Nanotech Anode Promises 10X Battery Life

UNIMurph sends word out of Stanford University that researchers have discovered a way to increase battery life tenfold by using silicon nanowires. Quoting News.com: 'It's not a small improvement,' [lead researcher Yi] Cui said. 'It's a revolutionary development.' Citing a research paper they wrote, published in Nature Nanotechnology, Cui said the increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium — which holds the charge — that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life... 'We are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of our technology,' Cui said. 'There are no roadblocks for either of these.'"

Good deal

[alshithead]

Now, if we can see the same kind of improvements in electricity transmission, solar power electricity generation, and larger scale electricity storage, we might be able to really reduce fossil based fuels and CO2 emissions.

Re:Good deal

[BlueParrot]

solar power electricity generation

No , please, stop right there. Here, let me put it into perspective for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_energy_usage_width_chart.svg [wikipedia.org]

For those too lazy to follow the link.
World energy consumption:
Oil: 37%
Coal: 25%
Gas: 23%
Nuclear: 6%
Biomass: 4%
Hydro: 3%
Solar heat: 0.5%
Wind: 0.3%
Geothermal: 0.2%
Biofuels: 0.2%
Photovoltaics: 0.02%

WORLDWIDE photovoltaic production is about 13GW. A single nuclear reactor or coal fired powerplant can produce 1-2 GW. Solar couldn't even power a tiny european country with populations of a few millions. Let alone China, India, the US, Russia etc ... Even if you doubled worldwide solar cell output every five years, you would have to keep up such an exponential growth for 50 years just to replace 20% of our CURRENT energy demand. As China and India industrialize this will increase.

The most probable ways to reduce CO2 emissions from our energy generation are:
-Carbon capture and storage
-Expanding Nuclear power
-Increased use of Gas in place of Coal ( gas contains a lot of hydrogen and hence emits less CO2 per kwH than does coal ).

Ironically these are all measures which are fiercely opposed by Greenpeace et al, who instead want us to hope that wind and solar will save the day. At present production wind, solar and solar heat taken together produce about 0.82% of worldwide energy. To avoid a 2 C increase in global average temperature we need substantial cuts in CO2 emissions before 2050. Does anybody SERIOUSLY believe that photovoltaic / wind is up to the job?

I mean for the love of god, electric cars are great in that they could let us use Nuclear power or plants equipped with carbon capture technology, but they will not be solar powered. Not within the foreseeable future at least.

Re:Good deal

[Rei]

Since when does "what we have now" imply "what we'll have with the radical technology improvements that are presently occurring"? You do realize that not only are solar thermal prices dropping, but there have been some *major* advancements in the economics of photovoltaic systems. Silicon cells are typically profitable to sell at $4/W (and are currently selling at $5/W because of supply shortages). CIGS cells are profitable at $1/W. This is a major, major leap that'd make solar cheaper than coal almost everywhere in the world.

Let's look at Nanosolar as an example. Their first plant, when at full capacity, will make them one of the biggest solar producers in the world (430 MW/year if I recall correctly). But this is just their first plant. Selling cells that are profitable at $1/W at nearly $5/W means they'll be profiting hand over fist, which means that investors will fight for the chance to throw money at them. How long do you think it'll take them to scale up with essentially unlimited venture capital? I'm betting not very long. They built their current facility with $100M raised just a year and a half ago, and they've already delivered their first product. Given that most of that money had to go toward simply commercializing their laboratory-scale process, what sort of capacity do you think they could pull off with, say, the next $1B in cash? Dozens of GW/year? And Nanosolar is just one CIGS manufacturer among many. And there's CdTe, too. Unmet demand begs for a market solution. It's inevitable that it's going to be filled.

Longer term, here's a crazy new tech for you to chew on: nanoantenna solar cells [inl.gov]. A completely different process than conventional cells, which use photons to knock electrons off a donor, these new cells are simply designed to receive solar energy in the same way that a larger antenna receives the several-orders-of-magnitude-longer wave radio signals. They should be able to be produced on a cheap reel-to-reel process like CIGS cells, yet they have the potential to be as much as 80% efficient, even receiving the infrared that the Earth emits at night.

Re:Good deal

[BlueParrot]

Let's look at Nanosolar as an example. Their first plant, when at full capacity, will make them one of the biggest solar producers in the world (430 MW/year if I recall correctly). But this is just their first plant. Selling cells that are profitable at $1/W at nearly $5/W means they'll be profiting hand over fist, which means that investors will fight for the chance to throw money at them. How long do you think it'll take them to scale up with essentially unlimited venture capital? I'm betting not very long. They built their current facility with $100M raised just a year and a half ago, and they've already delivered their first product. Given that most of that money had to go toward simply commercializing their laboratory-scale process, what sort of capacity do you think they could pull off with, say, the next $1B in cash? Dozens of GW/year? And Nanosolar is just one CIGS manufacturer among many. And there's CdTe, too. Unmet demand begs for a market solution. It's inevitable that it's going to be filled.

First of all, Nanosolar HOPES to make the cells at $1/W, they are nowhere near that cheap yet, and this is the price their marketing department HOPES to achieve. Secondly, that is the price for the cells without factoring in energy storage devices, energy conversion systems, servicing etc ... Thirdly, it is the price under optimal conditions, with perfectly aligned cells. In any real applications they will only be optimally aligned for a small part of the day, unless you intend to use expensive devices to track solar motion. They are also relying on indium, an element which is thought to become scarce due to increasing demand, and of course, mass-deployment of indium based solar cells would certainly push the price up. Finally, even if they were able to start producing these at competitive costs and at a large rate, you still have the problem that you will have to increase solar photovoltaic output by a factor of 1000 just to reach 20% of current energy demand.

With most of nuclear reactors built in the west ending their licensing in about 2030 - 2040, Oil running low and gas prices rising due to low demand, it seems likely that nations will turn to coal. This effectively implies you will either have to do carbon capture and storage or start building nuclear plants very soon unless you want to have your greenhouse gas emissions rocket due to massive deployments of coal plants. To think that solar will replace Coal, Oil, Gas AND nuclear within 30-40 years amidst the east rapidly increasing the energy intensity of their economies, is wishful thinking at best.

