Nanowire batteries are just around the corner!!!!

Hey guys I was talking to BatterySpace.com and had a conversation with them about nanowire batteries. They are supposedly in production and batteryspace is trying to become a reseller of them. The A123 batteries are currently nanowire according to them. I will be checking back with them next month to see if there is any further news about it. I will update this as soon as i know more.
PDF file explaining the technology http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/zEVLdhAVLgi--xWiiZyjiA/4.7.1_Cui_Web_Public_2010.pdf

Article about nanowire car batteries
"The technical side also has issues to be solved, for the batteries to be a serious contender for use in electric cars. For the moment, they have only been tested and lasted at their full capacity for about 250 charge/discharge cycles. The electric vehicle industry demands that a battery should be able to last for at least 3,000 cycles (11 years, if we count one charge a day), says Ryan Kottenstette, the company’s director of business development."
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2010/09/18/amprius-nanowire-battery-manufacturing/




This convo was in the beginning of October.

Copy of the emails between me and batteryspace.com

ME
I will be definitely buying my stuff in the very near future from you guys and recommending you guys to everyone i know. Much thanks for answering all my little questions. I'll be checking the forums out for further info so i don't F anything up. Last question. I read that same article on the nanowire Li batteries several years ago. Is there any info on a release date? Ball parking it would be even appreciated. It said it should take about ahlf the time as Li-ion took to hit the market so from the inventor said it would be 4-5 years? So does it seem logical it'll be 2-3 years until it comes out?

Jared

BatterySpace.com
Hello Jared,

You are welcome.

Actually the Nanowire technology is use on the A123 cells already. Unfortunately, it is difficult to establish as a reseller for them, but we are trying.

ME
awesome that's exciting news! Do you got a ballpark price range for the 18650 or 26650? Any info on number of recharge cycles? I tried googling before but little info exists on these sweet puppies.

BatterySpace.com
Hello Jared,

Not sure yet. As we are stilling working on the pricing. But we find another vendor that produce the 19860 and 26650 cell that should better in quality and hope to have those available soon.



This is exciting ^^ I will be ditching my laptop battery and replacing it with these suckers when they come out. Light use with my laptop is 60-70 mins of life lol

 

What are nanowire batteries?

 

Ubersexy batteries which use silicone made into nanowires (they change the structure of silicone) so that it can retain lithium without cracking. Should have 8-10 times the battery capacity of current batteries

 

Maybe he should try Candle Power forum, there is an Battery seller called AW Battery`s

CandlePowerForums - Powered by vBulletin

Also try the 4sevens website.

4Sevens - 4Sevens.Com

 

i'll check those out later....NMCI blocks first site :/........damn marine corps


EDIT:has anyone heard what the nanowire batteries will be called so we cna tell the differance or effectively search for them? Finding good/up to date info on them is hard.

 

so we coudl do what with it wait until a oem use them in their laptop?

or could we rebuild a batterie pack with such cells? would the actual charging circuit handle it is there any danger to be using such a pack? that would not have beem built specificaly for the laptop

 

I would assume the cells would be standardized like any others, so you could probably make a custom pack as soon as those cells are marketed...

Not to mention notebooks have quite a bit of flexibility as far as the voltage of the battery.

 

I like underwire batteries better.

This is exciting news though. I always wondered why manufacturers didn't offer higher capacity batteries. Seems they don't pack them to capacity that they could. I guess this could really change things though. 12 hours on a quad core with SLI GTX 480m. LOL.

Or if you just want an ultraportable, only have to recharge it once a week. 60 hours of real battery use. Wow.

 

According to what I read, the nanowire batteries will settle down to 8x current capacity instead of 10x.
It would appear they have to stabilize them in order to maximize that particular aspect to 10x, but even 8x would still be good.

If a mid-range laptop is able to reach around 3 hours on battery today (without maxing out the hardware) then, even 8x increase would result in 24 hours with that kind of use.
Although, if the hardware is maxed out (we're talking gaming wise and doing renders in 3dsMax that push CPU and/or GPU utilization to near maximum and aren't throttled), then would the battery be able to operate for at least half as much (12 hours), or at least 6 to 8 hours?

I would theorize that it might (if we are talking about full utilization).

