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 Samsung SDI has had a lot to worry about this year. And Samsung stock certainly took a hit because of the Note7 debacle involved tightly with its battery arm. But Samsung and their battery arm Samsung SDI have come back from their stock slump and are back to their average price.
The reason for a return to normalcy is a combination of doubts about the battery arm being the cause of the Note7 fires. It is looking somewhat likely that the designers of the phone just didn't give the battery enough room. And because the separator in the battery was especially thin, the tight fit was too rough on the battery.
It would have been too rough on any battery, which could be why the replacement battery failed as well.
But there is more to the story. Samsung SDI hasn't been a money maker for the parent Samsung even before the Note7. The memory business of the highly diversified conglomerate company is doing very well. And their display business is also profitable, among other divisions.
Even with the big hit they took cleaning up the Note7 problem, Samsung SDI is already creating new contracts and trying to make its way into a solid position because batteries should be a great business in the future as demand has grown almost exponentially.
 Dendrites are the bane of lithium batteries. They grow inside a cell as it is used and sometimes they get big enough to pierce through a separator causing a lack of performance and sometimes catastrophic failure.
So there has been a lot of research into how to stop them or mitigate them. That kind of study starts with understanding them. It turns out they dendrites are a great deal stronger than we first imagined.
This is bad news when it comes to what we wanted the outcome of the research to be. But it is good news in that knowing the true nature of the problem will help us combat it better.
The interesting thing about the Czech battery factory is that one normally doesn't build a factory if they don't have something to build. The company that has built a factory is HE3DA.
 They claim they have a battery breakthrough that justifies the investment. They claim the battery they are manufacturing has a higher energy density at a lower cost. And that these are not just tiny advantages, but very large capacity increases at greatly reduced costs.
And the ability to charge and discharge is supposed to be enough for starter batteries and EVs. And they can create this all in a cell that is at least as safe as any chemistry that is around today.
We haven't had any independent reviews as of yet, but they should come soon enough.
Lithium chemistries have taken a large lead in R&D in the battery industry. And this doesn't look like it is going to change anytime soon.
Even with battery breakthroughs in the lab that don't include lithium, the dominance of lithium will continue until those new chemistries can be time-tested and be put into mass production. That will probably mean at least 10 years before another chemistry can take over.
But with all the R&D going primarily to lithium, even a breakthrough for non-lithium chemistries will have a taller hill to climb as the research in lithium chemistries makes them even better.
 Looking at the graph of cost over time, lithium cell prices keep coming down and capacity keeps going up.
And the latest data shows the capacity had continued to go up while the costs went down even further. GM is supposedly paying $145 per kWh from LG Chem for the Volt/Bolt battery.
Projections show this trend to continue for the next few years. The Gigafactory is projected to have costs down below $100 per kWh for the Tesla vehicles by next year despite rising lithium costs.
So any non-lithium chemistry will have to be especially high performance, inexpensive, and very safe to jump ahead of lithium cells even in the next ten years. The reason for this is that lithium has a lot of great properties for batteries while other materials that might offer theoretically higher capacity have been either hard to work with or are expensive.
That's not to say that there haven't been some great breakthroughs in the lab. Silicon, sulfur, carbon, and other materials and alloys have been promising a better battery. And we don't mind them proving their point. If relatively all of the lithium investment will go for naught because of a breakthrough with another chemistry, we should welcome the change.
Apple has removed the "time remaining" estimate from macOS 10.12.2 which is the latest update. This is because calculating the time remaining, as opposed to the percentage the battery has been discharged is sometimes misleading.
In order to compute time remaining, past usage has to be projected into the future. And if heavy use of the battery begins after checking the "time remaining" estimate, then it will be woefully wrong. This is true for any battery. So they, like most other devices, will check the current "state of charge" (SoC) and give either the percentage the battery has been discharged, or the percentage of discharge remaining. A snapshot of what things are like at the moment instead of a guess about how things will be in the future.
But even this can be dicey, which makes a more complicated algorithm having the SoC as part of its calculation even more uncertain.
The Battery University starts their article on battery SoC thusly:
Measuring state-of-charge by voltage is simple, but it can be inaccurate because cell materials and temperature affect the voltage. The most blatant error of the voltage-based SoC occurs when disturbing a battery with a charge or discharge. The resulting agitation distorts the voltage and it no longer represents a correct SoC reference. To get accurate readings, the battery needs to rest in the open circuit state for at least four hours; battery manufacturers recommend 24 hours for lead acid. This makes the voltage-based SoC method impractical for a battery in active duty.
But they have to guess at the SoC in active duty so every device manufacturer does their best using various methods and they can get close enough to satisfy most users.
This can lead to some difficulty for BEV car makers as they really can't avoid the "time remaining" problem and they must provide a "miles remaining" estimate. This is how one Tesla driver experienced the problem:
Took my first road trip using a Supercharger this weekend. From Charlottesville to Greensboro NC for the ACC Tournament. Did a full range charge (254miles) and headed down on Thursday, a pretty cold day (upper 30s) and headed straight to the Burlington NC supercharger, about 199 miles. I didn't drive fast, did some hypermiling (putting in N down long hills), and got there with about 20 miles to spare. So got about 219 miles on the 254 mile estimate. Charged there and headed to Greensboro to watch my Hoos roll through the ACC tournament.
On Sunday after the tournament, we headed from Greenbsoro to Burlington, plugged in and went and had something to eat. Temps were dropping and slight drizzle falling. Got charged up to 252 miles, and headed out on the 199 mile trip. Did the same thing, drove slowly (55-60), hypermiling when I could, had to have some defrosting on because everything fogged up without it. Wipers running. I noticed we were losing miles fast --after 80 miles of driving, we had used about 120 miles of range, so we were down to 132 left with 119 to go. I kept doing my best but eventually we were in the negative -- when we had about 75 miles to go, we were down to 70 miles of charge. Weather was getting nasty, snow on the roads, cold (32) and moderately windy. We pulled up Chargepoint and there was nothing anywhere near us. I calculated what we were losing in my head and figured we could make it to the Hyatt Place in Charlottesville that has chargers with a few miles to spare (about 20 miles from our destination). Fortunately we did make it there with 5 miles of charge left, and 20 miles to home. We plugged in, went to a nearby restaurant and had a couple drinks, and came back to 40 miles of charge and headed home.
I was pretty disappointed though that 250 miles of charge would only get me about 180 miles. And this was not driving fast. Yes it was cold (32) and snowy, but that's a lot of mileage loss...
I still love my Tesla.
It's a good thing there was a charge station close enough.
