DOE Wants 5X Improvement In Batteries In 5 Years

Chu! by mrbluejello · 2012-11-30 10:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's so refreshing having a Secretary of Energy that actually knows something about energy and physics, rather than somebody who just knows how to dig carbon out of the ground.

Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:24 · Score: 1, Insightful

Want in one hand and crap in the other, then you can tell me in 5 years which got full first. The secret isn't finding in higher energy density battery technology but in finding one that you are willing (liability wise) to release to Joe and Jane Public.
Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

Right. 5 years to develop 5X cheaper and 5X more energy dense? How gullible are you?
The free market doesn't solve all problems, but any company that could deliver this would make hundreds of billions of dollars. Why aren't they doing it? Because nobody knows how!
This $120 million is good research, but it isn't going to deliver. Dr. Chu will certainly be glad that the deadline is past the time that he will be out of office.
Re:Chu! by ShanghaiBill · 2012-11-30 11:40 · Score: 4, Funny

Chu is just as one dimensional ...
Nonsense. In addition to his many accomplishments in physics, he has contributed to several other fields, and even invented the Scroll Lock Key, which was a major advance for personal computers of the time.
Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:55 · Score: 1

Chu is just as one dimensional and more of the same politically driven science, he's just on the opposite side as the oil men. I'd prefer our energy policy be driven by what makes economic and scientific sense, not directed at doing what either a carbon lobby or a climate change lobby wants.
That may be, but it doesn't really apply here. Batteries need energy and that can come from fossil fuels more easily as sustainable sources. Batteries are green, because they get rid of lots of tiny pollution sources (and demand shifting). The political motivation behind this is probably make work for a national laboratory. Since the end of the cold war, they've been desperately trying to find something to do beyond new ways to kill people.
Re:Chu! by icebike · 2012-11-30 12:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

Batteries are green, because they get rid of lots of tiny pollution sources (and demand shifting). The political motivation behind this is probably make work for a national laboratory. Since the end of the cold war, they've been desperately trying to find something to do beyond new ways to kill people.
Not all Batteries are green when you consider the total life cycle.
But given that a rechargeable battery allows energy portability, which is worth a great deal, they may be greener than schemes that
rely on continuous.
But what is missing with this 5 in 5 plan is practicality.
The best minds in the world have been laboring on this for years, and progress is pretty slow. Results are proprietary, patented, secret.
If Chou things he can pry these secrets out of the hands of the corporate overlords, or he things he can field any new tech that won't be
instantly assaulted by patent lawyers and trolls he is crazy.
Anything developed here will, to the extent it sees the light of day, not be marketed without huge patent encumbrances tacked on by
dodgy players who will take any research discoveries, and plaster them with patents, and sue any others that try the same thing.
(Rambus ring any bells?) Unless the Government is going into the battery business,
DARPA's success isn't likely to be replicated in the world of patent trolls.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Chu! by jgarry · 2012-11-30 12:56 · Score: 1

Why doesn't anyone ever notice that the greater the energy density, the greater the energy that can be released all at once? You'd think people getting their houses or private parts burned with energy dense devices would be a lesson learnt...

--
Oracle and unix guy.
Re:Chu! by Belial6 · 2012-11-30 13:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

That depends on how energy plays out. If the oil doom sayers are correct, then there would be enough political pressure to adjust patent law to free up the tech. It might seem impossible that this could happen, but even 6 years ago, ObamaCare would have seemed just as impossible.

Even if fossil fuel prices don't spike, as global warming gains more and more acceptance, there is more and more political capital in anything that moves us off of oil.
Re:Chu! by icebike · 2012-11-30 13:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

If the oil doom sayers are correct, then there would be enough political pressure to adjust patent law to free up the tech.

From your lips to God's ears.
Patent law is so entrenched it can probably never be fixed.
Only a policy of Nationalizing Patents the way that some countries nationalize industrial segments, refineries, mines, etc has any hope of success. And as long as there is even one congress critter with his hand out that will never happen.
(There is another meaning to "Nationalizing Patents" which simply takes a foreign patents and gets a US patent to cover the same thing. That's not what I mean here. I mean a "taking".)

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Chu! by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 14:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

Right. 5 years to develop 5X cheaper and 5X more energy dense? How gullible are you?
AC in 1962: "Right. 10 years to develop develop a rocket ship to land a man on the moon and return him? How gullible are you?"
Re:Chu! by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 14:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

All that's needed is something as energy dense as gasoline. And whilst that can and occasionally does release it's energy all at once in a catastrophic way, it's been more than worth it up to now.
A battery as energy dense as gasoline probably won't be any more dangerous than gasoline. And may very well be less so.
Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 14:27 · Score: 1

DOE Wants 5X Improvement In Batteries In 5 Years
And I want a pony!
Re:Chu! by bloodhawk · 2012-11-30 14:54 · Score: 2

I can assure you that they weren't asked to do that the minimal budget that this is being proposed at, if they had said here is 50 billion to develop 5x cheaper and 5x more energy dense in 5 years, it would be at best a hail mary chance of achieving it, to do it on 120 million over 5 years would take incredible luck.
Re:Chu! by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 15:06 · Score: 2

Your assurance means nothing to me. This guy on the other hand seems to know what he's talking about:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3286503&cid=42150187
Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 15:16 · Score: 1

$120 million over 5 years DOES seem like enough to do this. it's not like they need to hire hundreds of people or buy exorbitantly expensive equipment. figure the scientists are making $80-$100k. so let's say they hire 100 engineers at $100k each. that's $50 million over 5 years. is $70 million not enough to cover the costs of everything else? i think it could work, especially since the people who planned out this budget are way more knowledgeable than me about costs.
sheesh, skeptics. when i saw this headline i thought it was a good thing. i still do.
Re:Chu! by Rei · 2012-11-30 15:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

What's so ridiculous about this? There's dozens of potential battery chemistries which could do this - sodium ion, lithium air, nickel lithium, lithium sulfur, and on and on. The payoff for all fields could be incredible. Why not have an organized program to work on it? High cost, high risk, high reward - the kind of basic research that's perfect for government programs (leaving the incremental tweaking, production optimization, marketing, etc to private industry).
To give an example let's pick one field - transportation. What does "5x energy density and 1/5th the price" mean for transportation?
Current energy densities generally provide EV ranges between 100 and 250 miles. 5x - 500 to 1250 miles driving per charge. Which means a single charge provides a full day of charging. Which means that it doesn't matter how fast you can charge, so long as you can get a full charge when you sleep.
Let's go with 800 miles range. Which would be extended if you plugged in during meals and/or breaks. A car with prius-level streamlining will use about 250 watt hours per mile on the highway. That's a 125kWh pack. With 80% net wall-to-wheel efficiency, you need to provide about 156kWh. Over 8 hours, that's 20kW, or about 80A. Most new homes have in the ballpark of 200A boxes and worst case, you upgrade.
In short, these kind of batteries would entirely eliminate the main two complaint about EVs: range and charge time.
What about price? Li-ions are roughly $200 per kWh nowadays, which would make that pack. That's $25k just for your pack's cells - pretty darned pricey! Now, contrary to popular myth, these packs are generally rated for a decade or so to get down to 80% capacity, and the bigger your pack, the less you stress your cells, so they're not a high-replacement item (there's even a potential aftermarket for used packs). But that's a ton of money. However, $5k for the cells would be a *dramatic* improvement, and quite realistic when you consider how much it simplifies the rest of your vehicle.
All of this would come with a whole range of other benefits. You'd never have to go to a gas station again. Your fuel would cost a small fraction as much as gasoline. Your maintenance would be way lower. Even your brakes would wear down slower (regen). If smart grid features take off, you could make money by simply leaving your vehicle plugged in. Increasing vehicle power is comparatively very cheap versus gasoline and actually *increases* your vehicle's efficiency slightly (fatter conductors to handle the higher peaks = lower losses at under normal driving conditions). On and on and on.

--
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 16:15 · Score: 3, Funny

As an employee of the DOE, I have to say I find your optimism concerning this boondoggle is quite, quite amusing.
Re:Chu! by Paradise+Pete · 2012-11-30 16:50 · Score: 2

There are many companies that would gladly spend a billion dollars to get that improvement. If $25M a year was all it took it would have been done already.
Re:Chu! by TapeCutter · 2012-11-30 16:55 · Score: 1

But what is missing with this 5 in 5 plan is practicality.
Yes, but patent trolls are not the problem, the government can simply dismiss them with the stroke of a pen.

There is a much more fundamental difference that you hinted at. Oppenheimer and friends had some idea of how the bomb would work, there was a specific proposal the success of which was predicted by the physical theories of the time. Hitler was guarding secrets on prior research on the idea, I'm pretty sure he wasn't publishing them in patent applications and scientific journals. From what I can see without RTFA, there is no such obvious research path here, no grand idea, there's just a goal and a pile of money. The money will definitely encourage research on batteries, but without a clear path to their end goal they are likely to get a fragmented research effort. Basically they appear to be paying people to search for a golden goose where others have already looked,gathering them all together in one place around a stack of money will help but that's where any similarity to the Manhattan project stops.

Speaking of Rambus, I wondered what happened to them so I looked it up..."January 24, 2012 - The last of three patents that tech licensing company Rambus used to win infringement lawsuits against Nvidia Corp has been declared invalid.". At the end of the (long) day most patent trolls suffer the same fate as internet trolls, after they've been hammered by common-sense, people simply ignore them.

--
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Re:Chu! by icebike · 2012-11-30 16:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

Not true. Ask the makers of viagra.
Patented for years. Only recently was it revealed they didn't disclose every detail in their patent. So virtually on the eve of the patent expiration, their patent was revoked.
But the don't have to give back the billions they made.
But I never said they were all those things in every case. It was a list of possibilities.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Chu! by icebike · 2012-11-30 17:13 · Score: 1

But the trolls keep the money.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Chu! by pixelpusher220 · 2012-11-30 18:38 · Score: 1

Batteries are almost always greener than CO2 emitting fuel sources including full life cycle. Of course what you charge those batteries with matters, but is of course changeable. A gas car can't run on anything other than gasoline.

But the full life cycle with oil involves all the continues flaring of gases into the atmosphere during well operation too. Batteries are a perfect step towards greener renewable fuel sources.

--
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
Re:Chu! by pixelpusher220 · 2012-11-30 18:44 · Score: 1

there's just a goal and a pile of money
So it's like the space program in the 60s. Fair enough. We did it then, we can do it again.

--
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
Re:Chu! by pixelpusher220 · 2012-11-30 19:04 · Score: 2

Not hardly. Until there is a direct path to profits they won't touch anything at this scale.

The free market works well at driving down costs and rewarding short to medium term risks but long term is heavily frowned upon because it kills the bottom line.

