The battery revolution

On March 12, 2009, President Obama announced the allocation of $2 billion for Research and Development (R&D) of electric vehicles (EV’s). The battery in these vehicles was regarded as being of such fundamental importance, that $1.5 billion of this sum is being provided for R&D into their improvement. The balance was for development of electric motors for use in trucks and passenger vehicles.

The Obama administration has good reason for attaching so much importance to the development of a battery able to hold a much higher charge, which rapidly recharges many thousands of times and is durable, light and cheaper to make than existing batteries. Portable energy is fundamental to our way of life and the direction of its future development.

Consider existing appliances which depend on the battery for energy: the simple mobile phone or more complex Blackberry, the wrist-watch, radio, camera, iPod, laptop, torch, fan or mini TV and others.

Since its invention by Alessandro Volta in 1800, the battery has been developed into many shapes and sizes. Over the ensuing 200 years improvements have been made in its ability to store electricity, provide power for an extended period, and there have been improvements in its production cost. Surprisingly, significant improvements in its capacity have not been achieved.

Users will know the frustration of not being able to use a laptop for more than two or three hours without the need to recharge the battery. Mobile phone users experience similar constraints. Those using other devices equipped with batteries know how long it takes to recharge them, if in fact they are rechargeable. It is often cheaper and quicker to purchase a new battery and throw the old one away rather than attempt to recharge it.

Truly glittering prizes are on offer to the scientists who research and develop the technology, as well as for the manufacturers able to commercially produce cheaper batteries with the enhancements sought by President Obama. Imagine the difference such batteries could make. A battery with increased capacity to hold a charge could be smaller and lighter, provide power for a longer period and recharge more quickly.

This is what makes recent statements by researchers so important for the future direction and growth of electronics. Dr Gerbrand Ceder and graduate student Byoungwoo Kang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported in Nature (March 12, 2009) that they had developed technology enabling production of lithium-ion phosphate batteries able to conduct electricity very quickly and handle repeated charges without degrading. Reports of their work are summarised at Google News.

The application of their breakthrough would make it possible for a mobile phone battery to recharge in 10 seconds and that of a laptop in about a minute. Moreover, the charge which could be held by such a battery would be in the order of 10 times greater than existing batteries. This conjures up the prospect of a laptop running for 20 hours or more before requiring rapid re-charge from the electricity mains.

Other work being undertaken in America and by CSIRO in Australia is well advanced. It involves development of a hybrid super-capacitor/battery with similar ability to hold and release an electric charge 10-20 times that of currently used conventional batteries. Similar outcomes have been achieved with the use of nano-technology. It is expected that both nanotechnology and the MIT technology would be in commercial production within three years. A date for commercial production of a hybrid super-capacity/battery has not been published.

Developments in battery technology have the ability to improve the past and develop the future. They have the potential to extend the design and use of existing portable electronic devices, enable wider and more efficient use of electricity and enhance production of electricity from sunlight.

Significant improvements in battery performance of the kind described by Dr Ceder could extend the distance electric vehicles can travel between battery recharging from 200km to at least 1,000km. A rapid 5-10 minute recharge would be possible, rather than the recharge period of several hours required for existing batteries used in EV’s. If used in banks, such batteries could provide the power needed to drive heavy commercial vehicles and other equipment now operated by diesel.

The implications of this are profound and far reaching. The price of electricity required to propel a car 100km costs about 20-33 per cent of the price of petrol required to cover that distance, assuming a petrol price of $1.15 a litre. The availability of a comparatively light and compact battery bank able to provide the energy needed to propel a car for more than 500km before the need for re-charging could rapidly kill the market for fossil fuelled cars.

Car makers would not require a government subsidy to help cover the cost of re-tooling factories to produce electric vehicles. They would be falling over each other to be first on the market with a bigger, better and cheaper electric car. Workshops would spring-up offering to convert fossil fuelled vehicles to electric. Oil imports and petrol sales would decline as the price of both continued to increase due to growing scarcity of oil.

In short, a battery with the characteristics sought by President Obama would bring about a revolution in the transport sector. Starting with cars it would move to other vehicles as improvements in battery technology and manufacturing capacity were achieved. It is possible that batteries using MIT or other advanced technology could be in production in Australia within five years, and their use would not be limited to EVs.

Batteries using MIT technology could store sufficient electricity to power the lighting and domestic appliances found in the average home. Batteries could be charged by photovoltaic cells or from the main during off-peak hours when demand for electricity is at its lowest. Electricity supplied by the mains would then become a source of back-up energy to supplement batteries when household demand exceeded battery capacity.

The availability of batteries with such significant storage capacity would support the use of photovoltaic cells (PVC’s) as the main source of domestic electricity. Although the present state of PVC technology renders them an inefficient producer of electricity, improvements in their performance, through use of plastics and nano-technology, will continue in coming years. Combined with improved batteries, the use of PVC’s is likely to become more extensive, further reducing demand for electricity generated from fossil fuels.

In the future, radio and lit beacons, air and fluid pumps, electric fencing, telecommunications transmitters and other devices controllable by radio could be operated in areas where electricity is unavailable. MIT and other advanced battery technology would permit use of these devices almost anywhere in the world outside polar regions where sunlight is scarce and current ways of recharging are limited.

Such devices would be powered by a bank of high-density batteries recharged by solar panels. It would be possible to construct long distance pipelines and pump water through them using electric pumps powered entirely by solar powered hi-tech batteries.

For example, pumping water from remote Lake Argyle to supply Perth could become both practical and, in terms of operating costs, cheap. Piping flood waters from northern Queensland into the Murray-Darling basin could be a way of reducing drought conditions in south-eastern Australia.

Compact high-density batteries could be used to supply power for portable domestic appliances such as those found in caravans or construction camp facilities in remote locations where mains power is unavailable. Enhanced capacity to store and transport energy would stimulate production of new devices and improve existing ones - such as a cooler (like an Esky) with a built-in refrigerating unit replacing the inefficient use of ice as a coolant. No doubt the military could think of new uses of mobile, longer lasting energy.

Two years ago, such views would have been labelled science fiction. Today, it is reasonable to predict that the battery revolution will be a fact in Australia by 2015 or sooner. Businesses should now be considering the opportunities, the innovations, and the extended use of electricity which the battery revolution will offer. Governments should already be planning for the effects this revolution will have on the economy.

Those effects will include the need to re-train the workforce displaced by reduced demand for fossil fuels, vehicles fuelled by them and electricity generated from burning them. It will include the need to expand the electronics sector so that it is able to meet growing domestic and export demand for its products, assuming it can compete with Chinese producers in quality, reliability and price.

Rather than supporting the myopic views of vested interests in Australia by offering subsidies to those seeking to retain dependence on the use of fossil fuels, government should be actively planning for coming changes. Five years is not a long time in which to prepare such plans, have them approved and ready for implementation. It is certainly not a long time for state governments, notably Queensland, to reduce budgetary dependence on fossil fuel production.

Three things we can be sure of over the next five years:

• technology will continue to make break-throughs resulting in the improved performance of batteries and PVC’s;
• this will result in a revolution in wider, greater but more efficient use of electricity produced from sunlight; and
• combined with electricity produced from other renewable sources, especially geothermal, this will start having profound and increasingly far reaching effects on the economy.

Governments may think they will be able to ignore or control coming changes. That is possible but only at the cost of seeing Australia lose its competitive edge. President Obama has metaphorically thrown down the gauntlet. No one should doubt his intention that America will lead the way in battery technology, electric vehicles, and a decline in the use of and dependence on fossil fuels.

Australia must follow his lead and exploit its competitive edge, which arises from having access to geothermal energy.