But no, we're going to gamble on some hypothetical solar breakthrough. Despite the fact that no realistic way to overcome the problems with intermittent supply, that they don't produce energy at night, diffuse and limited output, as well as the high price, having been demonstrated. If you think the press release about what one heavily subsidized solar company "hopes to achieve" negates any of my arguments, then I'd say you are naive at best.

As for nano-antenna solar cells, again, you are talking several decades of development at the very least. They won't save us from the energy gap that is likely to occur within 20-30 years, and they only deal with the costs incurred by the cells themselves, they don't address the cost of storing and converting the energy.

Re:Good deal

[Rei]

First of all, Nanosolar HOPES to make the cells at $1/W, they are nowhere near that cheap yet, and this is the price their marketing department HOPES to achieve.

And your information comes from? Nowhere, that's where, because they're not sold on the open market yet, so claims like "they are nowhere near that cheap yet" are complete BS. All of their capacity is currently going to a German municipal plant. Secondly, all of the CIGS companies are giving numbers in the same ballpark, as are the CdTe companies.

Secondly, that is the price for the cells without factoring in energy storage devices, energy conversion systems, servicing etc

Duh. That's part of a general solar economics calculation. Only an idiot would just multiply $1/W times the desired number of watts. A large, batteryless installation in Anchorage, AK of nanosolar cells gets a 30 year IRR of 7-8% [daughtersoftiresias.org]. In Las Vegas, it's more like 13-14%.

Thirdly, it is the price under optimal conditions, with perfectly aligned cells. (and on, and on...)

(Dragnet theme)Duh, duh duh duh. Duh, duh duh duh, duh!(/Dragnet theme)

Do you think we're idiots? What's next? "Third, the cells only produce power when the sun is visible. Fourth, you need to have wires to conduct the power. Fifth, you need "humans", who can use the power...."

They are also relying on indium, an element which is thought to become scarce due to increasing demand, and of course, mass-deployment of indium based solar cells would certainly push the price up.

Indium is more common than silver, is easier to recover than silver (because of its close interrelationship with zinc ores), and CIGS cells use a miniscule amount of it (nanoscale-thickness coatings). Indium's current high price is more related to a lack of demand for it before LCD TVs started using it in bulk; this led to a few of the world's only indium recovery circuits shutting down without new circuits replacing them at other mines. It's not a problem [indium.com]. It only takes a few years to ramp up production.

Finally, even if they were able to start producing these at competitive costs and at a large rate, you still have the problem that you will have to increase solar photovoltaic output by a factor of 1000 just to reach 20% of current energy demand.

Huh? Did you ignore my post, above, where it already addressed this?

With most of nuclear reactors built in the west ending their licensing in about 2030 - 2040, Oil running low and gas prices rising due to low demand

Whaa? For one, nuclear is making a serious comeback in the US. Two, oil is not running low. Light sweet crude is, but light sweet crude != world petroleum production capability. Venezuelan super heavy crude and Canadian bitumen syncrude are taking off. Third, the demand for gasoline has been rising constantly year to year. Are you confusing the annual demand fluctuations with year to year growth in consumption? Demand is always lowest in the winter, highest in the summer.

[quote]But no, we're going to gamble on some hypothetical solar breakthrough.[/quote]

Hypothetical? Yeah, about two dozen companies, some of which have been selling them in smaller volume for years, is "hypothetical". What's next -- are CFLs hypothetical as well?

[quote]Despite the fact that no realistic way to overcome the problems with intermittent supply, that they don't produce energy at night, diffuse and limited output, as well as the high price, having been demonstrated.[/quote]

In the pacific northwest, and to a lesser degree the west coast as a whole, energy storage is a non-issue. The west relies a lot on hydro power, and hydro pairs perfectly with solar (it already has a low capacity factor, so there's no additional economic cost to the hydro producers). Even in the east, solar alone with no storage can eliminate the p

Re:

[olman]

Even if you want to use solar for everything, most pricing I've seen for bulk energy storage is about 4c/kWh to the consumer. With solar this cheap, that's affordable.

On what exactly? Hot air?

We do not have very good ways of storing energy. Battery technology sucks balls, especially on industrial grade. Sure, you could use the energy to make methanol for example and burn that later but that's not terribly efficient process. Growin plants and all that. Hydrogen has a nasty habit of evaporating through solid

Re:

[Rei]

On what exactly?

Compressed air and/or pumped water storage. The prices I've seen listed are about 4c/kWh.

Have you factored in the costs of powering regions which do not get much sunlight during winter months and/or do not have sunny weather in general?

With $1/W solar cells, it doesn't really matter. I'm not sure you understand how cheap that is. Even solar power Alaska comes out cheaper than coal with $1/W cells.

You take a $/W number that everyone knows is unrealistic unless you've got orbital solar pane

Re:

[olman]

Compressed air and/or pumped water storage. The prices I've seen listed are about 4c/kWh.

Fair enough. But again you're omitting some key facts, are you not?

To start on the water reservoir business, you have to put about a billion USD on the table and that's if you're building the damn thing in China dozen years ago!? The chinese plant [power-technology.com] has storage capacity of around 9300MWh (13000MWh gravity potential at 70% efficiency). That takes 8 million cubic meters of water pumped 600 meters up. Or about 200m by 40m by

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

You missed the parent's point. While his numbers for Nanosolar were off, they've already sold out their first year of production. And they're going to sell out the next two years of production very quickly. Once they bring up a new factory, production speed is only going to increase.

Re:Good deal

[ThreeGigs]

First of all, Nanosolar HOPES to make the cells at $1/W, they are nowhere near that cheap yet, and this is the price their marketing department HOPES to achieve

Minor information injection here:
Nanosolar _is_ making solar 'sheets' now... no wishful thinking involved.
They've contracted with a German company who has ordered roughly 600 megawatts worth of sheets ....at.... drumroll please..... 90 cents per watt.

The sheets will be mounted in panels in a factory near Berlin, and used in Germany, which because of favorable laws requiring utilities to buy back power from customers, is experiencing a HUGE demand for renewable energy sources for the homeowner.