 

Yes you can rebuild the current battery pack you have. It voids warrenty but who cares ^^. Go to my OCing tweaking guide in my sig. I briefly explain it and tell you where to go to find all sorts of DIY info. They should be the same voltage as regular li-ions as far as i know...though if the voltage is different we will have to ask an expert ^^. I don't know that much. Also never buy a new battery you can get high cap cells for 12 bucks a piece so a 6 cell battery can be rebuilt to hold 6 new cells for like 50 bucks ^^ Also those new cells should be stronger than the old ones. They would be 18650 cell size with 2800mah. So it would be 11.1v battery with 5600mah ^^ or you can use 2600 cells for 8-9 bucks but i rather pay the premium

18650 Li-Ion Rechargeable Cells -- OEM from Japan/Korea


Sidenote:If they ever make the LiFePO4 batteries with nanowires they can give a much stronger output than regualr li-ions and they have over 2k cycles ^^ but they hold a bit less power. Look at that website and read the info on the different batteries...quite interesting. Now i much go back to work :/


EDIT: worse comes to worse if you can not intigrate these right away into old laptops than you can easily make a DC powered back up. I briefly mention my idea in my OCing guide.

 

How soon is "soon" though? Three months, six months, year, two years, more?

Problem is though, manufacturers will just use this as an opportunity to give us smaller and lighter laptops, and not necessarily longer battery lives. It is a good thing, even if they use something 1/4 the size of today's would still give you twice the battery life, and thinner and lighter laptops, or more room for cooling on a powerful desktop replacement, that might still actually have a chance of running 2-3 hours on that smaller battery. They'll probably be crazy expensive at first though.

 

well i have a "dead" batterie pack and a replacement one so i can mess with the dead one how eve i was having a hard time finding a proper guide how to do it maybe i missed it in your other thread

since my laptop's batterie pack was built for less demanding GPU they die quite quick due to to much power draw but i still can get up to 1 1/2 hour on my monster 12 cell pack so if i can get it to be X8 it would be sweet for my monstruosity and i could build it for the spec of the draw

 

These new nanowire batteries should bee out 2011 from what i can tell. From what batteryspace said these batteries are currently being made and batteryspace is just trying to get manufactures to sell them.

My other link told you to go to BatterySpace.com/AA Portable Power Corp. Tel: 510-525-2328 - Powerizer Battery Official Site and go to their forums. They have community DIYs...kind of a cluster F but you will be able to find something relevant. Plus if you make your own DIY and post it the admins for batteryspace.com will give you a $10-30 gift card for your next purchase. I plan to make my own DIYs when these batteries come out and i'll post it here and there as well.

You have a 12cell battery? Are they 18650? if so thats huge! You can easily rebuild that if the batteries are dead. I would use the 2600 mah for a 12 cell instead of the more expensive 2800 mah. Its a difference for 3-4 bucks for 200mah...not worth it if you need 12 cells lol

Also these batteries from what i read will be more expensive but the added benefit of capacity will balance it. I am guessing they will be equal to a little more when you do the math for buck per Wah(watt hour) I doubt manufactures will shrink the battery. I only see that for ultra-thin/lightweight technology. Like mini bluetooths mini phones and so on. I see them taking a while though to implement these new batteries, which is why I will DIY asap. Also i bet you'll see these batteries fairly quickly as "optional upgrades" for a premium....thats why i'll DIY all my batteries now on ^^......unless these things are a different voltage...than we run into problems. I will look into that PDF file later and see if it gives volt specs to clarify.

 

i have a pack that's working so if it does not grant any benefit i'll leave it dead until the nanowire are out dang these thign could give my laptop 12hours of batterie life

yes i have a 12 cell pack 2lbs of batterie and i haven't opened it yet so i doN,t know what type of cel they are i'm waiting to have a workshop and an extinguiser so i can open these without any issue

 

Fire extinguiser? These batteries aren't that dangereous. Thats why they have saftey devices in them to protect them and you. Do you know the volts and mah? you can calculate what type of batteries it has. If its a 11.1v 12 cell that means it has 3serial and 4 parralel(not sure how to spell that). You take the voltage and divid it by 3.7 if its li-ion if its liFePO4 it will be a 3.2 volt i think. See which one makes the voltage come out to a whole number. 11.1/3.7=3 so 12/3=4 3s4p. Than take the xxxxmah/3 and you will get the battery capacity. I think i gave you the right math....its hard to do this with x variables ^^

 

i'm not woried about building the new pack i'm woried about the older one i doN,t know the qualitie of it i just know that it degrade faster then imaginable so i prefer being ready then sorry

Edit
it seem like we won't be getting a 8X improvement in the consumer hand market cause since they can reduce the anode and have a higher densitie they need bigger cathode to compensate the power capacitie of the new anode

rather a lowly 40% improvement .....

edit 2 : see for your self http://www.a123systems.com/a123/products they are not yet or it's a go back

edit 3 my cells are actualy less then 2200mah if i would replace them all with 2800mah they would give me some aditional power now that i have the pack in hand i checked and wow just wow and these nanowire batterie will give me a 5x improvement

EDIT4 i opened the paack
http://www.ec21.com/product-details/ICR18650-22E-Samsung-18650-2200mAh--4053820.html a lowly 2200mah cell a 2800 would bring a great improvement on both the baterie life and it's endurence on damage due to the over curent drain brought by my gpu

 

hey an other quick question would you disrecommend buyin cells on ebay?