--
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
Re:Chu! by a_hanso · 2012-11-30 19:05 · Score: 1

Only a policy of Nationalizing Patents...
I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if a million Ayn Rand fans cried "Atlas Shrugged!" and were suddenly silenced.
Re:Chu! by dcollins117 · 2012-11-30 19:05 · Score: 1

The free market doesn't solve all problems, but any company that could deliver this would make hundreds of billions of dollars. Why aren't they doing it? Because nobody knows how!
This is why basic research is needed. The best way to get research done is to fund it. Which is what they're doing.
I see no problem in setting the bar high, either. It simply signals that incremental improvements to current* techniques won't cut it.
* Yes, pun intended. I couldn't resist.
Re:Chu! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 19:10 · Score: 1

Actually, greater energy density doesn't necessarily mean greater energy that can be released all at once. Especially with electrochemical setups, sometimes only a fraction of the energy can be released at once, which is why batteries are not used as replacements for capacitors. There are plenty of plots around which show energy density versus power density and often there is some anti-correlation between the two when looking at bleeding edge stuff at any given time (although both still improve with time).
Re:Chu! by BlackPignouf · 2012-11-30 19:12 · Score: 2

"A battery as energy dense as gasoline" is called a nuclear reactor.
Seriously, there's a lot of research going on for batteries, and we're still 2 orders of magnitude away from gasoline density.
What's more, the biggest obstacles aren't engineering ones, but physical ones.
Forget it.
Re:Chu! by MrL0G1C · 2012-11-30 21:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

Cars could be much more efficient if they didn't weigh 2 tons. Reduce the weight to something sensible and your problem is solved.
I know it's a radical idea but why not have separate roads for light and efficient vehicles - bicycles, low cc motorbikes and ultra-efficient, light cars, and then high taxes and the absurdly heavy cars can go on the roads with the trucks etc.
Most cars are only carrying one person most of the time anyway, 2000 kilos to carry 80 kilos strikes me as daft.

--
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Re:Chu! by OeLeWaPpErKe · 2012-11-30 22:06 · Score: 1

Politics in a nutshell:
Step 1: A: your solution sucks !
Step 2: B: your solution sucks too !
Step 3: Profit !
Re:Chu! by OeLeWaPpErKe · 2012-11-30 22:08 · Score: 1

Plenty of Ayn Rands fans in the valley. I have yet to meet the first one in favor of the patent system.
Am I missing something ?
Re:Chu! by OeLeWaPpErKe · 2012-11-30 22:14 · Score: 1

Actually it's possible to make gas cars run on lots of stuff. From ethanol to hydrogen. And if you include the Fisher-Tropsch process, you could argue that it's possible to run a car on anything that produces heat.
Now as for the efficiency of doing that ... let's just not go there.
The final truth is that liquid (and gaseous) fossil fuels are amazingly compact and light, efficient fuels, so easy to use it's ridiculous, with an externality that only really manifests itself at enormous scale. Of course, we are currently operating at that enormous scale. Any energy policy that wants to have any hope of success would do well to acknowledge the advantages of fossil fuels.
Re:Chu! by semi-extrinsic · 2012-11-30 22:45 · Score: 1

I don't know about the US, but here in Northern Europe flaring is strictly limited and can only be used a few percent of the time. You basically use it only when you are ramping production up/down too fast for the gas reinjectors to follow.

--
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Re:Chu! by UsuallyReasonable · 2012-11-30 22:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

I agree. My first response to this article was "Oh, I see. Spend more money, and suddenly the laws of physics change by a factor of 25." Somehow I think not. It's not like private industry hasn't been doing research on batteries . . . the person/company who could achieve the kind of breakthrough that these idiots think throwing money at it will achieve would become very, very wealthy indeed. But the government will do it better at that level with a simple wave of its hand? I doubt it.
Re:Chu! by rtb61 · 2012-12-01 00:08 · Score: 1

First step, push it into military development. This step means you can quite legally stake step 2, ignore all existing patents during development stage. Once developed, publish and let the lawyers sort it out while military procurements can still quite legally be conducted.
Battery energy storage density has hit a rather major problem, risk. Current design inherently do not restrict discharge rate so in the even of structural failure, catastrophic discharge can occur, the greater the energy density the greater the catastrophic nature of the discharge.
This requires a immediate shift in focus of design to molecules in reaction that have an inherently limited rate of discharge. Whilst this obviously results in limited power output this can be obviated by modern nano-manufacturing techniques to substantially increase the number of cells, to produce the required power output. Crystalline molecular structures being a likely target molecular engineering target.

--
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Chu! by Savage-Rabbit · 2012-12-01 02:19 · Score: 1

Plenty of Ayn Rands fans in the valley. I have yet to meet the first one in favor of the patent system.
Am I missing something ?
There has been some confusion about her teachings on that subject among her disciples. The great prophetess her self is reported to have commented:
"Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_intellectual_property#Ayn_Rand.27s_views
It does make sense, she preached the virtue of complete and utter selfishness and so would have been in favour of not sharing anything at all, at least not without charging a fee in which case it is in your selfish interest to share. Stripping inventors of any right to the product of their mind, thus making their ideas fee for anybody to use without having to compensate the inventor, is from her perspective collectivism which is a socialist idea and socialism she despised.

--
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Re:Chu! by whizbang77045 · 2012-12-01 02:39 · Score: 1, Insightful

Yes, and Obamacare is just as practical and just as realistic.
Re:Chu! by a_hanso · 2012-12-01 03:13 · Score: 2

If I remember correctly, government decree that "all patents and inventions be 'voluntarily' turned over to the government" was like a turning point in the novel.
Re:Chu! by BasilBrush · 2012-12-01 04:53 · Score: 1

"A battery as energy dense as gasoline" is called a nuclear reactor.
No, that's fare more energy dense than gasoline.

Seriously, there's a lot of research going on for batteries, and we're still 2 orders of magnitude away from gasoline density.
Yeah, I'm simplifying. The primary objective is electric cars. The advances don't all have to come from energy density. Converting the energy to motion more efficiently than the internal combustion engine also comes into it. As does other things such as developing lighter vehicles. And we don't have to have the batteries on a vehicle take up as little space as a fuel tank.
So no, strictly speaking as energy dense as gasoline isn't required. Just something close enough to make electric vehicles attractive.
Re:Chu! by iamhassi · 2012-12-01 05:42 · Score: 1

It's so refreshing having a Secretary of Energy that actually knows something about energy and physics, rather than somebody who just knows how to dig carbon out of the ground.
Why is this sarcastic comment marked insightful?? Chu setup the impossible goals of 5x more energy AND 5x cheaper in 5 years! Clearly has no clue how batteries work and thinks by requesting magic to happen it will! That's +1 Funny! What's next, 5x more efficient cars for 5x cheaper in 5 years? ROFLMAO

5x more energy is possible. 5x cheaper is possible. 5x more energy AND 5x cheaper in only 5 years is so impossible that it is funny, but damn politicians like to make statements that rhyme or sound good together and idiots believe them: "it's my 555 plan!! 5x more for 5x less in 5 years!! VOTE ME!!"

--
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Re:Chu! by lsatenstein · 2012-12-01 09:11 · Score: 1

What's so ridiculous about this? There's dozens of potential battery chemistries which could do this - sodium ion, lithium air, nickel lithium, lithium sulfur, and on and on. The payoff for all fields could be incredible. Why not have an organized program to work on it? High cost, high risk, high reward - the kind of basic research that's perfect for government programs (leaving the incremental tweaking, production optimization, marketing, etc to private industry).
To give an example let's pick one field - transportation. What does "5x energy density and 1/5th the price" mean for transportation?
Current energy densities generally provide EV ranges between 100 and 250 miles. 5x - 500 to 1250 miles driving per charge. Which means a single charge provides a full day of charging. Which means that it doesn't matter how fast you can charge, so long as you can get a full charge when you sleep.
Let's go with 800 miles range. Which would be extended if you plugged in during meals and/or breaks. A car with prius-level streamlining will use about 250 watt hours per mile on the highway. That's a 125kWh pack. With 80% net wall-to-wheel efficiency, you need to provide about 156kWh. Over 8 hours, that's 20kW, or about 80A. Most new homes have in the ballpark of 200A boxes and worst case, you upgrade.
In short, these kind of batteries would entirely eliminate the main two complaint about EVs: range and charge time.
What about price? Li-ions are roughly $200 per kWh nowadays, which would make that pack. That's $25k just for your pack's cells - pretty darned pricey! Now, contrary to popular myth, these packs are generally rated for a decade or so to get down to 80% capacity, and the bigger your pack, the less you stress your cells, so they're not a high-replacement item (there's even a potential aftermarket for used packs). But that's a ton of money. However, $5k for the cells would be a *dramatic* improvement, and quite realistic when you consider how much it simplifies the rest of your vehicle.
All of this would come with a whole range of other benefits. You'd never have to go to a gas station again. Your fuel would cost a small fraction as much as gasoline. Your maintenance would be way lower. Even your brakes would wear down slower (regen). If smart grid features take off, you could make money by simply leaving your vehicle plugged in. Increasing vehicle power is comparatively very cheap versus gasoline and actually *increases* your vehicle's efficiency slightly (fatter conductors to handle the higher peaks = lower losses at under normal driving conditions). On and on and on.
In 2010 my grandkids in their school as a project asked 8 year olds to do a science project. One of the projects was compare the batteries on the market from brands such as Dollar store, Duracell, Ray-o-Vac, Panasonic, Sunbeam, and Energizer. All batteries were alkaline type.
To perform the evaluation, they built some home made motors, using mail-order parts. A time clock started when the motors were started, and stopped when the motor armature stopped turning.
The dollar store batteries provided half the time of the others. The longest running batteries were Ray-o-Vac, followed by Panasonic, which retailed about half the cost of the cost of the Durocell and Energizer.
You have never seen a battery manufacturer compare his product against the competition, but these kids convinced me to not believe the TV commercials.

--
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Re:Chu! by buybuydandavis · 2012-12-01 10:01 · Score: 1

Plenty of Ayn Rands fans in the valley. I have yet to meet the first one in favor of the patent system.
Am I missing something ?
"Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind."
Though it may surprise you, not all Ayn Rand fans agree with everything she said.
If anything, the questioning of "intellectual property", i.e., government monopoly on ideas, is more prevalent among Ayn Rand fans than the general population - who for the most part just accept it as a given.
Re:Chu! by pixelpusher220 · 2012-12-01 10:42 · Score: 1

We certainly wouldn't be where we are today as the human race without fossil fuels. However, that 'externality' might just doom us and so, as you so eloquently put it,

"Any energy policy that wants to have any hope of success would do well to acknowledge the DISadvantages of fossil fuels."

Besides making cars electric lets us actually 'save' our oil and gas for important things...like the military and other things that simply have most stringent requirements than simply commuting to and from work.

--
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
Re:Chu! by pixelpusher220 · 2012-12-01 10:43 · Score: 1

Perhaps, but when the OP was complaining about full life cycle, its something that does need to be included.

--
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
Re:Chu! by russotto · 2012-12-01 12:54 · Score: 1

I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if a million Ayn Rand fans cried "Atlas Shrugged!" and were suddenly silenced.
Where would you ever find a million Ayn Rand fans?
Re:Chu! by MrL0G1C · 2012-12-01 22:39 · Score: 1

"in e.g. a vehicle of 1/3 the mass of the counterpart"
Like a bicycle, but more so - you take more care, and that is the point. As cars get more and more safety features drivers just make up for it by driving worse.

--
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Re:Chu! by MrL0G1C · 2012-12-01 22:43 · Score: 1

I didn't say *build* a separate road system, this could largely be done by splitting current roads up - like bus lanes and choosing some roads to be light vehicles only. Here in London there would not be any room for new roads anyway.