Re:

[msevior]

Minor information injection here:
Nanosolar _is_ making solar 'sheets' now... no wishful thinking involved.
They've contracted with a German company who has ordered roughly 600 megawatts worth of sheets ....at.... drumroll please..... 90 cents per watt.

Do you have a reference for this? It is very interesting news.

Re:

[Martian_Kyo]

I used google to search for result (I refuse to use google as a verb) and came up with this: http://www.celsias.com/2007/12/23/nanosolar-update-first-panels-now-shipping [celsias.com]

Re:

[msevior]

While it may well cost Nanoslar 90 cents per watt to make these panels, I don't think they would sell them too far under the current commercial price of $4-$5 per watt. If there is demand at $4 why sell them for $1?

In any case this is incredibly good news. If they can make 430 MW of product per year at $4 million per MW from a $100 million dollar facility, that gives them well over $1 Billion per year to expand production. So in 2011 they may have 10 plants in full operation and another 100 under constructi

Re:

[smaddox]

I think CIGS are currently less durable than single crystal SI cells. I could be wrong on that though.

Re:

[Rei]

There's nothing about the CIGS chemistry itself that's inherently less durable. On the contrary, since it's flexible, it can't break like silicon. On the other hand, CIGS cells can be put on any kind of substrate, and these can be less durable than other substrates. You print your cell on thin plastic, and of course it won't last as long as something with a heavy steel backing and a thick plate of glass on the front. In Nanosolar's case, if I recall correctly, they use a semi-flexible aluminum backing.

Re:

[pev]

Despite the fact that no realistic way to overcome the problems with intermittent supply, that they don't produce energy at night

True yes, but then again we don't use as much energy at night either! e.g. in the UK :
http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/Demand8.htm [nationalgrid.com]

With most of nuclear reactors built in the west ending their licensing in about 2030 - 2040, Oil running low and gas prices rising due to low demand, it seems likely that nations will turn to coal.

Actually

Re:

[Rei]

Solar is more land efficient than coal or hydro, which together make up 60% of our generation capcity, when you consider the area used for coal mining and the lake backed up by the dam, respectively. An order of magnitude more land efficient than hydro, actually. I'm not sure how much land natural gas production/transportation/generation takes up, and likewise, for uranium mining/processing/enrichment/generation/waste storage, but I doubt they're out of the ballpark.

To top it all off, consider where solar

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

You're aware Texas is on it's way to be generating almost 23,000GW (yeah, you read that correctly) in the next 3 years. Wind and solar are indeed up to the task.

Re:

[Eivind]

As these things go though, "doubling every 5 years" is not ambitious at all, infact that is very VERY conservative and much less than the increase in production of PV currently taking place. It is, afterall, less than 15% of growth a year.

The IEA PV trends report from 2003 estimated 20% growth a year for the next decade, but has since been revised upwards. Current trend is looking more like 25% growth in area produced year, which gives somewhat more than that in power generated because average efficiencies

Re:

[srussell]

-Expanding Nuclear power

Aww, no, see... I saw a chart just like the one you linked to from 1910, and the percentage of Nuclear power used in the world was 0%. By your logic, this means that Nuclear power is utterly impractical and won't be able to produce enough energy for a small country, much less the world.

Or did the fact that increasing the use of photovoltaics will consequently increase the percentages of photovoltaics on that chart escape you? What, exactly, did you think that that graph proved,

Re:

[Zeinfeld]

How about a hydroelectric dam? These are things we will need energy to make. Does a PV cell result in a net energy gain if you account for how much it took to make one? Starting with the mining processes....all the way up to installation on your roof. Its called energy accounting. My Father was doing it for ICI in the 1970s after the first oil shock. My wife now works for a consulting company that provides that type of data.

The energy input required to make solar panels is one of the major concerns in th

Sony

[calebt3]

This is Sony's way of making a military-grade exploding battery.

You were beaten to it

[Kupfernigk]

During the Falklands "war", it was discovered that the British Ministry of Defence had managed to supply the Army with radios that used rechargeable batteries, but no battery chargers below brigade level.* The Army was reduced to using heliographs on some occasions.

After the event, there were several studies of what to do about it. One suggestion was to make available lithium batteries as an alternative. The cells proposed were really quite big. After a few interesting incidents in testing, one of which had an engineer cowering behind a filing cabinet screaming "get that wire away from that thing", one REME officer suggested that with a simple piece of spring loaded steel, the cells could find an alternative use as emergency grenade substitutes. (Disappointingly, the actual solution proposed was to fit an internal fuse.)

Given the energy density of this proposal, a simple micro-Sterling generator driven by sticks of dynamite might be safer in the briefcase.

*The Ministry of Defence is kind of like the Pentagon, but without the competence.

OK...

[All Names Have Been]

"...There are no roadblocks for either of these."

So quit with the jibber-jabber and make with the 50 hour laptop battery.

Re:

[tgd]

It'll never happen, at least in the US.

There's TSA limits on the amount of lithium that can be in a battery. Using nanowires to hold more lithium will get you a bigger, yet far more dangerous battery you can't bring anywhere.

Its not so good in cars either, given how dangerous lithium ion batteries are. I'd rather have a RTG or a box of dynamite in my car.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[giorgist]

Hey hey lighten up. This is news for nerds. If you want to read about things that are on the market, go read ebay. It does get frustrating, but be critical and enjoy NEWS. Things are not simply evolutionary, things are changing increadably fast on the big picture. Step back and look just a couple of ago. The difference is evident. Each technology/science front is moving forward pretty fast. And all together are starting to tie in ... look at MEMS ... 2GB USB sticks for a couple of bucks, all the music and

Re:

[Rei]

You can learn the caveats to each tech if you're willing to do the research. In this case, the first caveat is cycle life. They want to get 1000 cycles out of it, and think they'll be able to. But if they can only get a dozen or cycles, this tech is dead in the water. If they can get 1000 cycles, they'll almost certainly be flooded with venture capital for commercializing it (or make a fortune selling it to an established company). Either way, commercialization will be attempted. Then there will be a

Re:Am I the only one getting sick of this?