Like I said, this applies to any battery. Here is a SoC table for lead acid batteries from Energy Matters:
| DEEP CYCLE BATTERY STATE of CHARGE & VOLTAGE |
| State of Charge | Sealed or Flooded Lead Acid | Gel battery | AGM battery |
| 100% | 12.70+ | 12.85+ | 12.80+ |
| 75% | 12.40 | 12.65 | 12.60 |
| 50% | 12.20 | 12.35 | 12.30 |
| 25% | 12.00 | 12.00 | 12.00 |
| 0% | 11.80 | 11.80 | 11.80 |
And one should note that reading these values has to be done under certain conditions to get the best estimate.
There are some new methods that are being tested to see if can get more accurate in our estimates, but since this kind of information always involves predicting the future, it will never be perfect.
The Apple iPhone 6 and 6s have been in the news lately for shutting down even when the battery shows good. This has been addressed by Apply through a battery change for certain serial numbers of the iconic phone.
 But the problem might be more than just a certain lot of phones. It might be more widespread as more people are reporting unexpected shutdown in China and even a few reports of burning batteries.
Could we be seeing a Note 7 issue at Apple?
I rather doubt it because the awareness of the problem was raised quite a bit when the Note 7 event happened. So if a high profile item like the iPhone 6 and 6s were having a problem with burning batteries, we are going to hear about every single incident.
But we aren't hearing about that many. And the 6/6s has been out for a lot longer than the Note 7 and there have been many more sold than the Note 7. In fact, with at least 10 times as many units sold, we should have heard of 10 times as many incidents, which would have dwarfed the news of the Note 7 if there really were a burning battery problem.
So we don't have a burning battery problem, which is a relief. But there is definitely an unexpected shut-down problem.
Since Apple has addressed this issue already, it would be a good idea to make sure they fix the problem for everyone that might have it. So if your iPhone is shutting down unexpectedly, make sure Apple hears about it.
Which brings up the problem of batteries that burn and what is being done about it. In an indirect way, the shutdown problem could be due to the burning problem. The reason is that since burning batteries is a problem, protection circuits are integral to every li-ion battery.
This extra complication is a place for possible breaks on what powers our devices. If we can remove this problem then we won't need the complication.
Meanwhile, there are some that have suggested other solutions, like new regulations that dictate device/battery design. I think this would be a big mistake. No one wants burning batteries. The fiasco Samsung has had to deal with is part of the industry. Creating regulations will only make the devices more expensive with no return, and unique solutions will be harder to come by.
Samsung SDI got a black eye from the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. They lost a lot of their stock value and they lost a number of deals that were in a state where the buyers could back out. But they are still making and selling batteries and they are out to prove they aren't really the bad guy they've been made out to be.
They just picked up a deal to supply the batteries for a BEV. The motor company is named Lucid.
However, the deal they inked with Lucid Motors doesn't seem like the kind of deal they want for their long-term growth plans. But even though it may not be the deal they want, it's the deal they need. They need to prove their new cells perform better than cells anyone else is making.
Lucid Motors has a prototype car, but no production yet. And the car they make is long on promise and short on substance. It purports to beat the Tesla Model S, the car it is going head-to-head against, in every category that matters - roominess, comfort, speed, range, and safety.
And they may certainly hit those marks. But at the price point they have to be at, based on the venture capital they've received so far, this car is going to have a purchase price somewhere north of the Model S.
And that's fine if that's what your market wants, but it also means the market for the Lucid will be smaller. And that's OK, too. But it means Samsung SDI won't be supplying the volume of batteries that they would prefer. Even that will be good enough if the cells perform well.
Volume can come later, but safety has to come first if Samsung SDI wants to climb back to the top of their industry.
 Snohomish County in Washington has installed 1 of 2 vanadium flow batteries that are the biggest of their kind in the world. They don't supply the cost numbers, but they seem to think they will pay off quite well.
They've already installed 2 Li-Ion grid batteries in 2014 in their grid, so it seems they are acting as the pioneers to find out which system works best.
 We thought the Galaxy Note 7 might be having a problem where the battery didn't have enough protection and the battery was being squished sometimes. And with the thin separaters, that would cause the kind of damage that would allow for an internal short. And this might be just what happened.
Although we still have to wait for the official investigation by Samsung to see what they come up with.
The material tritium emits electrons. One would hope there would be a way to take advantage of this. There have been attempts, but this scientist thinks he has cracked this nut. This would result in a battery that would last for about 12 years, although there aren't any numbers that give us a good idea about the performance o
 f this battery.
 I've been sent this link about a diamond battery a few times now. It would be more like a primary battery. But it seems to drive electrons through radioactivity and not chemical reactions, but there's nothing wrong with that.
If one watches the video they can see the cool way this battery works
What they don't tell you is that this cannot be the holy grail of batteries. The "better battery" that changes the world.
Despite being relatively inexpensive, the cost is being compared to other diamond batteries. And they are, as you might expect, very expensive.
The feed material, despite being a hefty 95,000 tons, is nothing compared to what would be needed to change the world with battery power.
The ability to deliver current is actually very low compared to what is needed to drive a new world of batteries.
Is this a breakthrough worthy of note? It sure is. It can be the innovation that makes some formerly impossible projects possible. But if anyone that reads this blog actually sees one, that will be noteworthy in itself. Which brings up the challenge that if someone ever sees this battery, no matter how many years have gone by, please leave a comment letting me know.
Now there might be more to come in line with this technology. We might find a way to harness nuclear power directly to electricity in a practical way. Currently, we use nuclear power to make electricity by creating steam from the heat of a nuclear pile, or from thermocouples that get their heat from a similar nuclear construction.
But this isn't nearly as safe or simple or inexpensive as the diamond battery. So hopefully this diamond battery can be the next step in the right direction to getting electricity generation from a nuclear source that everyone can have at their house.
I was recently asked about a battery bank for renewable energy:
I've been doing some research into renewable energy... You might be able to explain to me what a "deep cycle" battery is. A lot of the schematics I'm finding say that "deep cycle" batteries (commonly found on boats?) are the best for storing wind or solar energy. Do you know what those are and how they work? Why would they be an advantage?
Yes. A deep cycle battery is one that can be discharged most of the way and still be able to charge back up again.
For instance, your car battery is not deep cycle. If you discharge your car battery down to 10 percent or 20 percent regularly, it will stop taking a charge after a few discharges. In fact, if you find you have a dead battery in your car more than once, it might be damaged.
That wouldn't be good for renewable energy so deep cycle batteries are required. Still, avoiding deep discharges will allow them to last longer.
And yes, they are used in marine applications a lot because a marine application will frequently deep discharge the battery. But more popularly, deep cycle batteries are used in golf carts. At least the 6V version is.
They are Lead Acid batteries. And currently, that is the best option for renewable energy.
