"We see portability in electronics being a continuing requirement, higher functionality, better battery life, requiring lower power for the actual electronics"
David Milne
A major part of our "new world" of energy will revolve around battery and capacitor technology. I will be the first to admit, I was more than a dunce on this entire subject. However, when I started with a new company in 1990, the first task I was given was to work on their high technology programs. These programs were "over the horizon" programs - technology so new, so advanced, it was being developed on the fly. Although I only had the opportunity to work on these programs for a year, the learning I received was intense and very interesting.
One of the major technology programs I was involved in was a new type of propellant for artillery shells. Not to get too technical, but today's artillery shells travel about 1 to 2 km/sec using standard propellant. This new program sought to use a combination of massive doses of electricity and certain chemicals together to allow a projectile to travel as fast as 10 km/sec. The advantage of obtaining this speed was simple physics - a sabot shaped charge traveling at that rate of speed needed no explosive warhead to be lethal. The kinetic force of a sabot hitting a tank would defeat any protective armor allowing the sabot to kill the tank in a fiery ball of molten metal. It was heady stuff, it was scary stuff.
In addition to this technology, the rail gun was also being developed. A rail gun operates the same way, only without the chemicals and much more electricity. Whereas one technology might take as much as 9 megajoules of electricity, the other might take twice that much. To put this simply, that is a lot of capacitors needed to store the required power. Besides weapons, it was also thought this technology might be used by NASA to launch low orbit satellites. To make a long story short, none of these programs ever reached fruition due to the immature technology of batteries and capacitors.
Flash forward 18 years. Towards the end of my career, I was doing technology procurement for large company in the Twin Cities. One of the items I bought was a tablet for mobile technicians to use. A common complaint from the technicians was battery life. The battery life on many of the high usage tablets was not optimal. I requested the tablet vendor fly in their corporate battery expert to present current battery technology at the next quarterly review.
The vendor flew in their expert all the way from Japan. He was knowledgeable, articulate, and able to handle many different questions. I was amazed however, how little advancement had taken place in battery technology from 1990 to 2008. Many of the same problems still existed. The expert from Japan told me his company, along with many others in Japan, were working feverishly on battery technology - however, there were still big hills to climb. I asked him point blank - will we get to where we need to be on this technology, or is this just a fool's errand. He was convinced that batteries are the wave of the future, but not for a decade or two (with luck).
That brings me to today. We are trying very hard to get cars like the Chevy Volt to work with battery power. What we have found out is this - they will work to a degree, but there are many limitations. Temperature, cycling, storage, running the heater or a/c, just to name a few. In addition, they are expensive and have a slew of negative externalities of production. Lithium rechargeable batteries can still overheat and catch fire - check out the stories with some laptops and cell phones. In fact, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has just been grounded by the FAA for battery issues - like catching fire.
The next time one of you "green" friends talks to you about the electric car, remind that person of these realities. The technology is not mature enough yet to have a successful "go to market" product. It is expensive, the manufacturing process causes unacceptable pollution, overheating is still a problem, and very few charging stations are around if you need a "jolt". Will we be there someday? I believe so. I think it is worth having some private, and yes maybe even some public investment into this technology. However, not one more taxpayer dime towards any "go to market" products until the maturity of this technology is at an acceptable level.
Flash forward 18 years. Towards the end of my career, I was doing technology procurement for large company in the Twin Cities. One of the items I bought was a tablet for mobile technicians to use. A common complaint from the technicians was battery life. The battery life on many of the high usage tablets was not optimal. I requested the tablet vendor fly in their corporate battery expert to present current battery technology at the next quarterly review.
The vendor flew in their expert all the way from Japan. He was knowledgeable, articulate, and able to handle many different questions. I was amazed however, how little advancement had taken place in battery technology from 1990 to 2008. Many of the same problems still existed. The expert from Japan told me his company, along with many others in Japan, were working feverishly on battery technology - however, there were still big hills to climb. I asked him point blank - will we get to where we need to be on this technology, or is this just a fool's errand. He was convinced that batteries are the wave of the future, but not for a decade or two (with luck).
That brings me to today. We are trying very hard to get cars like the Chevy Volt to work with battery power. What we have found out is this - they will work to a degree, but there are many limitations. Temperature, cycling, storage, running the heater or a/c, just to name a few. In addition, they are expensive and have a slew of negative externalities of production. Lithium rechargeable batteries can still overheat and catch fire - check out the stories with some laptops and cell phones. In fact, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has just been grounded by the FAA for battery issues - like catching fire.
The next time one of you "green" friends talks to you about the electric car, remind that person of these realities. The technology is not mature enough yet to have a successful "go to market" product. It is expensive, the manufacturing process causes unacceptable pollution, overheating is still a problem, and very few charging stations are around if you need a "jolt". Will we be there someday? I believe so. I think it is worth having some private, and yes maybe even some public investment into this technology. However, not one more taxpayer dime towards any "go to market" products until the maturity of this technology is at an acceptable level.
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