[TooMuchToDo]

It's 2008. We still don't have flying cars, practical nuclear fusion, fission-powered cars, or multi-petabyte holographic storage devices. In the real world, advances in technology are usually incremental and evolutionary in nature, or a serious tradeoff at best (As an example, the move underway from platter-based hard drives to solid-state hard drives, while revolutionary in nature, involves massive tradeoffs in price-per-gigabyte which are only slowly lessening). It took CD technology a decade or two to give way to a successor with 10 times the storage capacity (dual-layer DVD-R), and making bits smaller is (arguably) a lot easier than increasing energy density (barring the use of nuclear technology or other exotic things which-- again-- isn't realistically going to happen any time soon).

It's 2008. We have extremely safe cars. We have practical, efficient nuclear fission (both for peaceful and weapons uses). We have the ability to store 1TB of data on a drive the size of a small cigar box. And don't forget that I can communicate from one side of the world to the other instantly either via fiber or satellite.

True, we don't have earth-shattering technologies occur overnight (you point this out as well, that research takes time). But if you've noticed, the pace of research and breakthroughs has been increasing over the last 30-40 years. Different technologies build on each other. Faster microprocessors allow us to build hybrid cards and space vehicles. Genetic engineering opens a whole new world in biology.

What I'm trying to get at is, don't be so pessimistic. This battery technology can and will be developed quickly. It's because we have few other practical options.

Re:

[drooling-dog]

But if you've noticed, the pace of research and breakthroughs has been increasing over the last 30-40 years. Different technologies build on each other. Faster microprocessors allow us to build hybrid cards and space vehicles. Genetic engineering opens a whole new world in biology.

Maybe the "problem" is that we've become so accustomed to rapid progress in science and engineering that we've started to take it for granted. Now, when advances occur as they do every day, they're more or less anticipated and thus capitalized into our expectations. The "wow" factor gets harder and harder to achieve, at least outside the immediate field where a breakthrough is made...

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

I completely agree. The bar keeps getting set higher and higher, so "regular" breakthroughs never really awe us anymore. It's less of a technological problem, and more of an sociological expectation problem though. =)

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

Of course, I meant cars. Give me a break. I had been up for around 30 hours at that point. =)

Re:Am I the only one getting sick of this?

[mw22]

So where's the "NotGonnaHappen" tag?

That's not going to happen.

Re:Am I the only one getting sick of this?

[mcrbids]

It's 2008. We still don't have flying cars, practical nuclear fusion, fission-powered cars, or multi-petabyte holographic storage devices. In the real world, advances in technology are usually incremental and evolutionary in nature, or a serious tradeoff at best (As an example, the move underway from platter-based hard drives to solid-state hard drives, while revolutionary in nature, involves massive tradeoffs in price-per-gigabyte which are only slowly lessening). It took CD technology a decade or two to give way to a successor with 10 times the storage capacity (dual-layer DVD-R), and making bits smaller is (arguably) a lot easier than increasing energy density (barring the use of nuclear technology or other exotic things which-- again-- isn't realistically going to happen any time soon).

Flying cars don't need flying drivers, they need driving pilots. There are about 650,000 pilots in the United States with a certificate of Private Pilot or better. (the minimum license necessary to take more than 1 passenger in a flying vehicle) Compared to the population of 300 MILLION people, and you find that there are an awful few people who could "drive" a flying car. You find the economics of scale that will work at this level. Certainly, Detroit won't. Flying isn't the same as driving. There are no roads, and you have to pay careful attention to long-established procedures designed to avoid situations like running out of gas. (a minor inconvenience in a car, potentially fatal in a plane if you aren't well trained to handle it) I hate to diss flying, since I'm a pilot by hobby, and I love my hobby. But the requirements to pilot are significantly greater than the requirements to drive.

Nuclear Fusion is widely available. Look up. (you have to go outside to see it - it's called the "sun") As a source for electricity, it's coming at prices comparable to coal [slashdot.org] which is the cheapest non-renewable form of energy today in the USA.

Data storages has generally followed Moore's law, with a doubling time of about 18 months. What more do you want? I remember when a 100 MB HDD was big. Now, a little over 2 decades later, I routinely transfer files bigger than that all around the world via the Internet, and save to a flash disk the size of my thumb that requires no external power source, while my LAPTOP hard disk is 2,500 MB in size. I won't highlight my workstation/home-server with > 3 TB of storage.

Amazing!

Try using a 10 year old computer sometime. You'll be amazed at just how far we've really come.

And, technology is advancing on ALL fronts.

I recently added on to my home, doubling its size. Along with that came new regulations for insulation, higher-efficiency heating/cooling unit, insulation, double-paned windows, etc. I DOUBLED the size of my home, but my heating/cooling bill is about HALF what it used to be. Progress? Suffice it to say that the money I'm saving on my utility bill easily beats the monthly cost of the financed retrofit upgrades to my original home! In other words: it would be cheaper to buy the upgrades to an existing 100 year old home to get these improvements than to keep using whatever you had in the first place.

I drive a 10 year-old Saturn. It gets 30 MPG fully loaded at 90 MPH, quietly, with air conditioning, decent radio, and air bags. Back in the 1980s, I drove a VW diesel Rabbit that did about the same at the same speed. It was noisy, shook lots, had an AM-only radio, and didn't have A/C. Relative prices (inflation adjusted) makes the Saturn CHEAPER than the VW Rabbit. Hello progress ?!?

I use CFL lights throughout my home. Over their lifetimes, they are cheaper than incandescents in replacement costs alone, and 5 of these things use less electricity than a SINGLE incandescent bulb. I can light up my whole house for what it used to cost to turn on the porch light. I've banished incandescents from my home. And, I'm still not particularly good at turning

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

We're using old breakthroughs

[AlpineR]

I think your parent poster doesn't realize how long it takes to turn a basic scientific discovery into a consumer product. There is a ton of work to do: understanding the phenomenon, optimizing conditions, designing a device, patenting, building a manufacturing plant, working out failures and inefficiencies, licensing, marketing, and getting the cost low enough to be affordable outside of military and space applications.

Before I became a scientist and engineer myself I would have thought a couple years wou

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The problem of the "flying car" is not technological, it's economic and societal. We already have Piper Cubs, Cessnas and so on.

