VIEWS on BATTERY NEWS: Samsung SDI stock up. Li-crystal structure strong. Made in the Czech Republic.

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 will continue to lead

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 and the battery life remaining problem

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.

Is Apple courting a Galaxy Note 7 problem?

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 getting back up

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.

Lucid Motors inks deal with Samsung SDI

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.

VIEWS on BATTERY NEWS: Installed vanadium flow batteries. More looks at the Note 7. Tritium battery.

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.