--
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Re:Chu! by MrL0G1C · 2012-12-02 03:45 · Score: 1

We currently have 5+ sets - Roadways, Railways, Waterways, Airways, Pathways.
And see my other answer to this same response. #42160305

--
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Re:Chu! by semi-extrinsic · 2012-12-02 09:35 · Score: 1

Sure, I'm just saying it's ~5% of the time, not 100%. Technical nitpicking is appropriate here on /., no?

--
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Re:Chu! by bhiestand · 2012-12-02 17:11 · Score: 1

In 2010 my grandkids in their school as a project asked 8 year olds to do a science project. One of the projects was compare the batteries on the market from brands such as Dollar store, Duracell, Ray-o-Vac, Panasonic, Sunbeam, and Energizer. All batteries were alkaline type.
To perform the evaluation, they built some home made motors, using mail-order parts. A time clock started when the motors were started, and stopped when the motor armature stopped turning.
The dollar store batteries provided half the time of the others. The longest running batteries were Ray-o-Vac, followed by Panasonic, which retailed about half the cost of the cost of the Durocell and Energizer.
You have never seen a battery manufacturer compare his product against the competition, but these kids convinced me to not believe the TV commercials.
On one hand, that's an awesome project for 8 year olds. I'd be proud! On the other... IANABE (battery engineer?), but from what I believe I understand, that's just one type of load. I am assuming this was a relatively rapid discharge of the batteries, using the exact same motor for the compared batteries, under the same conditions (air conditioned room held at constant temperature, batteries kept at same temps for 12 hours, etc.)? Even if they held all those constant (and battery temperatures have huge impact), further testing may have shown that the "best" batteries were miserable in other tests.
For example, impurities or casing issues or whatever may cause the Ray-o-Vacs to have reduced shelf life (or lower mAh output after, say, 5 years storage). The batteries could perform differently under constant, low loads (e.g. digital clock) or in remote controls. Performance could also be different for strobe type applications (sporadic rapid discharge, sometimes in burst)... or the batteries could handle temperatures differently.
In short, I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from that test. But I'm a bit biased... I use Eneloops for nearly everything these days :) don't even buy alkalines.

--
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Re:Chu! by bhiestand · 2012-12-02 17:21 · Score: 1

$120 million over 5 years DOES seem like enough to do this. it's not like they need to hire hundreds of people or buy exorbitantly expensive equipment. figure the scientists are making $80-$100k. so let's say they hire 100 engineers at $100k each. that's $50 million over 5 years. is $70 million not enough to cover the costs of everything else? i think it could work, especially since the people who planned out this budget are way more knowledgeable than me about costs.
sheesh, skeptics. when i saw this headline i thought it was a good thing. i still do.
The sort of leading material scientists and engineers who would do this sort of research? I suspect they'll be making more than $100k/year. And some likely come with very expensive grad students :)
You're also forgetting that take-home pay isn't everything. Expect an employer to spend somewhere near double the take-home on every employee (medical, retirement, other benefits, their share of taxes and govt programs). So a more realistic figure might be $200k+ for the people who have any real chance of doing this...
Of course it looks like this will all be in the form of grants, and more of a supplement to existing budgets. Plenty of brilliant people already working at Argonne, various universities, corporations, etc. I support initiatives like this even if they're unlikely to succeed. We'll likely learn useful things.

--
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Re:Chu! by lsatenstein · 2012-12-02 18:02 · Score: 1

Hi Chu
You are correct. There are many factors governing battery life. The students first tested with flashlights, butwhat level of dim light is an indication of exhausted battery? They tested penlight (AA) batteries with continuous use. We know that the quality is very variable. However, under the identical conditions, the RAY-O-VAC ones outperformed Durocell by 10-15 minutes, using the identical motor, and the same classroom. Students bought their batteries, and it could be that one vendor manufactured a better batch than the other. The students tried about 6 of each type, as there were three test beds. ROV batteries provided the most capacity in the AA package. Panasonic came next. With 19 AA cells from each vendor, we could draw a statistical conclusion that we are 95 percent confident of the differences
I for example, know that for my outdoor weather station, alkaline will basically freeze at -20C and so, lithium is preferred.
Battery manufacturers are now promoting 10 year shelf life. The manufacturers cannot compete against each other on milli-amp-hour capacity.
For what it is worth, I buy my batteries in packages of 40, from Costco. At that packaging density, the prices are respectable. Durocell and Energiser still demand an unwarranted triple premium price.

--
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Re:Chu! by bhiestand · 2012-12-02 21:33 · Score: 1

Sounds like they had a great advisor :). Now I might have to hit up google and see if anyone has done rigorous tests with precise equipment... I'm pretty curious how well the different vendors stack up. Overall, I'd agree that the name brands are overpriced. And I used to buy the Kirkland packs from Costco, too.
My main uses are in strobist photography, wireless keyboards and mice. My flashes can burn through 16 AAs on a busy/creative day, so switching to low self-discharge rechargeables has been an incredible investment. By my estimates, I've gotten 200-400 cycles from all of my Eneloops with no noticeable reduction in capacity. But I use a very slow charger and occasionally run them through a refresh cycle.
I can't compare their cold tolerance to alkaline or lithium, but if you have any devices that regularly burn through batteries rapidly I'd consider going the same route. Costco has the occasional sale on a "Super Pack" with charger, 12 AAs and 4 AAAs, and some C and D spacers for $30.

--
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Re:Chu! by lsatenstein · 2012-12-03 06:14 · Score: 1

If you consider North America, the price is right. I acytually bought a Maxwell brand of trickle charger, for about $5.00 and found a no name brand of nickel hydride rechargables at a buck a piece for 2200mah.
It was a good deal. I do believe the NH rechargables costy no more to manufacture than alkaline cells. The extra cost is for perceived benefit, as recharging the cells cuts into future sales, and profit.
Many many years ago I was a camera buff. I used 35mm film; I had a darkroom, and was keen for about 10 years. Then I discovered computers.... I changed hobbies, and saved money.

--
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada

Re:I predict a Chinese cluster with no real result by Desler · 2012-11-30 11:07 · Score: 1

Well, we can't all be renowned scientist and expert in battery technology "Rob H.".

Wrong direction by bobthesungeek76036 · 2012-11-30 11:08 · Score: 2

What they really need to do is make it a spec for the next DoD project and it will get done. Making batteries for the sake of batteries isn't going to provide the payback that a usable product would. Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor? How do you think the 8-bit micro would have turned out if we just made it without a purpose?

--
Karma: Bad

Re:Wrong direction by Desler · 2012-11-30 11:13 · Score: 5, Informative

Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor?
No, it didn't. Intel did in 1971 with the 8008.
Re:Wrong direction by Desler · 2012-11-30 11:13 · Score: 1

That was meant to be 1972.
Re:Wrong direction by wisnoskij · 2012-11-30 11:32 · Score: 1

Well energy storage is a general problem, it does not make sense to add on a specific goal to such a general need.

--
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Re:Wrong direction by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2012-11-30 12:23 · Score: 5, Informative

Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor?,
Nope. Not even the 4-bit.
The Apollo guidance computer didn't use a microprocessor at all. It was built from thousands of individual RTL 3-imput NOR gates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

--
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Re:Wrong direction by Desler · 2012-11-30 13:30 · Score: 1

Yeah got the two dates switched up when I wrote the first post.

There they go again! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:08 · Score: 1

The government, picking winners and losers!

The free market should solve this problem just like it has already, with a dependence on millions of years of solar investment which is harvested at low cost from foreign locations!

Re:There they go again! by ShanghaiBill · 2012-11-30 12:03 · Score: 3, Informative

The free market should solve this problem ...
Free markets can solve many problems, but they don't solve everything. There are plenty of examples of market failures, and this is one of them. If someone invents a battery that is 5x cheaper and better, they will make a lot of money. But the benefits to society at large will be MUCH larger. We will save hundreds of billions on oil we will no longer need to import, hundreds of billions more on defense spending cuts since we no longer have to protect oil shipping lanes, many billions more from time-shifting baseload electricity, and even more billions from reduced AGW. But very few of these savings will flow into the pocket of the innovator. So government intervention in the market is justified.
But there are still important free market principles that can be applied here. If the government just hands out grant money, little is likely to be achieved. It is much better to set this up as a competition, and offer specific monetary prizes for meeting certain milestones. Look at the Ansari X-Prize and the DARPA Grand Challange as models. They were able to accomplish a lot by drawing in diverse talents and rewarding success.
Re:There they go again! by lurker1997 · 2012-11-30 12:44 · Score: 1

The biggest problem I see with this is that the research funding will end up going to those with the best grant writing skills and not necessarily the best scientists. I have no idea how to solve this problem, and get the actual best people working on it, but this is as important as any other aspect of the project.
Re:There they go again! by jcr · 2012-11-30 12:44 · Score: 1

Nonsense. There's no shortage of market incentive to develop better battery technology, and there's no reason to expect that whoever the DOE picks out of a hat is going to succeed. The DOE's track record on this kind of boondoggle is hundreds of millions pissed away on politically-connected charlatans like Solyndra's hucksters.
-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:There they go again! by a_hanso · 2012-11-30 19:09 · Score: 2

The free market should solve this problem ...
Of course it could. The only problem is that we don't have free markets today. The markets (and information flow) are dominated by a small group of organizations with political influence.
Re:There they go again! by MartinSchou · 2012-11-30 22:14 · Score: 1

If someone invents a battery that is 5x cheaper and better, they will make a lot of money. But the benefits to society at large will be MUCH larger
That depends entirely on the inventor/manufacturer.
If they decided to simply market it as a battery that is five time as good at five time the cost while pocketing the profits, society doesn't gain any benefits until the patents expire.

So...? by GeneralEmergency · 2012-11-30 11:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

. ...I want a pony. Betcha I get my wish first.

To think that there is not a HUGE amount of academic and commercial research in this area already is absurd. The previous 5 years has produced results that directly made a 10 hour iPad possible. If you want to spend tax dollars on this, make it an X-Prize like contest.

This plan, as laid out, smells like "Workfare for Scientists".

.

--
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency

Re:So...? by roc97007 · 2012-11-30 11:44 · Score: 3, Funny

I want a pony that flies. I bet I'll get *my* wish first.

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:So...? by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 14:44 · Score: 1, Insightful

This plan, as laid out, smells like "Workfare for Scientists".
Public money spent on having scientists do science is money well spent.
Re:So...? by roc97007 · 2012-11-30 16:10 · Score: 1

And a cutie mark?

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:So...? by roc97007 · 2012-11-30 16:52 · Score: 1

I read this to my daughter. She says "welcome fellow bronie". Um, what does that mean?