Given the cost of energy, do you really want to pay for the cost to fly a flying car? I don't think energy is going to get any cheaper over the next century. Just the gas to fly a single prop aircraft is $45/hr, not counting all the other maintenance costs, and the craft can only go about twice as fast as legal highway speed. Do you really want to deal with sky rage?

Re:

[mgblst]

You know, for stories I am not interested in, I generally ignore them by not clicking on the link.

Look some people want to hear what research is going on, what is at the cutting edge. These are things we don't hear about in the normal media. If you just want product deliveries, wait around for the Macworld or CES discussions.

Re:

[nmg196]

Point accepted, but some technologies DO come to market and work out OK in the end.

1. I would never have believed when I was at university exactly ten years ago, that in 2008, I would have a more powerful processor in my *telephone* than I had in my desktop computer I took to uni to study Computer Science with.
2. I would never have believed ten years ago that I could get 4 GIGABYTES of non-volatile memory in something the same size as my little fingernail (MicroSD) for a few pounds off eBay.
3. I also bet my

Re:

[dylan_-]

On the other hand there are some other surprises. If you expand the old graphs of PC processor clock speeds, we should have 12GHz CPUs now, but we don't. Clock speeds stopped increasing about 4 years ago. Processors are still faster due to architectural changes, faster bus speeds and more cores, but clock speeds are exactly the same if not slower than they were a few years back.

I think the growth in computing power has remained fairly close to the mark though. Last review I saw for a Core 2 Duo had a benchm

some more

[Atreide]

Nanowires Boost Laptop Battery Life to 20 Hours
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/19/169259 [slashdot.org]

Never mind the knee-jerk "We've heard this before"

[mmell]

(although we have heard this before)

Nano-technology . . . last I heard, not the easiest stuff to engineer in. Nope - can't find too many qualified workers on street-corners. 'quipment ain't at the local machine shop.

Erm, even if this isn't just another load of vapor, just how much will these things cost? and how do you mass-produce 'em?

Oh, and we've heard this whole "new technology discovered which promises blah." We didn't need to hear it twice.

Why graphite?

[drwho]

Why is graphite used as an anode material? What does it offer ? I was just reading some cool articles on how to make electricity from sewage ( http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MicrobialFuelCells/ [yahoo.com] ) and thinking this. I read articles where they similarly talk about little 'whiskers' or cilia that bacteria have in relation to this sewage-to-voltage idea and wonder if it's all related somehow.

Yea, I am starting to turn into a biochemistry hacker. Just imagine what my basement will smell like now...ha ha ha

could increase the availability of solar and wind

[FriedmannSolution5]

http://www.solarnetwork.net/ [solarnetwork.net] is an app that hopes for this - but bigger and cheaper storage would help with the intermittent nature of these 2 power sources. does anyone think that affordable battery capacity could increases the way hard drive capacity did over the last 10 years? 1997 I think I was installing 8GB drives in a machine maybe? maybe even 4GB drives for laptops? Today it's easily 10 times that size on average.

Storing more danger?

[cheros]

As that technique stores a lot more energy in the same volume, I would imagine that a lot more energy will come out if something goes wrong with the battery.

This could get interesting later..

Interview with Dr. Cui

[Twinbee]

Interview with Dr. Cui, here [gm-volt.com].

Which Is It?

[Nom du Keyboard]

researchers have discovered a way to increase battery life tenfold...said the increased battery capacity

So which is it, life, or capacity? As I know those terms:

Life: the number of times the battery can be recharged to some approximation of its original capacity.

Capacity: The amount of energy, think amp/hours at the rated voltage, that the battery can deliver.

So does this battery provide 10X as many recharge cycles in service as normal batteries, or does it deliver 10X as much energy per volume or

The Slashdot summary and news.com are incorrect

[cgraves]

The Slashdot summary correctly draws from the news.com article, but the news.com article is mis-reporting this news. It is not battery life that is being discussed but rather energy density. Capacity has never referred to battery life. The Nature Nanotechnology journal article in question ( abstract [nature.com], fulltext [nature.com], pdf [nature.com] - for some reason they are all freely downloadable) reports that their Si nanowire anode has a little more than 10 times the capacity of common graphite anodes, and they have achieved that in ch

Re:

[Crypto Gnome]

You saw it.

I saw it

But clearly "they" did not see it, else "they" would not have submitted a dupe.

Re:

[Zymergy]

OMG, I saw it too!!... I remember reading it here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/19/169259 [slashdot.org]

Re:

[wizardforce]

Don't the editors at least read the headlines?

you must be new here. Dupes are not just the editor's doing although the editors really should google things like this it is ultimately other slashdotters that vote stories like these up in the firehose. No matter how many dupes happen on slashdot, people still vote up duplicates of stories probably because 1) no one googles them and 2) a lot of our fellow slashdotters apparently don't visit the site enough to know a dupe like this one.

Re:

[Smidge204]

Not to excuse them, but at least it's a different article on a different website, and at least it's not another worthless copy+paste blog "article" from over a year ago. This dupe is pretty high standard compared to some.

=Smidge=

Re:Dupe

[CastrTroy]

Who cares if things get reported more than once. It's something that enough people thought was interesting that they thought it should be posted. Obviously some people want to discuss it. If you've already read the story, and don't want to discuss it any more, then that's fine, but there's lots of people who miss the story the first time around, and would like to discuss it.

Re:

[Spazntwich]

Have you ever read the book "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie?" While dupes are not the end of the world, you sitting there and speciously defending bad editing (Seriously, it's their job to make sure stories only make it up once. You know, for the sake of the site regulars.) only encourages it, and once it's ok to edit badly, the quality will sink further.

So, again, don't get all pedantic on others just because you can't think of the consequences of an action or choice.

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Damn I thought we were going to get a factor of 100 improvement in battery capacity.

Re:Dupe

[Rei]

It's not even 10fold -- at least not currently. It's only "several" times improvement without an equivalent cathode improvement. Now, that may well happen, but it hasn't happened yet. However, they think they may be able to commercialize it in five years [gm-volt.com].