However, a better chemistry would be LiFePO4 not considering cost. This is a safe battery that can deep discharge more efficiently and deep discharge a great deal more times than Lead Acid.
The problem is cost. LiFePO4 can be had for as little as about $1 per Ah at a nominal 3.2V; Whereas Lead Acid is also about $1 per Ah (at about a 50% discharge level) but at nominal 6V
There are a few different kinds of comparisons that can be made, but this one shows that initially you get almost double the energy per dollar currently with Lead Acid.
There are other factors, however.
If the discharge is at a high Amp rate, then the efficiency of the LiFe PO4 batteries compare better. If the discharge is usually far below 50% then the cycle life of the LiFEPO4 batteries will compare better there as well. If maintenance is considered, the LiFePO4 batteries compare better on that count, too.
If all these things are considered together, there are a lot of renewable installations where LiFePO4 is a better fit.
Oh, just to note since some lithium chemistries have been in the news lately for bursting into flames, LiFePO4 is very safe.
Cold weather is a consideration when deciding what are the best batteries for a renewable energy installation
Lead Acid batteries don't work as well in cold or freezing temperatures, but they do work without damaging themselves much - one risk is having to deeply discharge them just to get the energy you need because they won't deliver as much in cold temps and then having them sit in the freezing cold waiting to be charged. If they are deeply discharged and it is very cold (zero degrees F or more) then the batteries could freeze and the cases might crack leaking acid or internal damage can occur. A charged Sealed Lead battery has no problems with the cold
LiFePO4 also won't give out it's rated energy in the cold, but it doesn't degrade as bad as Lead Acid. And there is no danger of damage if it is left in a very cold environment in a discharged state. The problem with LiFePO4 in the cold is that when the temps get below freezing it cannot charge without damage. The charger first has to warm the batteries to above freezing before it can start charging them or they will get permanent capacity loss. Obviously, this would require some smarts on the part of the charger.
As far as you application goes: how much energy do you need? Or, asked another way, what do you want to run when running off battery power only and for how long? Once we know the answer to this question we can size the battery and give prices for both options.
Driverless cars. Computer driven cars. Cars with Autopilot. Whatever you want to call them; Autopiloted cars have been around for a little while - before battery powered cars were considered mainstream. So the first autopilot cars with a lot of press were ICE powered. But generally autopilot only become street-worthy roughly the same time as BEV's have become more popular. But they aren't intrinsically connected.
Still, autopilot is a natural fit for BEV because Tesla jumped into the autopilot game with both feet. And they are a media favorite so whatever happens, good or bad, we will hear about it connected with the Model S.
And as far as autopilot cars go, the Tesla version is considered quite good. There have been a few crashes but people seem to want autopilot so they give as much charity to the problems as possible. It's similar to the batteries themselves - we risk li-ion fires just to get the best energy density and power density when safer chemistries are only a handful of percentage points lower in performance.
As soon as magnetic drive gets the battery it really needs to be a better economic choice over ICE vehicles, it will be the future. And autopilot will probably be the future, too. Why is that? Because they are already considered to be "nice drivers." And in our PC world, that translates to a mandate. There will come a time when people behind the wheel will be considered less safe than autopiloted cars and so autopilot will be required to drive.
All our current software and processing power isn't enough to handle all driving conditions. So total autopilot won't happen for a long time. That's why controlled inner-city areas will be the first to transform into areas that have few or no human-driven cars. And probably the few human drive cars will only be allowed with a permit. This will expand farther out of cities until controlled areas that only allow autopilot are connected.
Will there still be crashes? Certainly. But there will be less than before. And in many inner city areas traffic will speed up because all the cars will coordinate with each other. It sounds like a lot of upside for little downside. But there are a few downsides. One is that central control, a requirement for any network, will limit freedom to travel. And costs may be somewhat high for a rather long time until controlled spaces are connected and less expensive options are allowed.
As cold weather approaches (for people in cold weather areas), it's good to do a little maintenance and make sure your battery makes it through the winter.
Colder temps make it harder for car batteries to work. Their usable capacity goes down quite a bit as temperatures fall. So if there is something else going on, like a battery that is starting to wear out, or a parasitic load, take note to do something about it so you don't find yourself stranded.
What is a parasitic load? A parasitic load is something taking energy from the battery when the car and everything in it is turned off. Pretty much every car has a little bit of drain on the battery because the computers need to keep time and memory when it's turned off. Sometimes it is more drain than when the car was new, and sometimes the battery is worn enough that it can't keep the designed drain from wearing it down.
Sometimes a daily use car starts fine, but if that same car is left for a time, perhaps a couple weeks, it always starts hard afterward. There could be something that has changed that is drawing more power from the battery, or the battery might not be up to snuff.
If a car has a parasitic load sometimes it is a very difficult electrical puzzle to solve. A battery maintainer might be the most inexpensive and simplest way to solve the problem. If one knows the car will be left for a while, just hooking up a maintainer will ensure the car always starts. Or if one knows the temperature will get extremely low, hooking up the battery maintainer then might be a good idea, too.
Cleaning the battery will be a good idea, too. When temperatures swing from relatively warm and cool or cold, condensation will always be occurring. And dirt on the battery can hold water and connect the 2 poles of the battery leading to a parasitic load.
If one is storing a battery, the best advice is to keep it clean and keep it charged. One needs to keep it clean for the reasons just mentioned. But keeping it charged is because a partially run down battery, one that is below 80% charged, will have deterioration on the plates due to sulfation.
Charge a stored battery every 2 or 3 months. Every battery self-discharges even without any load, and lead acid more than most other chemistries. So that is what prompts the top-off charge. And if the battery will be stored inside the car, it's not a bad idea to remove the negative battery cable to be sure no load can be on it.
Recycling has been a success in the Lead Acid battery industry.
Lead batteries are the environmental success story of our time. More than 99% of all battery lead is recycled. Compared to 55% of aluminum soft drink and beer cans, 45% of newspapers, 26% of glass bottles and 26% of tires, lead-acid batteries top the list of the most highly recycled consumer product.
Wow, more than 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled. And they can, to the tune of 60-80%, be turned back into a new battery.
This can't quite be true for lithium batteries because we can't just melt down the component parts and put them back into a battery very easy. But this is somewhat due to the tiny volume of li-ion in a particular place. To get a high enough volume for recycling li-ion to make sense, the use of li-ion will actually need to be quite a bit higher.
 But if current trends continue, we should see that kind of volume in the future. Even then, recycling of li-ion will not be on the same scale as lead acid because the recycling process is more expensive. The effect of recycling li-ion will probably be relegated to evening out the price of some of the component parts.
 But I know one might point out the rising price of lead. And it's true the price of lead has gone up lately. Despite that, the 5-year price of lead has been a little over and a little under a $1 per pound.