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Re:So...? by kenorland · 2012-11-30 17:12 · Score: 1

You don't understand. Chu is part of the government elite now. He used to have to obey the laws of physics, but these days, he just needs to snap his fingers and the universe bends to his will.
Re:So...? by swillden · 2012-12-01 04:21 · Score: 1

This plan, as laid out, smells like "Workfare for Scientists".
Public money spent on having scientists do science is money well spent.
Public money spent on having artists do art is money well spent.
Public money spent on having coders write code is money well spent.
Those are just as valid as your claim. The fact is that whether or not it's well spent depends on what kind of work is done, how the work is done, and what the results are. It's perfectly possible to have a lot of scientists exploring obscure and relatively useless areas of knowledge, to no net benefit. It's also perfectly possible to have scientists exploring potentially very useful areas of knowledge but doing it ineffectively and wastefully.
I don't know if this plan is a good idea or not... it could be. There's no doubt that achieving the 5-5-5 goal would have enormous beneficial impact. Whether or not this plan will achieve it, or anything of substance is harder to say -- it will depend on how the money is spent. I think the odds of success would be higher with an X Prize approach: Offer a $120M prize to anyone who succeeds at creating a practical* battery technology with 5X the energy density for 1/5th the cost by 2018 and it'll probably spark even more research -- and if it fails to achieve the goals we'll probably still have achieved significant progress but without spending a dime of public money. If it does achieve the goals, well, it was a bargain.
* "Practical" would need to be defined. It would obviously need to include some requirements around the environmental impact of production/disposal, useful battery lifetime and charging rates.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:So...? by BasilBrush · 2012-12-01 05:07 · Score: 1

Public money spent on having artists do art is money well spent.
I couldn't agree more.

Public money spent on having coders write code is money well spent.
There I need to be persuaded. I need to know what long term good they will likely produce that the commercial software industry will not. I'm not saying no, I just want to know what the benefits are in the same way as I know the benefits of scientists and artists being publicly funded.

The fact is that whether or not it's well spent depends on what kind of work is done, how the work is done, and what the results are.
Of course there are no blank cheques. It's not about pre-judging the results. Because often the results cannot be predicted before the work is done. Both in science and the arts. Not so sure about coding though.
Re:So...? by swillden · 2012-12-01 07:41 · Score: 1

Public money spent on having artists do art is money well spent.
I couldn't agree more.
Really? Have you seen what sometimes gets called art? For that matter, it's possible to call anything art -- doesn't mean it has any value.

Public money spent on having coders write code is money well spent.
There I need to be persuaded. I need to know what long term good they will likely produce that the commercial software industry will not. I'm not saying no, I just want to know what the benefits are in the same way as I know the benefits of scientists and artists being publicly funded.
Why do you need to be persuaded here and not with respect to science or art? What is the difference?

The fact is that whether or not it's well spent depends on what kind of work is done, how the work is done, and what the results are.
Of course there are no blank cheques. It's not about pre-judging the results. Because often the results cannot be predicted before the work is done. Both in science and the arts. Not so sure about coding though.
Again, what is the difference? And your original statement is the very definition of a blank check. You didn't put any constraints or limitations on it whatsoever.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:So...? by BasilBrush · 2012-12-01 12:20 · Score: 1

Really? Have you seen what sometimes gets called art? For that matter, it's possible to call anything art -- doesn't mean it has any value.
Yes really. Value? Who the fuck are you to judge? I'll tell you this, the French government does fund it's artists properly, and without judgement, and it's a better country for it.

Why do you need to be persuaded here and not with respect to science or art? What is the difference?
Because I've already been persuaded by scientists and artists being government funded. But I haven't been yet persuaded by the concept of the government funding coders. In fact yours is the first suggestion I've come across of such a thing.

Again, what is the difference? And your original statement is the very definition of a blank check. You didn't put any constraints or limitations on it whatsoever.
There's a difference between funding without judgement of results and a blank check. A blank cheque means the recipient decides how much money they are going to get. No one is suggesting that.
Re:So...? by swillden · 2012-12-01 15:51 · Score: 1

Really? Have you seen what sometimes gets called art? For that matter, it's possible to call anything art -- doesn't mean it has any value.
Yes really. Value? Who the fuck are you to judge? I'll tell you this, the French government does fund it's artists properly, and without judgement, and it's a better country for it.
Who are you to judge? I'm an artist (photographer), and I'd love it if I got government funding so I could do more. Why shouldn't I?

Why do you need to be persuaded here and not with respect to science or art? What is the difference?
Because I've already been persuaded by scientists and artists being government funded. But I haven't been yet persuaded by the concept of the government funding coders. In fact yours is the first suggestion I've come across of such a thing.
That's a non-answer. And you obviously haven't been paying attention if you haven't seen suggestions that governments should fund Free Software development.

Again, what is the difference? And your original statement is the very definition of a blank check. You didn't put any constraints or limitations on it whatsoever.

There's a difference between funding without judgement of results and a blank check. A blank cheque means the recipient decides how much money they are going to get. No one is suggesting that.
So who does decide the funding amount? And on what basis do they decide?

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:So...? by BasilBrush · 2012-12-02 05:17 · Score: 1

Who are you to judge?
Can you not read? I said "without judgement".

Why shouldn't I?
Indeed, why shouldn't you, if that is what you dedicate your life to.

Because I've already been persuaded by scientists and artists being government funded. But I haven't been yet persuaded by the concept of the government funding coders. In fact yours is the first suggestion I've come across of such a thing.
That's a non-answer.
No, it's my honest answer. Who are you to decide whether it's acceptable.

And you obviously haven't been paying attention if you haven't seen suggestions that governments should fund Free Software development.
Clearly not. I've visited Slashdot most days for more than a decade, and I've not seen that. So either I haven't been paying attention, or it's not been covered very much. Please, show me.

So who does decide the funding amount? And on what basis do they decide?
In France they need to show they are practicing. So for example a theatre artist would show that they've done more than X hours of professional stage work in the last year. And then they get the funding that means that they can actually afford to live decently. Over and above that, there is of course grants for specific projects, and those are judged on merit. But the basic funding so that an artist can afford to be an artist does not require the work to be judged.
Re:So...? by swillden · 2012-12-02 16:34 · Score: 1

You use many words to say basically nothing. Feel free to reply; I'll let you have the last word.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:So...? by BasilBrush · 2012-12-03 06:55 · Score: 1

So you've got nothing more to challenge my point of view with. Fine.
As I said, the state funding scientists to do science is a good thing in itself.

Pocket change by ebonum · 2012-11-30 11:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

Industry has been pouring billions into research. How is $120 million over five years going to do anything?

Anyone who invents a technology ( and production process to keep it cheap ) to get a 5x improvement will be a billionaire over night. If you are going to do this, do it right and spend some real money. How about 250 million a year over 5 years? btw. The if the US government pays for it, the US government should patent everything and get a 5x return for the taxpayers.

Re:Pocket change by newyorkdude · 2012-11-30 11:20 · Score: 1

Argonne has a lot of pertinent facilities, skill and technology. IIRC, Argonne licenses patents for $100 a piece. They can always demand more funding and from other agencies too in successive years.
Re:Pocket change by Libertarian_Geek · 2012-11-30 11:39 · Score: 1

Industry has been pouring billions into research. How is $120 million over five years going to do anything?
Anyone who invents a technology ( and production process to keep it cheap ) to get a 5x improvement will be a billionaire over night. If you are going to do this, do it right and spend some real money. How about 250 million a year over 5 years? btw. The if the US government pays for it, the US government should patent everything and get a 5x return for the taxpayers.
The consumer/taxpayer gets money taken out of their paycheck for federal income taxes for R&D. The government would spend the money on research and development. Once developed and patented, the government would collect royalties on the patent from the corporations who would pass the cost on to the consumer in the cost of products and services.

Once again, the consumer takes it in the rear. I say let industry continue to pour money into research and leave out the government middle-man.

--

www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights

www.fairtax.org
Re:Pocket change by Bengie · 2012-11-30 11:41 · Score: 1

Too many patents for the private sector to navigate. If the government does the research and gives it out for free, then there's no questions. I don't know, just babbling.
Re:Pocket change by TheEffigy · 2012-11-30 11:49 · Score: 2

Industry has been pouring billions into research. How is $120 million over five years going to do anything?
Anyone who invents a technology ( and production process to keep it cheap ) to get a 5x improvement will be a billionaire over night. If you are going to do this, do it right and spend some real money. How about 250 million a year over 5 years? btw. The if the US government pays for it, the US government should patent everything and get a 5x return for the taxpayers.
While I agree more money would be awesome (and surely if they're doing good things it will come), you don't seem to get the premise. The industry isn't pouring all of their "billions" into a collective research environment with the aim of brand new tech. It is fragmented with the majority of players focused on iterative improvements to the existing technology which they're already heavily invested in. It's not easy to sell R&D costs to shareholders when there is nothing other than a goal, investors want to see a real plan and predicted returns from day one.
Re:Pocket change by skids · 2012-11-30 12:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

Industry only pours money into research they think they will help their own company exclusively and/or which they can turn around into a profit in under X business quarters.
These national labs do the basic research that industry fails to fund.

--
Someone had to do it.

And I want rainbows and unicorns! by FoolishBluntman · 2012-11-30 11:11 · Score: 1

Just because you want something, it doesn't mean you'll get it.
We'll see if $120 Million is enough to make a difference.
The problem with gasoline is that is has such great energy density, about 46 Mega-joules per kilogram.
The best batteries currently are Lithium with an energy density of 1.8 Mega-Joules per kilogram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Math fail by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:12 · Score: 1

5 x more powerful and 5 x cheaper sounds like 25 x improvement to me.

Re:Math fail by zippthorne · 2012-11-30 11:48 · Score: 2

No, they're somewhat orthogonal improvements. So, it's really more like a 7x improvement...

--
Can you be Even More Awesome?!

It's about time! by rts008 · 2012-11-30 11:14 · Score: 1

I hate power cords with a passion!

It would be great to see something like the microfusion cells, or small energy cells from the Fallout games. When I played FO1 and ran across those for the first time, I was intrigued and fascinated.

--
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti

Technology deliberately stifled by Beerdood · 2012-11-30 11:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

Sorry for a wiki link, too lazy to look up more sources. Basically we'd have better battery technology if Oil & Car companies didn't deliberately stifle technology

--
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM

Re:Technology deliberately stifled by amorsen · 2012-11-30 12:59 · Score: 2

Or cheaper, inferior NiMH batteries would have stifled the research into lithium batteries.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?

Re:Just Dictate & it will Happen... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:15 · Score: 2, Funny

I must have missed the part where the government is requiring these new, powerful batteries to be used in wrist watches.

Enough $? by markdavis · 2012-11-30 11:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

$120 million really doesn't sound like enough money to me to solve a problem that has been the bane of thousands of electronics companies for many decades....

Still, this is a VERY worthy cause. Batteries have improved a lot over the years, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with what we need. Especially important as we move ever closer to electric cars (I would just LOVE to have one).

And it isn't just the capacity and price that is important- safety and component scarcity and disposal concerns should be addressed too.

Re:Enough $? by foniksonik · 2012-11-30 11:55 · Score: 1

I believe magnets are the biggest issue or more specifically rare earth magnets. Batteries are great but we'll need efficient motors to go with them and that requires rare earth minerals which are in heavy demand and tightly controlled.

--
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Re:Enough $? by Bengie · 2012-11-30 12:00 · Score: 2

IBM's senior research engineer thought we'd have batteries with 100x the storage in the next 10 years and he only said this a few years back. I have read about a new battery tech that was in the safety testing phase that could recharge 10x faster than current batteries and could hold about 10x-100x the charge for the same size. It already works functionally, it just needs to be shown to not be a fire hazard and pass a lot of testing.
Re:Enough $? by Dutchmaan · 2012-11-30 12:46 · Score: 1

..why not? World peace begins by *believing* that it's possible.
Re:Enough $? by skids · 2012-11-30 12:56 · Score: 2

Switched variable reluctance motors need very little in the way of rare earth elements. If rare earth magnets become too pricey before they figure out a nanostructure that doesn't need these elements to be a good magnet, then we could always use those. I'm inclined to bet on the latter, though the former will probably crop up from place to place.