Re:Dupe

[Rei]

And, let me add, I don't say this to diminish the importance of this news. A severalfold improvement is major, major news. Not in the least because this anode likely lends itself to very rapid charging at the same time. What we're looking at is, as it stands, giving it the sort of charge time and range as a gasoline vehicle, meaning that there's no reason to stick with gasoline (when you can get lower maintenance (assuming long lifespan batteries), higher torque, quieter, more thermodynamically efficient vehicles that only require gas station visits on long trips, require hardly any new infrastructure (versus oil, which needs a lot of infrastructure construction) due to mostly off-peak charging (timer-based to get you a low rate and use our huge amount of unused off-peak capacity), lets us use domestic energy supplies instead of funding our enemies with oil imports, and even if all of the electricity came from burning fossil fuels, would still emit almost half the greenhouse gasses. An equivalent cathode improvement for electric vehicles simply means that you could then drive cross-country on a single charge.

As for lifespan, Yi Cui's team expects to be able to get at least 1,000 cycles out of this. That may not sound like much, but when you can go ~350 miles on a charge, that's 350,000 miles. And not like the battery just disintegrates up at the end of its lifespan; it simply doesn't hold as much charge.

Re:

[pipatron]

And not like the battery just disintegrates up at the end of its lifespan; it simply doesn't hold as much charge.

To be honest, that depends on what their marketing division means with a "cycle"...

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

What we're looking at is, as it stands, giving it the sort of charge time and range as a gasoline vehicle

Also time shifted photovoltaic and wind power suddenly become much more viable. The problem with solar power is that we throw away much of the peak supply because we can't store it anywhere.

Re:

[InvalidError]

Until solar and wind power exceed overall power demand, there is no real need to store that power: any power from clean/renewable sources will reduce the amount of non-renewable resources used in other power plants and this in itself could be considered as a form of grid-based storage. Another form of grid-based storage is to operate hydroelectric turbines in reverse during low-demand hours to pump water back to the high-side, basically using the water reservoirs like capacitors to even out production requi

Re:Dupe

[ThreeGigs]

giving it the sort of charge time and range as a gasoline vehicle

Stop and think for a second, or do some math, because electric cars will *never* 'fill up' as fast as a chemically powered car. Instead of pouring in gasoline, imagine that gasoline powering a flamethrower which you point into your gas tank, and you'll have a better grasp of what it means to transfer energy directly (as in electricity) versus high density potential (like gas).

Assume your electric car needs only 20 horsepower to maintain 60 mph.
One horsepower is about 750 watts, assuming perfect efficiency.
That's 15 kilowatts to keep the car going 60 mph.
To make the numbers easy, figure 300 mile range. That means you need to drive for 5 hours.
5 hours times 15 kilowatts is 75 kilowatt-hours.
Now let's assume the 'electric station' supplies electricity to charge your car at 500 volts.
75000 watt-hours divided by 500 volts equals 150 amps.
For an hour. Assuming perfect charging.
To get to a 3 minute charge time (one twentieth of an hour) you need 20x the amperage, or 3000 amps.

To carry 3000 amps of current for 3 minutes without melting insulation, my numbers show you'd need copper wire about 2.5 inches in diameter (and you'd still get a temperature rise of 90 degrees farenheit over ambient). And note to electricians who may think the numbers are off, don't forget you're charging with DC voltage, not AC, so you're gonna need about 5000 circular mils worth of wire.

I cannot imagine Joe Average plugging TWO wires, each of which is thicker than his wrist, into his car for a 3 minute recharge.

And yeah, you could drop it to 300 amps, but then you're talking 5000 volts.

So basically... you're never, ever going to see a 'gas station' for electric cars. They'll always be charged for long periods at home, or at 'charging garages'.

Re:

[JonathanR]

So basically... you're never, ever going to see a 'gas station' for electric cars. They'll always be charged for long periods at home, or at 'charging garages'.

Which wouldn't really matter too much, since most people (who commute) will leave their car parked someplace for an extended period. For lengthy car trips, a trailer-mounted fossil-fuel powered generator could supplement the battery charge, and be available on a hire basis.

Re:

[ThreeGigs]

You won't see a trailer with a running generator and fuel supply on it like you describe, as it would kill efficiency and be inconvenient. Much simpler to just rent a gas powered car. However, I'm guessing that soon there'll be hybrids with a low power (10 HP), constant RPM (max 2500 RPM) diesel generator on board. Park the hybrid and let the engine keep running to charge the battery pack. Full battery pack plus 7500 watts of generating capacity would amount to about a 500 mile range, and allow you to recha

Re:

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Instead of recharging your battery inside the car, simply exchange your exhausted battery for a fresh battery at the 'gas station'. They recharge your exhausted battery for however long it takes, and exchanges it for someone else's exhausted battery. People with gas grills are already used to doing something like this; when your propane tank is empty, you take it to a location where they exchange it for a full tank. They then fill the tank you gave them and sell it to someone else.

Re:Dupe

[fadir]

Maybe you take the wrong approach to "charge" a car.

What about standard, pre-charged batteries that you simply swap at the "gas" station instead of really charging the car? This way the whole process can be done in the same amount of time than filling up gasoline.
This is not even to complicated. You more or less rent the battery from the respective company and return it when it's empty (just to exchange it for a fully charged one).

The "gas" station has all the time in the world to charge the empty batteries, replace/repair faulty ones, etc.

Isn't that a more logical (and much safer) solution to the problem?

Re:

[mprinkey]

The analogous situation currently exists with small propane tanks for gas grills, etc. There are dozens of places that have racks of these ready to swap with your old one. I think this is an excellent business model. Each location will need to an inventory of batteries that is equal to the peak turn-over rate times the recharge time plus a bit of a cushion. The trick is getting automakers first to build electric cars at all and second to agree on a standard battery module.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

However, batteries are heavy. For this to really work, they would need some sort of standard form factor batteries that could be lifted in and out of the car by some kind of machine. There's no way you'd get some minimum wage kid lifting 20 lbs. batteries all day, like you can get them to fill up cars at the gas station. Also, It would have to all be in one single casing, or it would take half an hour to unload and reload all the batteries.

Re:

[Rei]

Car batteries are not ~$40, 20lb propane tanks. Car batteries are $8k, several hundred pound devices bolted to the base of your car. Not going to happen.

Re:Dupe

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Isn't that a more logical (and much safer) solution to the problem?