But looking at lithium carbonate, the material needed for lithium batteries, We see a much wider swing. Note, too, that the graph for lithium is for a longer time period.
And there are also other components like cobalt, copper, and aluminum, but they are also difficult to extract from a spent cell.
It's not all bad. We will probably see a different chemistry in the next few years just based on creating a safer battery. And whether this new chemistry can be recycled well or not will still only affect the price, and not the availability, of what we will come to know as a necessary part of modern civilization.
There have been a number of new utility sized grid batteries that have come online in the world in the last few years. But the largest grid battery was built 13 years ago.
It's still going strong. Obviously, it doesn't use lithium technology since that technology wasn't around for grid batteries back then. It uses NiCd chemistry.
NiCd batteries may very well be the most robust battery type available, even today. LiFePO4 might take that crown in time, but looking at the performance of this very large battery it might not. NiCd might not have the energy density of Lithium chemistries, but that doesn't matter much for a battery that weighs in at 1500 tons.
 What does matter a lot is cost. And lithium chemistries are benefiting from economies of scale. Already we are seeing sub-$200 prices per kWh. NiCd cells are more than $300 per kWh.
So the next ' world's biggest battery' will be made with a lithium chemistry. It's going to be built in Los Angeles.
I'm going to bet that it will be a much shorter time than 13 years before the LA battery is out-done.
There is a large network in the world that runs the gas pumps that power our vehicles. It is a system that goes from an oil pump to the refinery to the distribution centers to the corner station. It's worldwide in size and the capital equipment within this system is almost too big to comprehend.
So when the world switches to magnetic drive, how are we going to replace this network? Do we merely need to switch all the gas pumps hoses with wires?
Kinda, but "merely" is as big an understatement as the size of the petrol system. It'll be like eating an elephant.
How does one eat an elephant?... One bite at a time.
And Beijing is taking a bite. The taxi system is switching to EV's. It is encouraged because of the smog problem in the city. But the number charging stations or battery-swap stations just won't handle the kind of increase in EV taxis the government is hoping for. So they are building stations to fix the problem.
This seems like a good idea on the surface - getting rid of the exhaust from a large number of the cars driving in the city. But the power requirements of the stations will have to come from somewhere. And we already know where it will come from.
 The coal plants not far from Beijing. And those coal fired plants are one of the main reasons the city has a smog problem. Sure, the coal plants might be a little more efficient than the cars, but the smog problem will not be reduced as much as they want it to be.
And the reason they really want to get a handle on this now is because in a few short years Beijing will be on display at the Olympics.
Elon Musk has announced gigafactory 2. Gigafactory 1 hasn't even been finished yet.
But it makes sense. Europe has a strong car market and Tesla would like to have their cars built there instead of having them shipped there with tariffs added. There will have to be another factory anyway if desired production numbers are to be met.
The announcement was made and Elon Musk said:
“This is something that we plan on exploring quite seriously with different locations for very large scale Tesla vehicles, and battery and powertrain production — essentially an integrated ‘Gigafactory 2,’”
Sounds like gigafactory 3 is already in mind. China maybe? How about South America? Australia?
And let's not forget that the PowerWall and PowerPack are huge battery projects in their own right. And capacity will have to include them as well. That's a lot of GWs.
And just how many cars is Telsa planning to produce? From the proceeds of gigafactory 1 it appears that the bar is set at about 1 million cars by 2020. And with gigafacory 2 perhaps they will be able to double that number in Europe.
I realize that gas-driven car production in the world dwarfs those numbers. But if expected production and sales of Tesla EVs come to fruition, then the tide of the future will be known. Magnetic drive will move into the car space like everyone knew the white LED would move into the flashlight space.
 Other big players are ramping up in a similar way. Chinese battery factories feel the need to keep up with Tesla and they have the capital and business sense to always be an effective rival. And let's remember that VW isn't the largest car company in the world because they can't get customers the kind of cars they want.
UPDATE: Jaguar, owned by Tata Motors, has announced their BEV luxury sedan. The electric Jaguar is expected to have similar stats and as the Tesla model S.
And let's not forget Fisker... just joking, you can forget about Fisker.
The problem I see is that batteries aren't quite ready. The transition from oil powered transportation to magnetic drive might not sound like a big deal, but it will be profound. And Elon is betting the battery that is really needed will be available in the future and his factories will be ready to produce them like no one else.
The junk battery story has legs. I guess people are pretty excited about it. I had access to the source paper and it's a good read. Certainly techy enough to give you a great number of details on exactly what it takes to make the battery.
You can read in a number of stories from a number of outlets (https://www.google.com/#tbm=nws&q=scrap+battery) that give a good overview of what the researchers did. But no one that wrote a story about the battery actually tried to make one. I won't be able to either. So can it really be made by a DIY?
Let's take a look at a couple statements that have me tending to believe that perhaps this could be a small business venture, but probably above the ability of most handymen.
First, it isn't just scrapped metal that is involved. From the paper:
To individually assess the electrochemical performance of each electrode, we performed electrochemical measurements in a three-electrode configuration with the anodized scrap steel and brass as the working electrodes against a platinum or gold counter with a SCE reference (see the methods, Supporting Information).
Gold and platinum aren't easy to come by. However, I imagine that any non-ferrous metal could be used? Typically batteries use carbon as a counter. So if I understand correctly, platinum or gold are used to maximize performance when a lesser metal would work.
Then again, I could be wrong about this.
And here is a curious statement from an anodizing FAQ:
CAN PARTS WITH BRASS OR STEEL HARDWARE BE ANODIZED?
No. The part being anodized must only be aluminum. Anything else will be destroyed in the process.
I'm sure this is only true under certain conditions. But anodizing brass and steel doesn't seem to be a common practice. And I'd be willing to bet that if anyone had tried this chemistry before they would have used anodizing to increase the surface area of the plates and to get an oxidized surface.
So perhaps this battery really is worth pursuing. Perhaps some enterprising DIY can put up a Youtube video and show us how it is done. If I get the time and money I'll try it myself.
It would seem with this much press the idea could get some traction.
With Donald Trump winning the election, what can we expect in the energy storage sector? Call this the post-election predictions!
 2 things should happen. Businesses are expecting the government to set their rules under Trump. This reduction of uncertainty should promote R&D. And since there is plenty of R&D that needs to go into the battery industry, we might expect battery startups to increase.
The second thing that should happen is tariffs. It's the only tool in the box for a government to protect its native workers. And that promise seems like one that Trump wants to keep. This does not bode well for the battery industry since it needs as many markets and worldwide innovation to grow as quickly as possible. Tariffs will slow that growth.