 

Never done it so I don't know. I personally wouldn't because of who knows the quality of them and if they have been "used". Are they alot cheaper than batteryspace.com?

 

yes it's like 10 buks for 10 depending on the seller

were the 2800 are 10 for 1 on batteryspace


EDIT NVM i just read about them they are real batterie but they are low qualitie 2800 mah and they are not protected they can't stand behid thier 2800mah claim

 

There is no way those can be that much or are ligit batteries....the materials for Li has to cost more than that. Do you got links? I got to see this.

EDIT: I'll have to check after work the government PC's block ebay

 

i'll just wait until the nanowire are out

 

you got a link because i am really interested in looking into what you found.

 

GTL 18650 Battery Test [ Updated ] - CandlePowerForums here you go all testinand even the autopsie of on of the little bugger

 

damn gov pc blocks it. I'll check it tonight and post back in a few hours.

 

i love being in canada LOL my worstation does not block anything

but it might not stay like that since some genius in a low grade tough about OMG governement employe could watch non work thign while they are at work let's cry

 

These are pretty exciting. I'll probably buy one of Sony's extended batteries, hollow it out, and fill it with nanowire cells.

 

Are these supposed to be safer than Li-Ion batteries too? How?

 

They will be the same size. As far as i know laptop use the 18650 standard battery. All you'll have to do is open the case pull out the old ones and put new ones in. Not sure if you need to replace the circuitry as well. Also I do not know the voltage so if it has a different voltage i am not sure if it'll be compatible or i you have to do something special for it to work.

Safety...not sure haven't read anything yet on it. I need to look through that PDF file link i have on the man page and see if there is any reference is voltage and safety.


EDIT: I just got done skimming the file. From what i can tell they have been testing several different kinds...safty i do not know about it but they did try several different environmentally safe material. Though these tests don't give any in site on what material manufactures will use. I am bettering they will use several different kinds of material. For several types of batteries. I did see a brief statement that one type has a voltage of 3.5-4.3 so we might be in luck with these having around a 3.7v Not sure. Finding info on this is tough. I don't want to email the Prof lol. I am sure he gets harassed enough.

 

DCMAKER,

thanks for the info.

Seriously though, I don't care what 'environmentally safe material' they use - as long as I'm safe (and my equipment is too).

I'll surely be looking out for these types of batteries in the new year (won't attempt to DIY just yet).

Would these also be appropriate to use in a flash/speedlight scenario? Lots of short, high current bursts with minimal internal resistance (to recharge the capacitor as fast as possible for burst shooting mode @ 8-11 frames/second)?

 

not sure...general use they will be good but flashes...not sure. Also for flashing and hi current app. use LiFePO4 batteries they have over 2k charge cycles and great hi current. They have lower density though

 

I made a statement about being able to run a p series core 2 duo at 3ghz for a week in a car, over at the mp3car forums.

someone said that your whole car would have to be a battery to do that. I said that 7 laptop batteries are much smaller than a whole car.

but now I will have to show them this

 

BatterySpace.com/AA Portable Power Corp. Tel: 510-525-2328 - Li-Ion Single Cell

tilleroftheearth look at this page it breaks down the current battery tech.


li-ion with a 5.4A discharge rate
Li-ion 18650 Cylindrical Rechargeable Cell: 3.7V 2800mAh (10.36Wh) --LG Brand, UN Approved


LiFePO4 with a 18.0A discharge rate
LiFePO4 18650 Rechargeable Cell: 3.2V 1200 mAh, 18A Rate, 3.84Wh, UL Listed, UN Approved (NDGR)

Now these are single cells. You can't get LiFePO4 as a polymer from what I understand. Also if you read closer you'll see that the LiFePO4 has much less capacity. There is a higher capacity LiFePO4 but it only has a 4.5A discharge. If you are serious on building a battery for max discharge rate you should talk to batteryspace. They have great customer service. Now you also got to understand that li-ion and LiFePO4 have different voltage so its possible you don't beable to make a LiFePO4 battery for whatever your using due to different voltage. But i would ask them because i am not sure about all of the voltage type of stuff.

 

The problem of putting a laptop in a car running on battery are the temperature extremes. Batteries aren't too fond of cold or heat beyond what we're usually comfortable with (i.e. 60-80F), meaning it can deplete battery life much more quickly.