On the surface, yes. But that means it's perfectly plausible to get different travel distances off of each swap, because you're swapping for batteries at different stages in their overall lifespans. OTOH, keeping the same battery for its lifetime would net you a slow, predictable decline in range -- something I suspect most people would prefer, as opposed to a guessing game as to how many miles they will travel after each swap.

Re:

[mea37]

That might be a pretty good idea, for several reasons. But it's not a slam dunk; there are problems that would have to be resolved.

What is the total weight of the car batteries? How much energy will be spent physically swapping them? This isn't just a starter battery... If nothing else, this would probably be the end of the self-service gas station (at least until our car-refueling robot overlords sweep in to save the day)... And remember, it's the driver that's going to end up paying for any labor, or

Re:

[Shotgun]

No.

You have to look out for people trying to game the system. I'd run a battery in my commuter car for a few years, until it started to degrade. Then take it to a 'station' and swap it out for a good one. I'd keep 'filling up' until I got one that was practically new. Then I'd stop 'filling up' and charge my batteries at home.

Batteries are like propane tanks, that are emptied of it's contents, but the bottle remains unchanged.

Re:

[ThreeGigs]

just to exchange it for a fully charged one

You buy a new car. With a new battery. With a range of 300 miles.
You use the car for a month, recharging at home.
You take a trip, and hit a 'swap station' on the way.

You get home with your 'new' battery, only to discover that your range has dropped to 150 miles, because the battery is a year and a half old and near the end of its useful life. Don't forget that lithium batteries only have a useful life of about 1.5 years.

Yeah, you could solve that problem by having

Re:Dupe

[BlueParrot]

Your numbers are a bit off. The Tesla roadster quotes a range of 356km on 54kWh.

If you use 1000 V , 4 parallel plugs, a 100A charging current, that gives you 66kWh in 10 minutes. 100A is doable with AWG 1 ( 7.35mm ), and most of the time you wouldn't be charging from empty anyway, so something like 6 minutes is more reasonable. Of course, this is only necessary if you need to take a pit stop during a long journey, most people would probably just charge it at home over night.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

356 KM is not really that far. I know people who commute that far every day to work.

Re:

[mdsolar]

The point of the article though is that the range would extend to 3560 km, if that is how you want to use the batteries. Otherwise you need ten times less mass in batteries for the same (oops slightly greater) range.

Re:

[Jeremi]

356 KM is not really that far. I know people who commute that far every day to work

Yes, it is that far. Those people are insane. If you're commuting more than 20 miles a day, the problem isn't with your car, the problem is that your house is located too far away from your job. You need to move, or take a different job.

Re:

[cnettel]

356 KM is not really that far. I know people who commute that far every day to work.

One or two ways? 200 miles, for the metrically challenged, seems quite hefty. I know that there are people with that kind of commute, but what percentage would they constitute of the total (the total population or the total number of miles).

Re:

[ultranova]

Of course, this is only necessary if you need to take a pit stop during a long journey, most people would probably just charge it at home over night.

If most people just charge their cars at home over night, then there won't be any charging stations, because it will economically unviable to keep one going due to the shortage of customers.

This also means that your effective operating range is limited by your car; you can't go farther than your car batteries can take you on a single charge, because you c

Re:

[FroBugg]

This is why plug-in hybrids are our best real hope.

Something like the upcoming Chevy Volt does it even better than the plug-in modded Priuses available now. It uses its gasoline motor only to charge the batteries, and thus runs far more efficiently than a motor that sometimes pushes the car.

It requires absolutely no change in our gasoline delivery infrastructure (unlike hydrogen), but would require an increase in electricity generation to take advantage of the plug-in aspect for daily use.

Also, once we get

Re:

[Ancient_Hacker]

You are correct in that it will take a heck of a lot of electrical energy and a lot of time to charge these batteries.

One work-around is to make the batteries easily swappable, like you drive in, the battery drops down, like dropping your gas tank, and a newly charged battery pops up. Could be done in ten seconds, much faster than filling your gas tank.

Re:

[s_p_oneil]

You think these things are going to be the size of laptop batteries? They're going to be the size of a gas tank, or larger. Or if they are small, there will be a few hundred of them plugged together. Either way, it will not be easy to swap them out.

Re:

[sgt101]

Or, alternatively, you could lease the batteries from the manufacturer who will then support the energy distribution retailers (Shell, BP, ect) in swapping them in and out of your car.

So, you roll up, pop your cell out, it validates against your account and is collected in a bin.

A recharged cell is placed near enough to your car for you to connect it, or alternatively it's clipped into your car by machines. I guess that will depend on the weight of the component.

You pay, you drive off.

Your old cell is recha

Re:

[iserlohn]

What you say is true only for batteries specifically, not for electric cars in general. There's nothing stopping you from changing the electrolyte or the battery itself. In fact, it's been done before... in 1907 - http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9719105 [economist.com]

Re:

[ErikZ]

So you're saying that the method of putting gas into the car gas tank doesn't translate well into putting electricity into a car battery.

Shock. Surprise.

New method, off the top of my head. Docking stations for cars. Since you don't have a gas powered engine in the front of the car any more, you can put the connector up there. You align up with the power supply plug in the wall and move the car forward into it.

To fix your high amperage/voltage/wire thickness problems, just put in 20 leads, and directly wire

Sure you can make electric filling stations.

[hey!]

But you don't use "filling stations" under an electric scenario the way you use them with gas. The only reason I'd ever set out on road trip with less than a full tank of gas is because it's more convenient to gas up on the highway than before I get on the highway. If the opposite were true, I'd always started gassed up. If, for example, I had a gas pump at my house, I'd always start full.

If my "gas" is electricity I do have pump at my house. True, if I were completely discharged it might take me ten ho

Why don't you make hydrogen instead?

[Joce640k]

The main problem right now isn't batteries, it's making clean electricity. If we can solve that, all the rest is just a technicality.

Maybe it'll be batteries, maybe it'll be hydrogen, maybe even both (hydrogen/battery hybrid). Who cares, so long as it runs?

Re:

[hey!]

Actually, the main problem IS batteries; but its not technological, it's legal: battery patents that are being used to slow technology adoption rather than make money from it.