--
Someone had to do it.
Re:Enough $? by amorsen · 2012-11-30 13:01 · Score: 1

Tesla uses plain boring AC motors without permanent magnets. Yes, the efficiency is a bit lower, but if we can get 5 times as much battery capacity, losing 5% on the motor without rare earth magnets doesn't seem all that bad.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:Enough $? by dj245 · 2012-11-30 15:27 · Score: 1

I believe magnets are the biggest issue or more specifically rare earth magnets. Batteries are great but we'll need efficient motors to go with them and that requires rare earth minerals which are in heavy demand and tightly controlled.
There is no reason you can't use an electromagnet to play the role of "magnet" in a motor or generator. In the large generator world we call this static excitation or brushless excitation depending on the design. Static excitation uses a small permanent magnet generator to flash the field (electromagnet rotor), but brushless excitation systems only employ steel, copper, capacitors, rectifiers, and thyristors to excite the rotor.

--
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Re:Enough $? by MechaStreisand · 2012-11-30 17:16 · Score: 1

You could say that industry is... reluctant to start using that type?

--
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
Re:Enough $? by Dutchmaan · 2012-12-02 21:55 · Score: 1

Doesn't bother me if you can't face the most simple of truths... Peace isn't possible for *you* because you don't believe it's possible, hence you don't try, thus it doesn't come to fruition. Peace is *made* by people. War is also *made* by people... It's just a matter of choosing the side you believe in.

Making babies by jamesl · 2012-11-30 11:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

We all know that nine women can't make a baby in one month but Chu thinks that they can if they work for the government and he throws enough money at them.

Five years is conveniently after the current administration has left the building.

Re:Making babies by vell0cet · 2012-11-30 11:38 · Score: 2

"A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at."

-- Bruce Lee
Re:Making babies by ShanghaiBill · 2012-11-30 12:22 · Score: 1

"A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at."
Indeed. Lets say this project made no improvement in capacity, and only acheived a 2 fold reduction in cost. That would be a HUGE improvement, and go a long way toward making electric/hybrid cars economically viable. That would be worth it even for ten times the investment of $120M.
Re:Making babies by rubycodez · 2012-11-30 13:54 · Score: 1

give me nine willing fertile nubile women and I'll show you nine months of one baby per month. the nubile part is so I'll be happy doing it.
Re:Making babies by Megane · 2012-11-30 16:17 · Score: 2

Sure, the first one may be eight months late, but being only 8 months behind schedule is pretty good for a government project.

--
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }

Re:Just Dictate & it will Happen... by newyorkdude · 2012-11-30 11:23 · Score: 1

Actually, in case you've been in the dark, the national labs do know how to do scientific advances. Not all batteries are equally hazardous. Obviously they're gearing toward automobile applications. We know a troll when we see one.

about by Nyder · 2012-11-30 11:28 · Score: 1

fucking time.

--
Be seeing you...

Maybe they know something we don't.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Perhaps the DOE knows we're going to run out of cheap hydrocarbon fuel faster than we can manage. 5x improvement in current battery storage density (per weight) will make affordable and practical electric vehicles pretty much pop up over night.

We can improve electric infrastructure. Petrol fuel transportation and distribution is actually pretty expensive and energy consuming we just take it for granted because it's already here and we've been doing it for a long time. Did you know the cost of actually shipping and moving fuel is one of the biggest factors in it's price? Fuel prices are high because refineries are on coast lines and those endless millions of galons have to be trucked everywhere. It's also one of the biggest lies of omission when petrol fuel proponents talk about pollution. They conveniently ignore the total energy cost/emission cost of the fuel distribution infrastructure itself.

Yeah, you'd still have to generate the energy. Even if you burn things to make it think about this: What's more efficient? A few large plant-sized generators or millions of little generators you have to carry around in cars? Also, is it easier to sequester and capture emissions in a few large fixed locations, or millions of tiny moving ones?

Electric is the way to go. The only missing link is good batteries. Once they come, we can build power lines and power plants we're good at that. Personally, I can't wait until the gas station is a thing of the past. A story to tell your children when they see an old TV show or something.

Libertarian badmouthing aside this is what we're supposed to do with public funds. Research that benefits everyone. (Really, don't you guys have jobs during the day? How's that bootstrap factory coming along? The big bad govt still on a conspiracy to keep you from building it?)

Re:Maybe they know something we don't.. by AvitarX · 2012-11-30 12:14 · Score: 1

We've already run out of cheap oil by the standards of not that long ago
There's a reason tar sands aren't generally in peak oil estimates.

--
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg

Re:Just Dictate & it will Happen... by GrahamCox · 2012-11-30 11:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

Even worse, what about something with nearly 100x the energy density? I mean, imagine how dangerous an automobile would be with that amount of energy on board, in the hands of clueless idiots who can't drive?

Oh, wait...

I want teleportation too by nurb432 · 2012-11-30 11:32 · Score: 1

But demanding it wont make it happen.

Oh, and i want a desktop sized chocolate chip cookie synthesizer machine too. mmmm cookies..

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----

Re:I want teleportation too by hey! · 2012-11-30 12:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

True, demanding something doesn't guarantee you get it. On the other hand, *not* demanding something *does* guarantee you won't get it.
If nobody in the government demanded a satellite based navigation system, there wouldn't be GPS. If nobody in the government demanded a robust, survivable way of transporting data packets between heterogeneous networks, there wouldn't be the Internet. If nobody in the government demanded a way of automating a wide variety of computations, the computer as we know it wouldn't exist. Same goes for the polio vaccine -- if you don't think that's a big deal ask someone brought up before the Salk vaccine was introduced.
Unlike the iPad or the filtered cigarette, these things were not going to be invented by the private sector (at least not soon) because once you discounted the probable profits by risk, uncertainty and delay, they weren't attractive private investments. On the other hand, the immense public need for these things justified the government investment in removing the initial uncertainties. Once the risky and uncertain parts of the problem are solved, then private investment is clearly a more efficient vehicle for making marginal improvements, which add up quickly. Kind of like shifting responsibility for low Earth orbit launches to private companies.

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Re:I want teleportation too by kenorland · 2012-11-30 17:21 · Score: 1

True, demanding something doesn't guarantee you get it. On the other hand, *not* demanding something *does* guarantee you won't get it.
That's true in planned economies like the Soviet Union. In market economies, you don't have to demand things to have your needs met.

If nobody in the government demanded a satellite based navigation system, there wouldn't be GPS. If nobody in the government demanded a robust, survivable way of transporting data packets between heterogeneous networks, there wouldn't be the Internet. If nobody in the government demanded a way of automating a wide variety of computations, the computer as we know it wouldn't exist.
You're thinking like a good little totalitarian and fascist.
Re:I want teleportation too by nurb432 · 2012-12-01 01:39 · Score: 1

On the other hand, *not* demanding something *does* guarantee you won't get it.
That is a silly statement. Businesses want to make money. Advancing tech will do that for them.
Sure, sometimes the goverment pumping in TONS of money into projects have accelerated some things, but they would still happen.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Re:I want teleportation too by hey! · 2012-12-01 03:35 · Score: 1

Ah, so the Internet is a *fascist* technology? Computers are a totalitarian technology?
You seriously need to relax. The government can do applied research without becoming a totalitarian state.

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Re:I want teleportation too by hey! · 2012-12-01 03:38 · Score: 2

You're ignoring the net present value of all the profit opportunities lost as technologies like GPS or the Internet take decades to emerge. It's beneficial to private industry for the government to take on high risk, long term payback applied research, and if you look at the *actual* budget data (instead of arguing from theoretical principles like a philosophe), you'll see that public applied R&D is *not* breaking the budget.

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Re:I want teleportation too by kenorland · 2012-12-01 03:57 · Score: 1

The government can do applied research without becoming a totalitarian state.
Yes, it can. I think it's a good thing when government pays for research.
What I object to is your repeated statements that that is the only way we could have gotten those technologies. That's not only unreasonable, it's historically wrong.
The problem isn't government, it's you and people like you.
Re:I want teleportation too by hey! · 2012-12-01 05:54 · Score: 2

What I object to is your repeated statements that that is the only way we could have gotten those technologies. That's not only unreasonable, it's historically wrong.
The problem isn't government, it's you and people like you.
I'll set aside the silly personal attack and address your point.
You are arguing against a strawman position. My point is that the government invested in the technologies I mentioned because there was a significant public need that would have been unmet. I don't deny that in most of these cases (excepting the Internet because of net neutrality) the technology might have eventually emerged, but the problems they addressed would have gone unsolved, probably for decades. The people working on those problems were right to use public money to solve them.
That those needs were met by public funded research is a historical fact. The onus is upon you to show that the Internet and GPS might exist by now without government investments in technology. These two technologies probably alone justify all the money the US has spent on applied research *ever*, and are huge generators of private business opportunities.
I was using irony to make the point that throwing advanced battery research into the same category as teleportation or desktop cookie synthesizers is silly. Those examples address two of three criteria that in my opinion justifies public research investment (1) advancement is feasible and (2) there is an important public need for the technology. The original post I was responding to was just an intellectually sloppy ideological harangue.
The third criteria is that the progress needed requires levels of investment that are unlikely to come from private investment, typically because of uncertainty about when the investment might start paying back. Battery technology is kind of a borderline case here. Clearly there are many incremental improvements that can be made, and its an important area of commercial research. But an improvement of the magnitude being discussed seems unlikely to emerge on its own soon. I am skeptical that any one research program can outpace private development, but the value of incremental progress on this is so high that it's probably worth covering some approaches that are a bit futuristic for private investors.

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.

Don't forget... by vell0cet · 2012-11-30 11:36 · Score: 1

"overcoming current manufacturing limitations through innovation to reduce complexity and cost"

Don't forget overcoming the patents own by big oil and reducing legal fees.

The problem is a bit complex by RobertLTux · 2012-11-30 11:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Okay so you create a battery that can be made cheaply and outputs X amount of Volts and Y amount of Amperage per gram of weight.

1 what does the discharge curve look like?? (how quick does it drop voltage/amperage)
2 exactly how toxic is the stuff inside?
3 what happens if it gets shorted??
4 how easy is it to recharge SAFELY??
5 what about heat??

it does no good to create a ZPM if dropping it causes an explosion in the C4 range or having a battery that has a sloped power curve (so that half power = half voltage).

--
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge

Re:The problem is a bit complex by amorsen · 2012-11-30 12:55 · Score: 1

If they mean 5 x energy density, that only seems realistic with a lithium-based chemistry. Anything seriously toxic you would want to use with lithium is heavy, so not likely for this project. It is unlikely that you would end up with a crappy power curve with lithium, but who knows.
As for shorting and ease of recharge and heat, those are rarely problems which need fundamental new thinking. A typical battery company research team should be able to handle those. It seems unlikely that the US government will enter the actual battery manufacturing business.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:The problem is a bit complex by symbolset · 2012-11-30 13:38 · Score: 1

If only there were a whole brigade of scientists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, materials and electronics engineers who could build us up a vast library of prior art and explore potential avenues for success by integrating the known with new thought and experiment, using innovative supercomputer modeling, 3d printing, viewing, manipulating and manufacturing process tools never before available. That would be neat. That would be like, um, progress.

