 2.2 times more play time per Mah*V.

Re:bunny? 370

[gabebear]

oops, re-read your post, so that's one AA battery, then make that 4.4 times more play time

I can already charge them in seconds

[DABANSHEE]

One just arcs them to a bloody car battery

Although how healthy it is on a AA or B cell is anyone's guess.

Re:Heat and internal resistance

[lcsjk]

All batteries have some self discharge. However, I suspect the real problem is either: 1. THe internal wiring is not large enough to support an external short (it would blow and leave the battery useless) or 2. The battery itself may generate internal gasses that could cause it to explode - lawsuits galore. Either case is not good for the customer. Obviously, a series resistor will reduce the battery efficiency in both discharge and charging. NObody wants that, so the real reason for current limiting is some sort of protection.

some are regulated

[marcus]

see this site for some interesting flashlights. :-)

Hey Coppertop, it's our way or the highway...

[Fredflintston47]

Now all we gotta do is figure out how to hook ourselves up to recharge this battery, and we're ready for the machines to take over the world.

Re:Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[pedrop357]

But you're burning a bunch of gasoline to push those eight pistons and all their associated bearings around when most of the time you could get away with two of 'em.

Cadillac tried something like this with disastrous results in the 70s, and I read a while back that Chevy wanted to try something similar with the Corvette-dropping down to 4 cylinders when power isn't needed and most GM cars kind of do this if the coolant runs outs, using half as many cylinders with the others just pumping air.

On the other hand, solenoid driven valves would allow stuff like to happen almost seemlessly. It would require higher voltages. Or use one of these NEC batteries to drive the solenoids.

Re:puter

[lucas teh geek]

in australia we call em poofters.... oh, your talking about your computer?

Math the hard way

[skintigh2]

You math is right but I would have said
2A * 1.2V * 1hour/30sec = 288W
Of course, that's assuming that a 2000mAh battery actually needs 2A for an hour to charge, (or could produce such a current), which is a while 'nother story.

If they ever did release such a battery I don't see how you could charge a few at a time without causing problems. I would have them all share the ~288W when charging, and put an * somewhere on the packaging explaining in microscopic print that they charge in 30 seconds when charged one at a time, but I'm a cynic.

Re:Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Cadillac tried something like this with disastrous results in the 70s, and I read a while back that Chevy wanted to try something similar with the Corvette-dropping down to 4 cylinders when power isn't needed

But you are still pushing the pistons around - with much of the associated friction.

What I'm talking about it not having them at all. Instead you use the batteries when you need more power than the engine provides (which is mostly when accellerating or hill-climbing) and charge 'em up when you need less than you have, (or when descending or braking).

Not great for cross-country trips in mountains unless you have REALLY BIG batteries (or your engine is still somewhat oversized, or you add a little trailer with an extra engine (or extra batteries), as some electric cars already do for long trips). But great for fuel economy.

and most GM cars kind of do this if the coolant runs outs, using half as many cylinders with the others just pumping air.

Now that I DIDN'T know. Thanks.

(I wonder if they alternate the cylinders, too, to distribute the heat?)

Okay...

[StarKruzr]

Can you explain what the difference is between 2-phase and 3-phase power? An EE here tried to explain it to me but it seems like a zero-sum difference to me.

Re:Okay...

[silverhalide]

The juice coming out of your wall has two primary conductors, a 'hot' one with a sine wave at 60Hz and a 'neutral'. Household applicances use the voltage between netural and the hot wire, which has an average value of 120V. That's good and dandy, but when you need to run something big, you need fat wires for the high currents

Someoen figured out (probably Tesla, he's the god of AC power) that if you run a third conductor with a second sine wave 180 degrees out of phase from the first one (now you have two phases!), the voltage between the two wires is twice that of just one wire and neutral. (Two-phase appliances typically don't use the neutral wire).

Three phase is
similar, except you have three conductors and a ground, and the waves evenly spaced 120 degrees out of phase to each other(120*3 = 360). Three phase supplies operate at a higher nomical voltage of 206V, so the three phases added together equals 480V. Not commonly found at home, but very useful in industry as you can run this directly into a big-ass AC induction motor and it'll spin. Those motors don't use brushes to switch the field around the rotor, but rather the changing field of the 3-phase AC turns the rotor.

That's the rough and dirty version, it gets wayyy more complicated when you start doing all the math.

Re:Okay...

[StarKruzr]

That explains a LOT about the minilabs I work with. Thanks!

Re:Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[doppleganger871]

Dodge's new Hemi is working on a variable displacement system in the Chrysler 300C and the new Grand Cherokee.

330+HP (more or less depending on whether the engine is tuned for more HP or more torque) with 27MPG sounds pretty good to me.

Re:Power to recharge. But it IS a breakthrough.

[doppleganger871]

I'm hoping that Dodge alternates the cylinders so they wear/build up carbon evenly. It'd be kinda bad to have the engine heat up unevenly because only 4 cylinders are being used most of the time, and the other four tend to stay cooler.. Switch cylinders every other revolution...

A magazine (not sure which, friend gave me highlights of the story) said the engine went from 4 to 8 cylinders seamlessly. Yea, not as efficient as a real 4 rodent engine, but it's an improvement that satisfies my desire for gobs of power, and helps out with emissions and fuel economy.