Will we see a change in how airlines treat lithium batteries? Probably not. Will we see a difference in environmental laws that impact the solar industry, and also the battery industry to some extent? Again, probably not. Will we see the government give out loans to certain companies like it did Fisker (Fisker did not pay back 139 million dollars of what they got from the taxpayers, by the way)? Probably not immediately.
But all this is a little speculative. We really are not sure exactly how a Trump government will shake out.
Perhaps you have some ideas, predictions, or admonishments you'd like to share with us. Comment below!
Lithium fires are particularly nasty. Depending on the kind of Lithium battery, water may or may not help.
Lithium batteries one will find in most handheld items; cell phones, laptops, tablets, and the like - do not have enough lithium in them to react with water so dunking them in water (or soda or whatever water-based liquid is handy) will help. This simply cools the battery so the reaction causing the fire will slow or stop. Using a regular fire extinguisher is not a bad idea, either.
There are other lithium batteries, perhaps bigger batteries that one might find in EV's or grid batteries, that have enough lithium in them that spraying water on them, or dunking them in water, will not have the desired effect because the lithium will react with the water. These are generally called Lithium Metal batteries. Reacting with water won't make things better and might make things worse, but to put fires out around a Lithium Metal battery is what water can be used for, so if water is all that is available, use it.
So in the case of a burning lithium metal battery, one should use a class D fire extinguisher. A class D fire extinguisher is for reactive metal fires and should not be used on other types of fires.
That being said, there are a couple new products out there just to help with this new first world problem.
A company called Spectrum FX is making a fire extinguisher that they say uses "Firebane" technology that they describe thusly:
Firebane® is biodegradable and human friendly. The agent has been accepted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a replacement for Halon and listed on the Significant New Alternative Policy List (SNAP). As an Aqueous-based agent it is now included in the FAA AC 120-80A as a firefighting tool that can be used on commercial aircraft. Firebane is the only known Aqueous- based agent that also has Class D fire ratings.
Specifically formulated for the use in aircraft at very low temperatures, Firebane has a Pour Point at > 63 Celceus and is Soluble in Water.
 Spectrum sells this and other aircraft ready fire suppression kits. They also have a "fire sock" which is like a pouch to put a burning item into to contain it. Obviously, it comes with fire resistant gloves to get the object into the pouch.
There is another company, Viking Packing Specialist, that makes a fire pouch called AvSax.
And undoubtedly there will be companies that can offer the kind of solutions we'll need to deal with the problem of burning lithium batteries. Even if the problem might, for the most part, go away with safer chemistries.
There have been some advances in batteries that have not made it into mass production because manufacturing a 1-off in the lab is quite a different thing than having machines make millions a day in a factory.
But what if a battery was simple enough to be made by hand? Sure a person would have to put in some sweat equity, but if you really wanted an inexpensive battery there are a lot of people that would be willing to trade time and effort for a battery that worked nearly as well as what they could buy. Especially considering the best prices on a Lead Acid battery bank for a good sized solar install can easily run into the thousands of dollars.
And what if you could even, with a little more effort, make this battery from scrap materials? For example, instead of a scraper (a person who collects and recycles scrap for money) delivering their steel and brass to a scrap collector, one could have the scraper deliver it to them by offering a little better price.
And having mentioned steel and brass, those are the two metals that the researchers at Vanderbilt University have proposed for their scrap battery. Cary Pint is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
Pint said:
“We’re forging new ground with this project, where a positive outcome is not commercialization, but instead a clear set of instructions that can be addressed to the general public. It’s a completely new way of thinking about battery research, and it could bypass the barriers holding back innovation in grid scale energy storage,”
 This sounds interesting, but what about performance? They claim a steel-brass battery can store about 20 Wh/kg and deliver 20,000 W/kg. That's not too bad for a homemade battery. Lead acid will give you more like 35-40 Wh/kg and deliver a whopping 20 W/kg...
Wait a second.
Lead acid batteries can deliver a lot of current. But supposedly this steel-brass battery can deliver a great deal more. Barring a typo, I'm impressed. Even at not quite 1/2 the capacity a steel-brass battery just might pay off. Especially at scrap prices.
So here's what might be wrong with this idea. Since the energy density is rather low, it's going to take almost 2 times as much battery to make a battery bank. The logistics of that seem a little daunting. Also, they said they could get 5000 cycles out of this chemistry, but they didn't tell us how deeply these can discharge without damage.
So we need a little more information, but it still sounds like something worth looking at.
Daylight savings time has become the convenient interval to change one's smoke alarm batteries. Although it doesn't happen every 6 months. And 6 months is really far below the runtime of an alkaline battery in a smoke detector.
 I guess daylight savings time used to be about a 6-month interval. And if one uses general-purpose or heavy-duty battery I certainly wouldn't want to have them go beyond 6 months. But an alkaline battery is so close in price to the lesser types that it makes sense to be sure you have one in your smoke alarm.
So pick either the start of daylight savings in the spring, or the end of daylight savings in the fall, and change them yearly.
Or, one might consider buying a lithium battery. Then it might be a good idea to wait for the smoke alarm to let you know when the battery is low. A lithium 9V battery will cost almost $10 and may very well last for 5-10 years depending on the smoke alarm. However, please at least test your smoke alarm every year even if you don't need to change the battery.
 Tesla has a new size cell which they, and Panasonic who will actually manufacture it, say is the best size for energy density and manufacturing cost.
Previously Tesla was using the ever-so-popular size 18650 cell. This cell was 18mm in diameter and 65mm length as denoted by the name. Their new cell, the 21-70, will be 21mm in diameter and 70mm length, following a similar naming convention.
Elon Musk says the battery will have the highest energy density and also be cheap relative to today's alternate offerings.
Everything is going very well at the battery Gigafactory and we believe quite strongly that SolarCity’s technology on the Silevo front added to Panasonic ‘s cell technology will make it the most efficient and ultimately the cheapest solar cell in the world – just as it is with the battery cell. We have the best cell in the world that is also the cheapest cell.
What will the energy density be? And the final cost? It's hard to say at this point. Stay tuned and as soon as we find out you'll know.
Just an update on the latest goings on of Henrik Fisker.
Yeah, I know this horse is supposed to be dead... but I just don't trust it. So here we are again.
What we all really want to know about is the battery. Or supercapacitor really. And we get this gem of a quote from Jack Kavanaugh who's company is making this revolutionary technology:
“The challenge with using graphene in a supercapacitor in the past has been that you don’t have the same density and ability to store as much energy,” Kavanaugh said. “Well we have solved that issue with technology we are working on.”
Now, I don't mean to split hairs here too much, but this quote does not pass the smell test. Maybe Kavanaugh is just not a smooth talker. Or maybe he was asked a question off guard, or maybe he was thinking of something else when he said this. But "density" and "ability to store as much energy" is the same thing. And then he used the past tense when saying he solved the problem, but the present tense when he was working on it.