Yes, making cleaner electricity would be better than making dirtier electricity. But cars are very, very dirty.

Re:

[Jeremi]

I cannot imagine Joe Average plugging TWO wires, each of which is thicker than his wrist, into his car for a 3 minute recharge.

Why is that so hard to imagine? Joe Average already plugs in a gas "cable" thicker than his wrist every time he fill up. Teaching him to plug in a slightly different, slightly larger cable seems like it would be the least of your worries. I'd be more worried about reliably and safely generating that kind of power on demand.

Re:

[Rei]

Assume your electric car needs only 20 horsepower to maintain 60 mph.
One horsepower is about 750 watts, assuming perfect efficiency.
That's 15 kilowatts to keep the car going 60 mph.

It's simpler than that. A typical modern EV gets about 200Wh/mi at 60mph. Some get notably less, like the Aptera, but that's a crazy Jetsons-like car, so we won't count it ;) 200*60=12kWh/h=12kW. As for range, 200Wh/mi * 300 mi = 60kWh.

But hey, let's go with your 75kWh. It's in the ballpark.

Now let's assume the 'electric sta

Re:

[russotto]

cannot imagine Joe Average plugging TWO wires, each of which is thicker than his wrist, into his car for a 3 minute recharge.

And yeah, you could drop it to 300 amps, but then you're talking 5000 volts.

The two thick wires you mention are no worse than those darn rubber nozzles. And 5000 volts isn't such a big deal. Yes, you'll need good insulation and interlocks, but if the battery can take it (and no reasonable battery can), transferring megawatts of power is not an unsolvable problem.

Used batteries

[mdsolar]

I think your point about continued use of batteries after they are no longer transportation grade is very important. This model is already being commercialized using Tesla Motors' batteries. I estimate here [blogspot.com] that these used batteries would provide storage of about a half a day's worth of our total generation if our transporation sector were converted to plug in hybrids. With a 45% wind, 45% solar and 10% hydro grid, this would be most or all of the storage we would need. This would allow us to concentrat

Re:

[Keith_Beef]

What we're looking at is, as it stands, giving it the sort of charge time and range as a gasoline vehicle, meaning that there's no reason to stick with gasoline (when you can get lower maintenance (assuming long lifespan batteries), higher torque, quieter, more thermodynamically efficient vehicles

No.

Charge time and range, compared to gasoline?

It takes approximately four minutes to fill the tank of my VW, to give me around 350 miles of range. I would guess a Li Ion battery charges now in around four hou

Re:

[Rei]

I would guess a Li Ion battery charges now in around four hours (probably closer to eight hours, but I'll be generous).

Don't guess.

It's about three hours to fill a typical current EV that's at "empty". Tesla is 3-4. Aptera is 2-4. However, this is mostly battery limited. There are already fast charge batteries ready to hit the market -- Toshiba and AltairNano are producing them. 5-10 minutes charge time. EEStor's EESUs are also 5-10 minutes. And this is for an empty battery. It seems likely that the

Re:But will it explode 10X more powerful ?

[BlueParrot]

Very briefly put, no. The explosive nature of lithium batteries has very little to do with the electric energy stored in them. If the electric energy stored in a battery was even remotely close to the amount of energy released by burning the chemicals they are composed of, then we would all be driving electric cars by now. In fact, more modern lithium batteries are less prone to explode because they have lower internal resistance, so they don't heat up as much when discharged. I keep seeing this fallacy about energy content vs explosive danger when people discuss batteries, but it is frankly nonsense. Many high-power explosives don't produce a whole lot of heat when they detonate, it is the rapid shock-wave that gives them their destructive power. Conversely, regular butter contains enough energy to drive your car on it, but it is quite tricky to ignite and hence fairly safe.

Anyway, poorly manufactured Lithium batteries are dangerous because they ignite easily. It has very little to do with their energy content.

Re:But will it explode 10X more powerful ?

[mrcaseyj]

The Wikipedia article on Energy Density [wikipedia.org] lists the energy density of lithium batteries with nanowires at about 6MJ/kg and the energy density of TNT at about 4MJ/kg. And unlike butter or gasoline or some other things, I think the lithium battery has the oxidizer in the package (though maybe not right in the molecule like TNT). I don't think they're going to let you take many of these on the plane with you.

Correct - a bit of amplification

[Kupfernigk]

The whole principle of operation of storage batteries is to separate charge by oxidising at one pole and reducing at the other, thus the larger the electrical storage per unit volume, the greater the available chemical energy. When the poles are connected, the oxidiser is reduced and the reducer is oxidised back again, in such a way that the exchanged electrons pass along a wire outside the battery rather than directly between the reagents internally. Replying to the GP, the lower the internal resistance, the closer the reagents must be together and the more rapid their reaction, since this is how the battery discharges. Any internal short will allow a potentially more catastrophic reaction, since more current will be generated. It is true as per the GP that butter has a high energy density but is quite safe. Now mix that butter with the correct quantity of powdered oxidiser - say powdered potassium chlorate - and you have, basically, home made blasting explosive. You are not comparing like with like. I wonder who the GP works for?(It's probably illegal to write this posting from the UK, but, Gordon, are you going to lock up everybody who knows a bit of basic chemistry?)

Re:

[BlueParrot]

Any internal short will allow a potentially more catastrophic reaction, since more current will be generated.

Not if the heat from that current is insufficient to cause further energy release. Thus the activation energy of the reaction is also important. Also, it is NOT the Lithium that is being oxidized/reduced during normal operation in a LiCoO2 cell, but the Co ions. The argument about energy density vs damage potential would be true if it was only the ions being reduced/oxidized present, and if their rea

Re:

[aproposofwhat]

At an average acceleration of just over 11G, you'd likely only ever do that 0-60 one time, before crashing uncontrollably after losing consciousness :P

Blackouts

[TapeCutter]

"I vote for a 0 to 60 Mph in 0.25 seconds Tesla."

To avoid blackouts it should also come with a pair of pressurised pants like jet pilots use (preferably with room for an adult diaper).

Re:

[Jesus_666]

But it should also have the brakes from the 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR. You know, for those times when you really need to go from 300 to 0 mph in less than 12 feet.