--
Help stamp out iliturcy.

US government should patent everything? by nurb432 · 2012-11-30 11:37 · Score: 1

Then the patent belongs to the people, which includes American business.

Everything the government develops, that isn't classified, is in the public domain, as it should be as *I* paid for it.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----

Re:US government should patent everything? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 11:48 · Score: 1

It's a good idea, because many (most?) of the batteries will be sold outside the United States. If they are patented, the American people will get benefit from those sales.

Re:Just Dictate & it will Happen... by roc97007 · 2012-11-30 11:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

Funny story... coming back from a photo assignment, I discovered while on the freeway why you do not put fully charged high current rechargeable batteries in the same pocket as a handfull of change. (sniff ... "What's that... OH MY GOD." And then try to pull off the road safely while your pants are literally on fire.)

Well, I can see the humor *now*. It wasn't funny at the time.

But seriously, a lot of current systems (your car's gas tank, for instance) have a significant amount of stored up energy. The companies that don't put adequate safeguards in place will pay out in the courts and perhaps go out of business. I don't see this as a valid concern. The pants on fire thing, that was me being an idiot. I got a good lesson out of the experience. And a small scar.

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.

Molten Salt Batteries by catchblue22 · 2012-11-30 11:42 · Score: 5, Informative

The idea of molten salt batteries sounds quite intriguing to me, especially for bulk utility level energy storage. In this TED talk, MIT professor Donald Sadoway details his designs and describes the models he has already built. In short, the idea is to have two liquid metals, one less dense and one more dense. In the middle is a layer of molten salt. The less dense molten metal floats on the top. In the middle is the molten salt, and at the bottom is the more dense molten metal. The molten salt acts as the electrolyte in the cell, and the two different metals pass electrons around due to their different electron affinities.

When building these cells, they would use common cheap materials, so that the cost of this type of battery would be trivial compared with the amount of energy it can store. The fact that the cell is molten is actually an advantage. We spend huge effort in our current electrochemical cells trying to keep them cool. This type of cell would thrive on heat...indeed the energy used in charging and discharging it would help keep the metals and the salt molten.

Clearly this type of cell would not be used to power your laptop or cellphone directly, but it could be used to store energy from solar panels on your rooftop, or to store energy from large solar power plants for use in the night. As always, I am sure there are bugs to work out, but really, this sounds incredibly promising.

--
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)

Re:Molten Salt Batteries by icebike · 2012-11-30 12:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

We need portable energy, and molten anything is not an answer.
Its easy to give a Ted Talk, its a lot harder to offer up a practical idea. (Just look at how many TED talks are nothing but TED Talks).

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by amorsen · 2012-11-30 12:43 · Score: 1

The loss of heat makes molten salt batteries impractical for house use. The bare minimum size that makes sense is probably somewhere like the size of the average house, but you really want them much much larger.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by catchblue22 · 2012-11-30 13:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

We need portable energy, and molten anything is not an answer.
Its easy to give a Ted Talk, its a lot harder to offer up a practical idea. (Just look at how many TED talks are nothing but TED Talks).
You didn't watch the TED talk, did you. If you had, you would realize that they have already built several working prototypes, around the size of a pizza dish, plus or minus. You also disregarded the implied or stated purpose, that is to store electricity generated from daytime solar electricity generation, be it in a single house or more likely on a utility scale.

--
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by Jeremi · 2012-11-30 13:20 · Score: 3, Informative

We need portable energy, and molten anything is not an answer.
We need portable energy, but we also need cheap bulk energy storage.
There are lots of wind farms and solar farms out there, and the times they produce power don't always correspond with the times power is needed. This results in excess power being wasted, and also in power not being available sometimes when it is required (e.g. at night or when the wind stops).
If we had an economic way to store lots of power, we could supplement these places with battery banks to temporarily store a few hours (or days) worth of excess power, and presto -- they'd become as reliable as coal or nuclear plants. That would make renewable energy much more usable.

--

I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 13:26 · Score: 1

So you crap them between a wind or solar site and the local population. Why do everything need to be so "ruggedly" self sufficient?!
OvO
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by icebike · 2012-11-30 13:32 · Score: 2

That's all fine and dandy, but that is not what Cho and his program are all about.
He wants wide applicability, tolerance of abuse, safety.
You want to put a 700 degree C device composed of corrosive salts in the hands, with a shock hazard of gargantuan proportions in the hands of people who's video recorder is still blinking midnight?
That kind of installation can already be built today, but nobody wants to do it on an industrial scale. (And industrial scale is the only way it makes any sense). Because when they do the cost analysis, its not really worth it. Cool ideas don't always make dollars or sense.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by VortexCortex · 2012-11-30 13:40 · Score: 1

Meh, molten is for the birds, where's my UltraCapacitors?
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 14:22 · Score: 1

Its easy to give a Ted Talk, its a lot harder to offer up a practical idea. (Just look at how many TED talks are nothing but TED Talks).

I've watched most of them, and very few of them "are nothing but TED Talks". Most are talks about stuff that's already happening in the real world. Though typically on a scale that's still small enough that most people haven't heard about it.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by dbIII · 2012-11-30 16:35 · Score: 1

Wrong! This can give you portable storage by the truckload!
I think that one has been implemented (or perhaps only just proposed?) for a mine site in a large tanker truck somewhere as a proof of concept, but I read it in print a couple of years ago and have no link.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by catchblue22 · 2012-11-30 16:36 · Score: 1

That kind of installation can already be built today, but nobody wants to do it on an industrial scale. (And industrial scale is the only way it makes any sense). Because when they do the cost analysis, its not really worth it. Cool ideas don't always make dollars or sense.
The near equivalent of a molten salt battery has already been built, all over the world, and on a massive industrial scale. They are called aluminum smelters.

--
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by dbIII · 2012-11-30 16:42 · Score: 1

Offshore wind can use pump storage in the form of high pressure air in underwater balloons, the depth is chosen for whatever pressure you want and it's a lot cheaper than steel walled pressure vessels onshore.
The real drama in power generation is covering the peaks and some of the alternatives are already doing that to an extent. Of course that's mostly in hot sunny places but the peak loads happen when the sun is up no matter where you are.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by dbIII · 2012-11-30 16:46 · Score: 2

That only matters if they are also the type to do their own house wiring AND the type to do it without learning or looking up how to do it first.

Which reminds me of a joke:
How many Border Collies does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one, and he's rewired the house to code.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by dbIII · 2012-11-30 16:48 · Score: 2

Some Joker was going to build one but Batman stopped him.
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by WalksOnDirt · 2012-11-30 17:19 · Score: 1

While antimony is currently inexpensive, it is also rather rare. This would appear to put a limit on the expansion possibilities for the battery if they continue to use it.

--
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Re:Molten Salt Batteries by amorsen · 2012-12-01 01:25 · Score: 1

Person a few comments up says a prototype was made that was about the size of a pizza.
A prototype is easy to do arbitrarily small. You just need to place it on a heater to keep it at 300C or whatever temperature the particular salt requires. It will self discharge in minutes or perhaps hours if you use the battery to power the heater though.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?

My prediction by sir-gold · 2012-11-30 11:48 · Score: 1

6 years from now we will be hearing about a DOE battery project being canceled without being completed, because it's 5 years behind schedule and $700 million over budget.

Re:My prediction by amorsen · 2012-11-30 13:04 · Score: 1

Even if that is so, it will likely save private companies a lot of money by telling them what doesn't work. That is a lot of knowledge they do not have to each research and try to keep secret from each other.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:My prediction by sir-gold · 2012-11-30 15:40 · Score: 1

When I said "canceled without being completed" I meant it in more of a "spent millions on consultants setting it up, and never even started the research" kind of way.
Re:My prediction by amorsen · 2012-11-30 23:49 · Score: 1

That could happen, but the Argonne National Laboratory is not known for spending millions on consultants or otherwise misusing money or resources.
If you have something to back up your prediction I would like to hear it.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:My prediction by sir-gold · 2012-12-01 04:39 · Score: 1

I had nothing to back it up, it was supposed to be a joke, based on all the recent news about government technology projects that were overdue, over budget, and ended up being canceled before ever being put into use. I didn't actually look at where they were doing the project.

Bonus: this will allow Surface to run for 20 hours by WillAffleckUW · 2012-11-30 11:54 · Score: 1

The major bonus of a 5 times longer battery life is that your MSFT Surface Tablet will have a life of 20 hours on a battery charge, instead of the current 4 hours, so you'll actually be able to use it. ... what, too soon?

--
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --

Re:Fail by timeOday · 2012-11-30 11:58 · Score: 2

I hope it "fails" just like solar research has - about a 90% cost reduction in 30 years.

Re:Fail by wbr1 · 2012-11-30 11:59 · Score: 1

It is easy to succeed. Borrowing from the Dept. Of Education Standards, as long as you get 1x improvement per year for 5 years......
Oh wait

--
Silence is a state of mime.

"I want" doesn't get by wonkey_monkey · 2012-11-30 12:07 · Score: 1

I want a freakin' dinosaur but nobody'll give me $120m/year to make it happen.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.

Re:"I want" doesn't get by painandgreed · 2012-11-30 12:47 · Score: 1

I want a freakin' dinosaur but nobody'll give me $120m/year to make it happen.
You've got it backwards. If you want something, you are the person to give somebody else for that thing. If you really wanted a "freakin' dinosaur", you have to give somebody $120m/yr to make it happen.

Re:Fail by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-11-30 12:14 · Score: 1

Even if they double battery power and keep the price the same in five years time this project will be a massive win.

Many companies have spent more than $120M and not achieved a doubling in capacity. With government efficiency at play, this appears to be nothing more than a feel-good program for politicians to talk about. They'd be better off spending the $120M on ponies for fifty thousand little girls for all the good it will do.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)

anti-science slashdot? Get a clue, guys. by troutman · 2012-11-30 12:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

Argonne has been a center for battery research and testing going back to 1976 . They have teams of materials scientists, chemists and physicists who have been working on various aspects of improving battery systems for many years, with a lot of published researched and patents. They also has one of the top 5 supercomputers in the world on-site, an entire center devoted to nanotechnology research, the biggest x-ray source around (for materials property research), and all sorts of other resources that make this more than "just another place" to do this work.

This grant is all about combining and focusing the efforts of all sorts of other public institutions and private manufacturers, with leadership from what is truly a "critical mass" of smart folks who work at the Argonne campus.

It is not likely to be any one "magic bullet" but lots of little improvements in each aspect of battery technology, gaining a percent or two here, a few more percent there, that when combined together will result in impressive gains. You know, like... science.

2017? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 12:17 · Score: 1

Right. 5 years to develop 5X cheaper and 5X more energy dense? How gullible are you?

The free market doesn't solve all problems, but any company that could deliver this would make hundreds of billions of dollars. Why aren't they doing it? Because nobody knows how!

This $120 million is good research, but it isn't going to deliver. Dr. Chu will certainly be glad that the deadline is past the time that he will be out of office.

Even if it does this project does work out, five years is just long enough for Jeb Bush to cancel it at the behest of the oil industry during his first presidential term.

Re:2017? by UsuallyReasonable · 2012-11-30 23:00 · Score: 1

How much good will your social responsibility do you when there's no money left? Or are you suggesting that following "most of the world" into insolvency is somehow good for social welfare?