I think when he was speaking he was putting on his politician hat and trying to sound bigger and better than the technology actually is. He needed to sound savvy but vague. He's just not very good at it. And then he strung out a clause in the second sentence too by hedging the absolute statement that the problem was solved in the past by also adding that they were working on it in the present.
They should have had Bill Clinton make the statement. He is a great deal more talented than Jack Kavanaugh.
If they actually are successful in making a graphene supercapacitor that has a higher energy density than today's best Li-Ion cells, then I'll fully apologize and you can call me bad names out loud. You can even grumble bad things about me under your breath.
But I'm not too worried.
 And just one more thing that has me calm about my view of the new Fisker Inc.; Did you see a picture of the doors on that car? It's like the tailpipe in your face all over again. Not that the doors will blow smoke in your face, but I'm predicting the rear door will be a head-shaker in the same way the tailpipe was.
I don't suppose someone has some Photoshop skills and can glean more information from this picture?
And don't worry. The next reveal by Fisker will be covered here even if it happens tomorrow.
Here is a .pdf from the Adam Smith Institute called "Solar Power In Britain: the Impossible Dream"
As you can tell by the title, they aren't too bullish on solar power. And they do a pretty good job of explaining why they feel this way. And they back it up with evidence.
They even go into the oft-cited claim that wind or solar on their own is too intermittent to be of much use for a large grid. But if they are put together, the wind will usually blow at night and the sun will usually shine when the wind dies down, or enough to smooth out the output of these types of renewable energy.
As it turns out, this claim is not true. Both wind and solar will be too intermittent for a grid even if they are put together.
But we all know that batteries can smooth out the problem.
Well, the paper gets into that too, but not much:
Battery storage on this scale is likely to be even more expensive and batteries would require frequent replacement.
And that's all they have to say about that.
Now, I agree with them using current technology. So does the future bode well for batteries saving the day?
The Adam Smith Inst. made a follow-up blog post called " Batteries will not save solar... yet" And they get into what the cost of battery would be if we replaced all power generation with wind/solar/hydro. They come to the conclusion, as I just said, that batteries will have to be a great deal cheaper and perform better for the numbers they ran to work. And that's fair.
But do we ultimately want to replace all coal/NG/nuclear? That might be the goal of some, but reasonable limits are a much better idea. And it all has to do with costs. As the cost of coal/NG/nuclear go up, and the costs of solar/wind/hydro go down, they will be replaced.
And I can hear a lot of commenters saying that we are already doing that and solar/wind/hydro are far too costly so "end of discussion."
But that's only if we have not taken all the costs into consideration. As nuclear plants age, we find out what the clean-up costs are. And the next time we build a plant like that we need to factor those costs in. And natural gas will diminish to the point where its price will go up, and we can predict that to some degree. Same with coal. And coal also has other cleanup costs that we are just now realizing the costs on. These have to be included.
And batteries will go down in cost due to scale. We certainly hope they will also go down in cost due to all these shiny advances we keep hearing about in labs. But just like coal and NG, it can only go so far and costs will start to rise for batteries, too.
Equilibrium. That's exactly where we will end up. As costs rise for coal/NG/nuclear and lower for solar/wind/hydro with batteries they will start to approach a point where costs will optimise for each type of power generation.
Motley fool is saying that the falling battery prices are just the start of changes that are coming from falling battery prices.
The auto industry is just the first, and most visible, domino in a number of industries that will be upended by falling battery prices. A report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and McKinsey & Co., cited by Bloomberg, found that the average battery-pack price fell 65% from $1,000 per kWh in 2010 to $350 per kWh last year. It even came out last year that General Motors is paying LG Chem just $145 per kWh for battery cells to make packs for the upcoming Chevy Bolt.
Wow, from $1000 to only $145 per kWh. And Elon Musk who is a principle at the Giga factory in Nevada says they expect the price to go down another big jump to $100 per kWh.
Can Li-Ion batteries really get that inexpensive? They can, and even a little below $100 per kWh, but not more than that. The material cost just won't allow it. And there have to be other costs in there somewhere like construction and transportation costs.
But the hope of getting far below $100 per kWh is not totally hopeless. Many hopeful batteries and super capacitors in the lab can be a great deal less if they work anywhere near as theorized that they might.
But when will we get the change in our lives and economies? It was thought that the $100 per kWh was it by a lot of people. But that changes things in an evolutionary way, not a revolutionary way, and economists figured that. For economists, the number is closer to $30 per kWh. Although there are other factors included in that figure that I'm not going to discuss in this post - energy density and safety - it is the price at which other competing technologies will be moved out of the way.
What will happen when we hit that mark? Home solar will be big, we surmise, which will cascade into other changes. But beyond that, we cannot really predict what innovations will happen when this technology gets into the hands of a very wide base of innovators.
Li-Ion has been king of the roost for a bit now. And it seems to have no end in sight with the new size factor being made at the Gigafactory. More than any other chemistry, in small electronics, to EV batteries, to grid connected batteries the most proposed chemistry has been Li-Ion.
Beyond that, research into battery technology has been the greatest in improving Li-Ion and not in new chemistries. So should we be worried that so much money is being put into one basket of eggs?
Despite the disparity in spending, marketing, and product development favoring Li-Ion, there is still a lot of interest in other chemistries. But Li-Ion works, and the smart money knows it will be the workhorse for a few years to come.
 But what else is out there? One alternative chemistry is sodium-sulfur. NGK in Japan has bet it's future on the chemistry. They are installing systems now, and they work. The systems use molten sodium and molten sulfur. Because the components keep reforming in their molten state, the battery has a great cycle life. If the numbers keep coming in better for sodium-sulfur, the switch will happen.
 Dyson has been a strong technology company. And when they put their money on a technology, one can expect that it should be pretty good.
Dyson bought Sakti3. A company that makes a solid state battery. Yes, it is lithium, but it has a very different set of properties because of its construction.
This acquisition was a while back, but not much news is not bad news when a company that is privately owned. And Dyson has inferred that the battery has been meeting its marks. I expect we'll hear more about it soon, within the next 2 years, since other more public promising battery technologies have been making gains.
The advantage of solid state is robustness. The battery is very safe and has great cycle life.
Flow batteries have been prototyped and installed in a number grid battery tests. The advantage has been capacity since the capacity is only limited by the size of the tanks. And making the fluid inexpensive is also a possibility since construction costs with a particular material aren't a big consideration.
 But there are a few things the fluid must do. One is its viscosity and the other is that it cannot be corrosive and break the machinery that the fluid flows in. Can a break-through fluid be made that will have such an advantage over other chemistries that its weakness, the machinery that runs it, won't be seen as such a liability? A lot of companies are spending their own money betting they can.