 

DCMAKER,

thanks for the links - will check them out later (going to shoot somebody now... - I love saying that! (Photog) )

 

batteries have better capacity in the 60 degree F range but they get the most discharge and recharge cycles at 32 degrees F

read the charts in those links and you'll see that when LiFePO4 batteries get over 2k charges when they stay at about freezing temps.

EDIT:idle batteries should be kept at room temp or slightly colder

 

Thats interesting about the environmental stuff. Whichever of you is right about it. Its true there are a lot of environmental factors to be considered in a car.

We were also talking about cpu overheating, this guy who had a 3ghz desktop core 2 duo.
It would only overheat in winter because it was too close to the heater vents I told him, get an air intake, a little 30f air will make a big difference!

ahh anyway...

 

These sound super, super sexy. Battery tech has been stagnating somewhat for Laptops - consumer devices have had some pretty awesome advancements with LSD NiMH, but LiIon just seems to get more explosive!

I can't wait! Although hopefully manufacturers can standardise their batteries a little more so that we don't have such ridiculous prices for OEM gear!

 

Batteries are standardized. The only ones that are not are ones for cell phones. Those are unique becuase they use li-ion polymer, which is a square design. You can actually remake those too but its a bit more tricky. Usually they are in a case if you open the battery up. All you need to do is remove the old battery and measure it and get a li-ion polymer battery of simulair size. Than just resoder(gun thing that melts metal) on the new battery to the connector on the phone battery case. Now i have never done this but from looking at several of my old batteries in the past that seems to be the only thing you have to do.

 

Just a reminder that you need to be careful when soldering batteries. The heat from soldering can destroy them if you're not careful.

 

I would take your statement a step further and say DON'T solder the batteries at all. Get the tabs welded in the configuration you want. Even if you don't destroy the batteries you have damaged them to some extent when soldering.

 

Also note that you can't just 'solder new batteries in' to many of the new packs, thanks to the microchips.

To the best of my knowledge (I also haven't done this myself to a LiIon pack) you have to bridge circuits when you remove batteries to maintain consistent conditions for the circuit, otherwise you risk flipping the "dead battery, don't charge me again" flag in the circuitry.

By standardised batteries I don't mean the internal cells - I mean the packs themselves. Or allow easy replacement of the internal cells a la flashlights (though with Lithium Ion that's a dangerous prospect too... sigh!)

 

this corner is going to take years to get around

 

It's a corner wih a two light year radius!

 

if these come in the end of 2011 - beginning of 2012 they could potentialy be paired with ivy bridge and the 28 nm GPU for a potentialy insane batterie life

 

Possible, but unlikely.
The likely result of pairing Ivy Bridge with 28 nm GPU's will already yield increased battery life on current batteries.

I think Lithium based batteries are here to stay (for now).
I won't hold my breath for Nanowires until well after 2012.

The market will switch if and when the current batteries become obsolete or essentially when users start screaming back... and I can tell you the general population will still take time before they cry they need and want more battery life out of their portables.

The sheep are content with what they have at the moment.

 

Unless nanowires are cheaper to manufacture or easier/cheaper to recycle.

Not only that I wouldn't doubt if someone like Apple was first to market with such technology if it was truly a better technology. Let the Mac owners pay for the tech first and let it trickle on down

 

Apple?
Lol...
They still utilize 2 generations old cpu's in their notebooks...

Then again... they ARE a bit obsessive in terms of battery life... so they just MIGHT switch.

Heck if the transition happens faster, all the better, but as I said, I won't hold my breath.

 

I hope it happens .. but I remember nanowire batteries being in pre-production back in high school -- and I graduated 20 years ago. .. don't hold your breath

 

nano wire batteries were just discovered/invented in the last 4-5 years. it was like 2007 when the professor at whatever university it was that made them

 

funny, I must be in a time warp then When I was in elementary school, scientists were working on chemical delivery systems based around modified buckeyballs -- the graphene sheets from unravelling turned out to sometimes be poisonous to cells, and so it was mostly abandoned. Nano tubes were all the rage in middle school and by high school they were specifically looking at using nano wires in batteries. -- There were so many ideas coming out by the late 80s that the name "nano-" really stuck. It was used a lot before then, but the literature, the universities began to use it.

I bet the difference is that in 2007, someone succeeded in doing it within production-specifications. -- Or, he thinks he has. But the groundwork is decades in the making... and they thought it was right around the corner back then. Imagine the dismay for the guy who created liquid crystals, were he to know the 6 decades that would pass between their invention and array in pasive matrix, and the creation of active matrix displays in the 1970s.