And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by nevermindme · 2012-11-30 12:24 · Score: 1

Battery technology has been a slow evolution and after 200 hundred years quantum leaps of performance are most expensive. The free market is working on this one, any money thrown at this just makes the market less free and less level. Wish the DOE would work on a standard "US Nuclear Power plant" design for the 21st century so all these batteries can be charged with the cheapest power possible on actual cost and pollution products basis.

Re:And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by BoRegardless · 2012-11-30 12:36 · Score: 1

Ah, but you are being to rational in asking for a better battery charging source, from say a Thorium reactor or Tri Alpha Energy's Boron-Gas Plasma fusion generator.
That would be too easy when we could just pile hundreds of millions a year into what existing university and corporations are already spending in 100s of places worldwide already.
Re:And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by amorsen · 2012-11-30 13:14 · Score: 1

The free market is pretty crap at research. In the past, the large US corporations had proper research labs. Remember Xerox? Bell? IBM? Even HP?
Nowadays private companies have a very short horizon for returns on research. Anything which is at all speculative has no chance.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by BoRegardless · 2012-11-30 13:31 · Score: 1

"The free market is pretty crap at research." I disagree based on the discussions of innovations here on Slashdot and similar sites.
VCs are funding all sorts of new ground breaking technologies. "Research" can be actually categorized into theoretical and practical and then the practical gets to single function innovations versus large system innovations. It is a wild world out there in research/innovations.
Re:And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 15:02 · Score: 1

"The free market is pretty crap at research." I disagree based on the discussions of innovations here on Slashdot and similar sites.
Basic research, and development of innovative products are different things.
Re:And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by Miamicanes · 2012-11-30 17:24 · Score: 1

I think it's more a case that the free market is pretty crap at SUSTAINED, ONGOING research. I mean, we've all seen the pattern so many times, it's practically a meme... someone comes up with something groundbreaking and innovative, starts a company, gets major investors, becomes a major force... then the company begins its long trajectory downward... never really coming up with anything equally innovative -- or even halfway impressive -- again.
TiVo? Groundbreaking and innovative 10 years ago... but now? Meh. Basically, the same as 10 years ago, except the hard drives are bigger and they can do HD. Wheeeeeee.
Windows? Win95 rocked compared to pretty much everything that came before it. For the first time in history, my Ultrasound, my ET4000w32 card, and my funky caching VL-bus hard drive controller with a few megs of ram onboard all basically worked. Fast forward to the 21st century... Windows 8. If Microsoft announced they were giving it away free via Windows Update next week, most of us would unplug our DSL & cable modems, and probably physically remove the hard drives from our computers and store them in foil bags in a vault for 2 weeks... *just* to be safe. After backing them up, disabling Windows Update, and explicitly firewalling anything at *.microsoft.com and Microsoft's /8 block of IP addresses forever going forward.
Sirius? I loved it. It saved my sanity after my two favorite radio stations in Miami both got destroyed over the span of 3 days. Then... well... the merger happened. Their audio quality went down the shithole, their channels became more like XM, and less like popular big-city radio stations that just didn't have commercials.
Computer hardware. For the past 5 years or so, it's basically stagnated... if not regressed. The i7 has gained a whopping 400MHz or so. And chiclet keyboards. Godfuckingdamn chiclet keyboards. Even on Thinkpads. THINKPADS! Jesus God naked on a motorcycle with a buttplug. THINKPADS! (goes off to cry...)
Just to name a few companies... let's start with General Electric. How many years has it been since they've innovated anything more meaningful than finding a cheaper factory in China to make the same clock radios they've been making for the past 20 years? *DO* they even invent anything anymore?
Or Disney. Remember when Disney was the company that built monorails and everything they did was magic? Now they run buses to their parks from cookie-cutter hotels that might as well be a Holiday Inn Express. They've made god knows how many sequels to Toy Story & Cars, and shamelessly prostituted movies from our childhood that were once sacred and special. And now they own Star Wars. May the Force help us all.
Oh, I forgot the crowning glory. Mrs. Butterworth syrup. Two percent butter. Yum! Then 1-1/2%. Then 1%. Then 1/2%. Then "flavored with". Then "Buttery". Bastards.Another piece of America shamelessly destroyed.
Re:And a Pony that doesnt pooh! by BasilBrush · 2012-12-01 04:28 · Score: 1

Sure. But all the things you're talking about are products. Potentially innovative ones.
It's far different from basic research in science. Stuff at the level of chemistry and physics. And that's the level that's needed to multiply the energy density of batteries.
With products, companies can lay out a roadmap to create the product and start selling it. Basic research is a big unknown. There's no way of guaranteeing that the work involved will result in a marketable product.

Re:anti-science slashdot? Get a clue, guys. by siddesu · 2012-11-30 12:24 · Score: 1

This is not "like science", man, this is like Marxism. Remember, Marx said and Lenin confirmed it - quantitative accumulations transform into qualitative changes. I say this is a badly covered plot to leak Communism out of these batteries and into our freedoms. We should kill it with fire before it self-combusts.

Re:Bonus: this will allow Surface to run for 20 ho by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-11-30 12:27 · Score: 1

at the same time though everyone else's batteries would last a week or more

--
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.

This is not a problem by Mike+Van+Pelt · 2012-11-30 12:29 · Score: 1

Everybody knows that the laws of physics are written in Washington DC, right? Pass a law, and reality must bend.

Well, everyone in Washington DC thinks so, anyway.

Re:This is not a problem by amorsen · 2012-11-30 13:44 · Score: 1

5 x energy density of current commercial batteries is not at all in conflict with the laws of physics.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Re:This is not a problem by dj245 · 2012-11-30 15:45 · Score: 1

5 x energy density of current commercial batteries is not at all in conflict with the laws of physics.
It flies in the face of over 100 years of historical data to have this much battery improvement in 5 years. Battery technology has historically improved by about 5% per year. To get a 5x improvement would take about 34 years barring some earth-shattering discovery the likes of which we have not seen in the past century. The goal of 5x improvement in 5 years seems hopelessly optimistic!

From a chemistry point of view, we are running into a problem too. We are already using the best metal theoretically possible based on chemical reactions and the table of elements (Lithium). We have run out of periodic table. Improvements recently have focused on novel geometries and other tricks.

--
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Re:This is not a problem by amorsen · 2012-12-01 00:22 · Score: 1

We "just" need to get lithium air commercialised. Instant 5 times improvement. It may of course turn out to be impossible, but at this point things look fairly good.

--
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?

While you're at it... by EmagGeek · 2012-11-30 12:48 · Score: 1

... I'd like a rainbow colored unicorn that shits cheeseburgers.

Re:While you're at it... by Megane · 2012-11-30 16:22 · Score: 1

Get real. It needs to shit BACON cheeseburgers.

--
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Re:While you're at it... by EmagGeek · 2012-12-03 13:08 · Score: 1

Nah, I'm half Jewish.

Re:pff by icebike · 2012-11-30 12:50 · Score: 1

Cho wants practical solutions

Shorterterm impact should include progress towards bench-top prototype devices that exploit
radically new concepts for electrochemical storage utilizing materials that are abundant
and have low manufacturing cost, high energy densities, long cycle life, and high safety
and abuse tolerance for a broad range of energy storage applications.

Something running at 700c is hardly long life, high safety, and abuse tolerant for a broad range of applications.
Its at best a single point storage scheme, not much more portable than pumping water up hill.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.

Hmmm by lightknight · 2012-11-30 13:33 · Score: 1

Tell them we will want two things for this increase: 1.) A lot more money than is ordinarily awarded in times past (I mean, a paltry $1 million for this kind of increase? That wouldn't cover one fiftieth of the materials cost alone for all the experiments needed to be run to achieve such a thing), and 2.) A lot of people of kind of wary of giving the military what they want when we've been involved in some, how do I put this lightly, questionable wars in recent years? That's a moral thing, as well as a money thing, and needs to be addressed.

--
I am John Hurt.

Will a non life or death manhattan project work? by StormyWeather · 2012-11-30 13:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

In WW2 it was advance technology fast or the other guys could kill everyone you love. That's a pretty big motivator to cut the red tape and bullshit, and pull as a team. His will they recreate that here?

Re:Pocket change/ Manhatten project by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-30 13:46 · Score: 1

Manhatten project cost over $20 billion (in 1996 dollars) for a three year project to build 4 bombs (Gadget, little boy, fat man, and number 4). $24 million per year is not going to do much.

post EMP nuclear war by cheekyboy · 2012-11-30 13:46 · Score: 2

Well, its better if every house and person has some power, even if its a small amount after a massive nuke attack. Your grid is toast.

But if I was Leader#1, I would tell the banks to Foff, give back the 5 trillion $, and make every single house and office building 100% solar powered, use excess power to suck water out of the air to make fresh water locally. Use extra power to suck N from air and H from water to make liquid fuels (amonia)

I mean really, for the benefit of 300m people is better, than some stupid 50b benefit for a few corporations, they can get fuekd, and go supply high power to industry/factories.

The general citizen should have free power + free water.

Thats the only way society will advanced, not getting huge $900 bills a quarter, and living poor because power costs are huge. Give back people a bit of luxury, and minimum life standards. Dont just say its a free market, bad luck if your poor . Id be the first to feed those wallstreet crooks to the sharks or zombies.

--
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.

all in the engines by cheekyboy · 2012-11-30 13:51 · Score: 1

Those big mofo engines did the trick.

The design is all public, why cant china just dupe it with 10x the work force, and be on the moon in 2013.

A couple of iPads and an i7 server is all you need ;)

--
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.

Re:When GOVERNMENT drives technological developmen by conspirator23 · 2012-11-30 14:03 · Score: 1

You mean like... THE INTERNET? http://www.sadtrombone.com/

Everything I know about management by Culture20 · 2012-11-30 14:07 · Score: 2

When you had to deliver the goods very, very quickly, you needed to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines to get very focused,

Everything I know about management, I learned from X-Com (UFO)

Re:Fail by ShanghaiBill · 2012-11-30 14:39 · Score: 2

I hope it "fails" just like solar research has - about a 90% cost reduction in 30 years.

But the cost fell too quickly, leaving politically connected manufacturers with stranded costs. So now we have government action to raise the cost again.

Re:Fail by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 14:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

Many companies have spent more than $120M and not achieved a doubling in capacity.

If the private sector has failed, that's a good reason to do public sector research.

Public sector money gave us the internet. Private sector gave us AOL and MSN. Whatever happened to those?

Public sector gave us a man on the moon. Now 40 years later, it's seen as an achievement for a private company to get into space.

The public sector is far better at the big multi-year stuff than the private sector.

That an easy one by slick7 · 2012-11-30 14:41 · Score: 1

Let the energy storage industry go belly due to unwise stock trading, then get the CONgressMEN to use taxpayer funds for a .0002% increase in efficiency. FTFY

--
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.

Re:Fail by timeOday · 2012-11-30 14:50 · Score: 1

Yes, but that's a small and temporary issue, relative to the dramatic multi-decade decline, which is due mainly not to market excess or manipulation, but to improved technology.

Re:Fail by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-11-30 15:03 · Score: 2

Public sector gave us a man on the moon

At what, 4.5% of GDP? Sure, if you spent $675B on batteries, you'd get good improvements. But not $125M.