Aluminum air battery technology has been of interest for a long time because of the theoretical high energy density. However, because there hasn't been a rechargeable variant in the lab it can only get niche funding. But someone may have found a way to solve the problem.
The experts at Fuji Pigment are experimenting with replacing the current
electrolyte (water) with an ionic liquid, as well as placing a TiO2
(titanium dioxide) as an internal layer to separate the electrodes and
battle the accumulation of byproducts. They claim these two upgrades, if
successful, will make aluminum-air batteries rechargeable.
That's some pretty good news. But it's only a theory as of this point. It hasn't even been tested in a lab. And even if it is tested in a lab, that doesn't mean it can become a commercial product. But that's never a good reason not to note the possibility!
Increasing the energy density of lithium batteries is always a welcome advance. This one comes courtesy of a chemical process that allows both less expensive construction and a higher capacity battery.
It is also claimed to allow for more cycles of the battery during its working life. It's like a win-win-win. The idea is to create an electrode that can be built in ambient air. Right now, electrodes have to be built in controlled environments so they don't react while they are produced. This not only makes it more expensive to make batteries but it also starts a battery off with a deficit in capacity.
Hailiang Wang said this about the technology, although he is only an interested party and not a part of this particular research:
The initial Coulombic efficiency of electrodes is a big concern for the Li-ion battery industry, and this effective and easy-to-use technique of compensating irreversible Li ion loss will attract interest.
No one likes irreversible loss.. Having people who are outside the research making positive comments about it is always a plus. And another plus is this process seems to be good for other chemistries which may yield even more capacity.
Wireless charging has been another great idea that just doesn't seem to have the technology available to work the way it really needs to. Right now we can place a device that has a wireless charging plate built into it on a charging pad and it saves us the trouble of actually plugging it in where the charging pad is.
What we really need is to come into any room that has a wireless charging device in it, and without even taking our phone off our person it will charge without even having to think about it.
And that's just what some researchers are proposing. By utilizing a certain property of magnetic waves and metamaterials they have found a way to beam the magnetic field to where the device is. The device would have to be built with this kind of charging in mind to track the beam and convert the energy to the proper voltage.
But wouldn't this mean, in many places, that you'd never have to plug your cell phone or laptop in ever again?
The way we've dealt with batteries not advancing as much as electronics has been to make the electronics more and more efficient. So the electronics have gotten faster and more capable, and at the same time, they use less power. So the same poor battery looks better.
That's not to take away from the amazing work done by battery manufacturers. They've made things a lot better. But we haven't quite reached the same advances in battery technology that we've reached in electronics technology.
And so, with our erstwhile battery cell scientists working hard to create the holy grail battery, the electronics side continues to improve their side of the equation.
Engineers at the University of Cambridge have come up with a very low power transistor. A transistor, when it turns off, still has some residual energy flowing. And this principle was exploited by the scientists. They claim the amount of power the new design uses is so small as to be somewhat negligible compared to today's technology.
Currently, this is being targetted for sensors. And they are also considering using energy scavaging to power these sensors instead of dedicating a battery to them.
This is very exciting news. We are all for better batteries, and we are also for equipment that uses our batteries better. And even equipment that doesn't need much battery at all.
Will this result in more than just low power sensors? I'm sure it will some day. One of the other advantages to what these engineers have discovered is a way to make transistors smaller. With smaller transistors using less energy, we can do more processing with less heat.
This let's keep an eye on this tech and expect our new cell phones that will last a lot longer on the same battery. And we should expect them to be smaller, too.
Zbattery doesn't carry many power tool batteries. In fact, there are fewer places carrying power tool batteries than there used to be. The number of cordless power tools is increasing, but the number of off-brand power tool batteries is decreasing. So unless a retailer is a distributor for a name brand, they don't have many options for power tool batteries.
This is because the power tool market used to be mainly NiCd. NiCd is safe. So no one had to worry about the liability problems connected with a battery suddenly bursting into flames. Third party manufacturers were able to make a good replacement battery without worrying that they were covered for unforeseen injuries and damage - even if they were very careful. And since the power tool market was, and is, growing we needed the non-name brand market to fill the great demand for replacement batteries.
But nowadays almost every power tool is made to be used with a Li-Ion battery. And there is a good reason for this. Li-Ion batteries are lighter and have a higher voltage so they can deliver more power in a smaller lighter package. What's not to like?
 I'll tell you what's not to like. Li-Ion bursts into flames. The name brands can mitigate this problem because they can make a quality track record to show the court they did everything they could to reduce the risk. And they have insurance. This might make the batteries more expensive, but the value is still better with Li-Ion even at the higher price.
But third party makers are a little skittish because they don't have a reputation with the courts. And they would rather not add insurance to the cost of their product because they are competing on cost. So non-name brand power tool battery manufacturers just aren't getting into the game.
Even re-builders are not as prevalent in the Li-Ion market. These are companies that put new cells into the cases of power tool batteries that have worn out. The equation is simple and the liability doesn't pay.
So what are we to do? We live with it. The name brand manufacturers are competing with each other, so that helps. The next possibility is to use LiFePO4 chemistry because it is safe. But I guess until Milwaukee/DeWalt/Ryobi/Rigid/Makita/Bosch/AEG have a "Note 7" event, it doesn't look like that will happen.
I'm going to guess that an improved capacity less expensive cell will come out of the lab and the power tool manufacturers will start to use it. And if it is as safe as NiCd, the off-brand market will recover.
The Curta handheld calculator could add, subtract, multiply and divide. That's not too impressive in today's world where we look at our phones and laugh when we remember our teachers said, "you won't always have a calculator on you."
But what is so amazing about this handheld calculator is that it was mechanical. No batteries. No electric plug. And its history is stunning!
And one might think on a battery blog this would be the antithesis of a subject for a blog post.
But what it really highlights is the power of even just a little bit of energy.
This is an amazing machine. It's still useful today. Anyone that knows what these are would never throw one away. They sell for more than $1000. And some people still actually use them as a tool of their trade or in their hobby.
Could it be made any better? Could a mechanical calculator be any smaller and do more functions? Possibly, but the brain power and precision to do so wouldn't be just a little more, but a great deal more.
And that's the point. If we need a machine that does what the Curta does, and not only does it well and with the exquisite artistry this machine really is, then we've arrived. But we need more. We need to add, subtract, multiply and divide with greater precision for less money. We need more functions, we need it smaller, we need it faster, we need it to share its results. And we need that and more while being intuitive and easy to use by anyone.
What has made us do even better than the truly astounding Curta is the transistor powered by a simple battery. Even in a state that is useful, but we know is far below what is possible, batteries are an essential part of making our lives so much better.
