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NEC Battery Charges in 30 Seconds
Tomo Hiratsuka writes "NEC's new battery uses polymers that turn to gel, allowing it to be flexible and to charge to full capacity in just 30 seconds. It's apparently destined for smartcards and the evil that is RFID."
This battery is very similar to a lithium polymer battery, but has different benefits and drawbacks. ORB's standout feature is not it's energy density, which is good, but no better than Lithium Ion - on the order of 10kW/kg and 10Wh/kg.
What sets this technology apart is the extremely high current rates at which it can charge and discharge. Where Li-Poly (which has the largest discharge rate relative to capacity and weight) is able to charge at between 3 and 10 times the capacity, and lithium ion is limited to a mere 0.7 times capacity, ORB is on the order of 60 times capacity.
This makes it suited to situations where high amperage is needed, but for short bursts, such as in UPS systems, which is what NEC demonstrated the battery with. They were able to sustain a 100 watt system for around 15 seconds using 4 "small, thin ORB cells (each the size of 3 stacked credit cards)." Using Ni-Mh the power system would have to be massively oversized to support this level of power output, which is why you still see UPS units using lead acid batteries instead of the more exotic technology available today.