BTW, AOL provided nearly all the Internet access for normal people for many years, something government never addressed. Frankly, most of the development was a function of Moore's Law, but if Xandu had won instead of ARPANET, we probably would have been using hypertext on our Commodore 64's.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)

Re:Fail by BasilBrush · 2012-11-30 15:17 · Score: 1

BTW, AOL provided nearly all the Internet access for normal people for many years, something government never addressed.

Internet ACCESS. There'd be nothing for AOL to have provided access to were it not for the government. Oh and BTW, Al Gore had a large part to play in that. :-)

There's an equivalence here. The government won't be the once manufacturing the batteries for consumers. They are the ones who will make them possible by funding the fundamental research.

There's some batteries near completion by dbIII · 2012-11-30 16:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's taken decades from initial R&D to the current batteries. Some of the stuff that was only working in the lab when I was a student 20+ years ago is now becoming commercially available and there's a lot of very interesting stuff in development now. The time lag is mostly due to limited resources being spent on R&D so a very small number of people are working on one technology at any time. Many of the things available now were improved after a long series of tests only because there were not enough people working on them to do some things in parallel.
So to sum up, putting a bit of extra effort into some promising designs could produce results very quickly.

Not as crazy as it sounds, thermoelectrics exmpl by dlenmn · 2012-11-30 17:08 · Score: 1

Yeah, this is asking for a lot, and it probably won't meet its goals, but it's not as crazy as it sounds. Take the example of thermoelectrics -- solid state devices that can turn a heat difference in to electricity or vice versa. Efficient thermoelectric devices could be super useful, either for efficient, light weight refrigerators that never break (since they have no moving parts) or for a way to turn any source of heat -- including waste heat from your car -- in to electricity. The reason you don't see them everywhere is because they're currently not efficient enough to be worth it.

I realize the following is gated, but access it if you can and see the first plot. (Coincidentally, the author was Chu's deputy and is an excellent researcher.)

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/303/5659/777.full

Otherwise, see figure 3 here:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.0888.pdf

The effectiveness of a material for thermoelectric devices is captured in one parameter called ZT -- the figure of merit. For about three decades, bismuth telluride was the best know material, with a ZT of a bit under 1 -- corresponding to about 10% of the Carnot efficiency (the theoretical maximum efficiency). To be competitive with conventional refrigerators, ZT has to be about 3 or larger.

In the early 90s, the DOD decided they wanted better thermoelectrics, so they started throwing money at the problem. You can see the result in the linked figure. Within a decade, ZT for the best materials shot up to about 2.5 at room temperature and 3.5 at higher temperatures -- to the point where they're starting to be useful.

More work is still needed before you'll see these commercially, but this is an example where government spending is and will be paying dividends; these are devices that will be generally useful, but languished for decades before the government gave research a kick. Battery funding could produce similar results.

science by wishful thinking by kenorland · 2012-11-30 17:10 · Score: 1

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/kurt-zenz-house/the-limits-of-energy-storage-technology

The maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven't yet been demonstrated to work is still only about 6 percent of crude oil."

So, they're making RTGs into a consumer item? by Miamicanes · 2012-11-30 17:37 · Score: 1

I, for one, am glad our government has set such lofty goals, because I really want a RTG power pack for my cell phone. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator )

Marginal increases by David_Hart · 2012-11-30 18:09 · Score: 1

Batteries have continually improved but only marginally and at a slow pace. While this program is a step in the right direction, it's unlikely to achieve its goals. That being said, we need lofty goals to reach for and this one is certainly worthwhile.

The greatest achievement over the last 10 years has been the continual improvement of energy usage in devices, etc. 10 years ago laptops could barely last 2 hours on a single charge, now we have laptops (ultraportables) that can last over 7 hours.

Re:Will a non life or death manhattan project work by a_hanso · 2012-11-30 19:12 · Score: 1

We could always threaten to kill the scientists if they don't produce a battery in five years.

Re:Will a non life or death manhattan project work by evilviper · 2012-11-30 19:49 · Score: 1

In WW2 it was advance technology fast or the other guys could kill everyone you love. That's a pretty big motivator to cut the red tape and bullshit, and pull as a team. His will they recreate that here?

The motivation in WWII probably isn't what you think it was... Scientists always want to do the neato next thing. What changed during WWII is any batshit crazy idea was listened-to, and given truck-loads of funding, on the off-chance it would work, saving bazillions on the battle-field, and the Manhattan project did just that.

Other WWII projects you don't hear about quite so much, include trained-pigeon guided-bombs, and gigantic aircraft carriers built out of ice, for use in the Pacific tropics. They spent some government money, but turned out to be dead-ends. Oh well.

I doubt there's any problem motivating the individuals to try and develop something new... What's really got to happen is that something is needed to seriously motivate the money men, to spend the cash on something that may pay of big, or might accomplish nothing.

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

Re:anti-science slashdot? Get a clue, guys. by AmiMoJo · 2012-11-30 22:45 · Score: 1

gaining a percent or two here, a few more percent there, that when combined together will result in impressive gains

They are claiming a 5x increase in capacity in 5 years, so they will need a major discovery that adds hundreds of percent, not a few.

Furthermore this isn't like getting to the moon. People knew that was possible, they knew more or less what was involved and the effort threw vast sums of money at the problem so they could try multiple different things at once. That is why people are sceptical about this claim that they can do it in such a short space of time with some unknown new technology that hasn't even been predicted by current scientific understanding for a mere $120m.

Good luck to them anyway though.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Impossible! by Peter+(Professor)+Fo · 2012-11-30 23:54 · Score: 1

Six times improvement in six years I could accept.

No, Not Efficiency... by KramberryKoncerto · 2012-12-01 02:20 · Score: 1

Jevons Paradox One would actually see a higher consumption of batteries, and even energy. If this plan is intended to save energy, I prefer finding something that's really renewable, or cutting the nonsense of measuring economy by growth.

Re:No, Not Efficiency... by MooseMiester · 2012-12-01 09:12 · Score: 1

You're right, this would increase electrical consumption and increase pollution at the same time. A hybrid car has a bigger carbon footprint than a large SUV. You are lucky that you don't live a third world country where the batteries are reprocessed, the pollution created by these operations is appalling.

The only "renewable" power source is nuclear, and environmentalists have just about killed that. The reactors we run now are all from the 1970's and are aging badly.

The reality is that the market will decide what happens no matter how many billions of dollars the government wastes on feel good research programs and propaganda. This is what has always happened, every singe time, no exceptions.

An economy that doesn't grow has a birth rate equivalent to the death rate. We're getting there in the U.S., but the third world continues to breed at alarming rates. It's a nice thought, though, that we could all get there someday.

--
Murphy was an optimist

400-800 Degrees Centigrade ... by littlewink · 2012-12-01 03:12 · Score: 1

is the operating temperature of molten salt in molten salt batteries.

And I thought lithium-ion batteries were a curse.

A better idea by navtal · 2012-12-01 04:27 · Score: 1

Why not just set up an organization to slowly release advancements made for military uses while giving time for the industry to adapt? Just seems simpler and more cost effective.

Molten Salt Bombs by Tenebrousedge · 2012-12-01 04:32 · Score: 1

Our current generation of batteries has a tendency to explode in the right conditions. What happens when you pack five times the energy density of a lithium cell into your new device, and then something goes wrong?

Wikipedia gives the energy density (Megajoules/kg) of lithium batteries as 1.8, and that of dynamite as 4.6. (Gasoline is ~46) At that point I'd be happy if an electrical discharge were the worst of my concerns.

--
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.

Re:anti-science slashdot? Get a clue, guys. by imsabbel · 2012-12-01 04:37 · Score: 1

Well, the APS is not THAT helpfull for stuff like that, and companies also rent time at facilities like Spring 8 or ESRF for this kind of research.
Supercomputers are nice, but you are not going to be able to skip the peer review just because you are from a new insitute.

Nanotech research center of course helps.

But you miss the point. Of course its a good thing to push that money into research, as public research can have more freedom in its options than corporate research.

But the goal is just a sad joke. 120 million over 5 years. For a factor 5 improvement in power and a factor 5 improvement in price. Over 5 years.

Thats so ridiculously idiotic, because it is impossible. Even if it was not even a 1% of the current R&D spending on batteries, it would still be a setup for failure.

Why not give it realistic goal, like 50% improvement in power at half price?

120 million is just a crapshot, especially on that short notice.

--
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?

What a joke by MooseMiester · 2012-12-01 09:05 · Score: 1

In 1903 the electric car with a lead acid battery had a range of about 30 miles. At that time the war between electric and gas was more real than it is now. Here are are over 100 years later and we have the Nissan Leaf electric car with a range of 50 miles. This represents an increase in efficiency of .36% per year. You can't legislate chemistry, or physics. This is as stupid as the "mandate" that the 2015 CAFE standards represent.

Now ignorant fools with no knowledge of engineering will blather on about the progress in computers, or advances made during world wars, or other such nonsense.

There is no correlation. The chemistry that makes a battery hasn't changed much in the last million years.

This is simply another excuse to bribe people who then give you money to get elected. All the high minded talk about the government setting lofty goals and inspiring us all is complete baloney, and if you buy into this nonsense I have some great investment deals for you, I promise I'll get you a one million percent return while saving the planet, saving the whales, reducing CO2, and making a car that gets 1 thousand miles per gallon on ordinary cooking oil. Send me money today, or the ice caps will melt, the oceans will rise, the skies will burn, and the end will come much sooner than you think.

--
Murphy was an optimist

Re:We have rainbows, now we just need the unicorns by robot256 · 2012-12-01 14:07 · Score: 1

No, charging speed is not the real issue, and here's why:

One, when battery improvements let the average car's range go past 120 miles per charge, the vast majority of daily trips and commutes can be done on a single charge, only needing to charge overnight.

Two, charging speed is fundamentally linked to battery capacity. If the capacity increases, so does the charging speed. So a larger battery can be charged at a higher miles-per-hour rate even though it still takes the same 6 hours to go from empty to full.

Three, cars like the 2012 Nissan Leaf have an undersized 3.3kW charger (~10 miles per hour). The batteries will support higher rates, and the 2013 model will have a faster 6.6kW charger (~20 miles per hour). The batteries could likely support even more, but charging stations with a >7kW electrical service are rare, outside of the 20-minute fast chargers. So it's actually not the batteries limiting the recharge rate so much as the rest of the design of the car/thermal systems.

A political goal, not a practical one by RogueWarrior65 · 2012-12-01 14:24 · Score: 1

Time was that a government research project could actually be accomplished within a specified period of time. The Manhattan Project and the Apollo project are two examples. Why should battery improvements be any different than mandating CAFE standards? How does Chu know that a matter of time a few million dollars are all it's going to take? $120 million is chump change by today's standards. This sounds more like a political goal than a practical one. Seems to me that there are too many uninformed people in Washington that think there's always some corporate conspiracy preventing them from reaching their utopian technological goals. This isn't to say that it's not a worthy goal but IMHO, if you really want to make this happen, then you do it Manhattan Project style (walk walk walk walk Manhattan Project style). You hire the top people in the field away from their current jobs, bring them together in one place, isolated with no distractions each competing to solve one problem.

Slashdot Mirror

DOE Wants 5X Improvement In Batteries In 5 Years

206 of 305 comments (clear)