Would I consider having a Curta a waste? By no means. We are in deep debt to Curt Herzstark not only for the device but for the way of life he displayed, not even counting surviving a Nazi death camp.
There is a battery that doesn't get much press. It's the battery that sits in standby in a very narrow niche. It's called a dry reserve battery and they work by being activated at use. They can be used 1 time and then they are replaced. Sure, that's the same as a primary battery, but by 1 use I mean they can't be turned off and they are used up in one session.
In general, their construction is simple in that the two main components, anode and cathode, are kept completely separate (dry) from each other and an electrolyte is added when the battery is needed.
Why would anyone use such a battery? Because they are very reliable. One might even say they are the utmost in reliability for a mass produced battery. When 99% reliability isn't good enough, a reserve battery is what you need. They can have a high energy density because they can sacrifice the property of bad self discharge to gain capacity. And they can be very cheap, even cheaper than primary batteries, but have a better performance in a one time use situation.
For example, a missile needs power only when it is fired. And it will only ever be used 1 time. The energy requirement must work the first time 100% of the time and be light, too.
Or take some electrical equipment that is only used in case of a fire. It might sit for years before there is a fire and it will never be maintained. With a standby life of an undetermined very long time measured in decades, perhaps centuries, a reserve battery might very well last longer than the device it will power.
In mines carrying any extra weight is a negative. But running out of power in some situations can be deadly. A very light high density battery that can be activated just to get out, and absolutely will work even if carried/stored for years, can save lives. This idea isn't used in modern mining much anymore, but there is a market for reserve batteries in survival packs when civilization is very far off.
And when the very inexpensive reserve battery types are marketed they are bought to be used in the same place as primary batteries in remote areas.
There are 3 main types of reserve batteries: mechanically activated, heat activated, and water activated. The mechanically activated need something to be broken, perhaps by a person or an automatic trigger, to release the electrolyte into the battery and begin supplying power. The heat activated reserve batteries use a melting barrier that breaks down in the event of excessive heat. And a water activated reserve battery doesn't need the electrolyte carried with it as any brackish, dirty water is the preferred way to start getting power.
So reserve batteries have their place. And their continued use will come even after the "holy grail" of secondary batteries pushes a number of other types of batteries exclusively into history.
Mr. Fisker starting a new car company - especially one he is going to name "Fisker" - is a pretty bold move. One would have thought he could stay in the car business but have a different front man and company name. But he's decided to head the company and named it the same as the failed company that never paid back the taxpayers the paltry sum of $139 million dollars.
Yeah, we in the US gave Mr. Fisker 139 MILLION DOLLARS and he just took it. I'll bet he keeps all his profit from his new company... if it doesn't go bust.
Best not dwell on such minutiae.
He's got a great new idea. He has the design for a beautiful new all electric car which he says will compete with Tesla. Isn't that special?
How can he compete with Tesla? Easy. With whiz-bang new battery technology that will give this fancy new car over 400 miles of range on a full charge. Fisker says they have a way to make a super capacitor, perhaps something close to the holy grail of battery technology. The secret they say is a machine that can make graphene at $.10 a kilogram.
They say with inexpensive graphene that a supercapacitor will be easily made. And that super capacitor, which they are saying has more battery properties than capacitor properties, has a greater energy density than the current best Li-Ion technology out there. And it can handle more charging current and discharge very rapidly - like a capacitor. All this with the ability to cycle a great deal more than Li-Ion, which is again, similar to a capacitor. So they brand it a "super battery" instead of a "super capacitor." If it works as advertised they can call it "late for dinner."
But with Fisker's track record, I'm not so keen. I don't think the battery will work as well as they plan. And I don't think it will be nearly as inexpensive as they plan.
Perhaps I seem cynical. Perhaps Fisker isn't even planning to get public money this time around (Hopefully it isn't offered... to anyone). Perhaps Mr. Fisker really is planning to make billions and pay back the 139 MILLION DOLLARS he got from the US taxpayer. Not because he has to, but just because he really is a good man.
Perhaps.
Unless you have the more common or popular devices, getting a lithium battery for things like a cell phone or a laptop computer is getting harder. These days every device has a battery designed especially for it. So there are literally 1000's of battery designs out there that are incompatible with each other. And as more devices and their unique batteries are made, the problem increases.
Add to this the ever increasing problem of shipping lithium batteries and the situation gets even worse. Since shipping lithium has become such a hassle, consolidating shipping of lithium products has become more prevalent to alleviate the time and cost.
What this means is that your local battery store is carrying fewer battery models and lower stock levels of the models that are kept in stock. This is because the fewer times a lithium battery gets shipped the better. So there are a few warehouses around the country that carry even the obscure models. And those warehouses supply the many retailers that blanket the country. But the retailers will only get the models they are sure they are going to sell. The rest stay at the warehouse to be delivered directly to the customer or have a special-order-only status with the retailer.
So let's say you have a Dell laptop computer. Unless it is one of the popular models, the chances of getting it today are pretty slim. In fact, the chances of getting it tomorrow are pretty slim, too. But I hear you saying "I have Amazon Prime and I can get anything shipped next day for free"... sorry, but nope. No matter how much you pay Amazon, you can't change the law that says that lithium cannot deliver via overnight air services.
The way to mitigate the problem is to have an accurate cross-reference and bullet-proof compatable electronics in replacement batteries. This way the battery will work the first time every time - or mostly every time - avoiding return shipping, and allowing as many replacement battery makers into the market as possible.
In the longer run, we need batteries that don't burn. It would also help to have some standardization but I doubt that will happen. And obviously, if batteries became so robust that they outlast the device then that would mitigate the problem, too.
Is there anything a user can do to help themselves? Yes. A battery usually doesn't die all at once. It get's worse and worse capacity until it just isn't useful anymore. So take note when the battery starts dying and look into a new one before you need it. Find out if it just happens to be popular enough for your local battery store to stock. Chances are they won't if your phone isn't on the best sellers list. So expect the battery will have to be ordered and that it will take a week to get.
Or, find out from your local battery store if they can special order it and send it straight to your door. If they can then you could pay shipping costs and probably get it faster because they won't have to ship it with a number of consolidated orders collected over a few days. And if there is a problem, you can deal with the local store instead of a remote seller.
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Samsung SDI has had a lot to worry about this year. And Samsung stock certainly took a hit because of the Note7 debacle involved tightly with its battery arm. But Samsung and their battery arm Samsung SDI have come back from their stock slump and are back to their average price.
Dendrites are the bane of lithium batteries. They grow inside a cell as it is used and sometimes they get big enough to pierce through a separator causing a lack of performance and sometimes catastrophic failure.
