Betting on BatteriesBetting on Batteries

We need better batteries that are more efficient. The following are three advances that could change battery technology and efficiency.

Think about it. Where would we be without batteries? There would certainly be no mobile market. But batteries have not improved at the same pace as Moore's Law. For every 1000% improvement to processors, we get less than a 100% improvement to batteries.

The need for stored power has increased rapidly and does not appear to slowing down. Battery technology has trouble keeping abreast of the increasing demands of PCs, tablets, phones, sensors, and now wearable technology. The battery is improving, but the distribution of electrical grids around the world may hamper the distribution of mobile devices because there is little or no access to electrical power to charge batteries. We need better batteries that are more efficient. The following are three advances that could change battery technology and efficiency.

Better Batteries
Personal batteries for powering electric cars and tablets may be helped by work at Northwestern University. The breakthrough uses graphene, a one-atom-thick piece of carbon. When combined with silicon nanoparticles, it is able to boost the power that a standard lithium-ion battery can store by 10 times. A second benefit is that it can be charged 10 times faster.

This type of research will have a profound effect on the size and application of mobile and portable devices. Think of a laptop, tablet, or other portable device, like wearable technology, where it can be used continuously for days, maybe weeks, without a charge. The extended battery life would also change what the military can deploy in the field away from power sources.

Let the Cloud Do It
What if the smartphone or tablet could use the cloud to offload computational work and thereby extend the battery life? This can be done using "hybrid contextual cloud in ubiquitous platforms composed of smart phones" or HYCCUPS. With computational processes in the smartphones and tablets offloaded, the smartphone or tablet then becomes an interface to applications running in the cloud and uploads raw data to the cloud and downloads the processed data when it is needed. The smartphone or tablet's processor requires less power, thereby extending the battery life.

HYCCUPS is middleware residing on the end-user device and the cloud. This creates a hybrid cloud, allowing battery driven devices to schedule and offload computational work without user intervention. If this is done over Wi-Fi instead of a cellular network, there will be even more power reduction.

Eliminate Charging Batteries
Another possibility are devices that consume low power by obtaining power from the radio waves that are all around us. Research being conducted at the University of Washington is using the radio waves as a power source for low-power-consuming devices like medical monitoring equipment, thermostats, watches, and parking meters. The radio power emanates from cell phones, cell towers, radio stations, broadcast TV, Wi-Fi networks, cordless phones, and many other sources.

The researchers are developing techniques to collect and convert the radio waves into electricity. The radio technology produces small amounts of power. Devices would not need to have their batteries replaced or recharged. Will there be a display with number of reception bars so I know if the radio recharge is working?

A good reference article is "The Lowly Battery Gets a Makeover" in the IEEE "Computing Now," posted by Stefan Weitz

I wrote a blog on the future of batteries back in 2011, "Better Batteries Coming". This blog is my update to that article.