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Old 16-12-2012, 04:10   #31
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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The EU will prohibit whatever as long as the prohibition fills pockets of EU owning classes.
(Forgive me for following an arguably off-topic subthread, but the politics do impact the economics of battery technology.) That was more true of the 15-member EU before 2004. The 27-member EU of today is more complicated. The Council of the European Union revolves around shifting ad hoc majorities based on different coalitions of countries, some of which pursue clean environmental policies due to domestic political considerations (sometimes without regard to economic consequences) and some of which pursue parochial economic goals (sometimes without regard to environmental impact). The EU Parliament, which has become as powerful as the Council, generally pursues environmental sustainability at the expense of economic sustainability.

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I have seen the new batteries replacing the older types in electric cars and wheelchairs in Sweden. Sure Swedes are relatively rich nation and can afford better (and more expensive) solutions.
At the moment, market forces are driving the switch from lead acid batteries to lithium phosphate batteries. I guess it will take a few years before we see legislation to prohibit lead acid batteries. Any such legislation will almost certainly have a phase-in schedule. Until then, market forces will continue to drive the transition. Prices are already at the point where I will never buy another lead acid battery -- for any application.
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Old 16-12-2012, 05:03   #32
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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(...) The EU Parliament, which has become as powerful as the Council, generally pursues environmental sustainability at the expense of economic sustainability. (...)
It is a good thing this is not politics&business forum. From my intimate knowledge of 3 EU countries, I can tell you that in 2 of them political decisions are taken purely on the basis of what benefits the owning/ruling class.

If lithium batteries fill manufacturers' pockets faster than lead acid ones, lithium batteries will we get.

BTW I am not certain lithium technology is environmentally healthier than lead-acid ones. But I am open to education.

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Old 16-12-2012, 15:23   #33
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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Boating business is not what dictates progress. If the batteries become with a major market (say caravan homes, etc.) then they will enter the boating market like a storm too. The boating batteries market is simply too small to drive the change.

b.
I think there is another factor at work as well... the tweakers and experimenters that look into certain subjects as an avocation. Someone out there will be the first one to spend their time and money on liquid metal batteries (pick a tech - whatever) and get them working on his/her boat. This hobby leads to practical experimentation by a group of hobbyists and then somebody decides there might be business in it.

S/he starts a business, it fails, but it puts a glint in the eye of a company with the resources to serve a customer base. Then you have liquid batteries on boats.
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Old 16-12-2012, 16:11   #34
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

"We're from the Government, and we're here to help..."
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Old 16-12-2012, 21:11   #35
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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"We're from the Government, and we're here to help..."
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Then you have liquid batteries on boats.
Only a government would want to put liquid metal batteries on boats. Liquid metal batteries require considerably more space than lead acid batteries and are several times heavier. They are not suited to any type of vehicle.

The advantages of liquid metal batteries are that they will be cheaper than lead acid (or any other kind of battery) and that they last longer than any other kind of battery (they last so long that no one has yet discovered their failure mode). They certainly will fail eventually, but liquid metal batteries might have lifetimes of a hundred years and a million discard cycles. No one knows yet. These are great advantages for storing solar and wind generated electricity on the hard, but the size and weight are prohibitive at sea. Also, do you really want three different liquid metals at, say, 700C or hotter, not matter how well insulated, on your boat? Only a government could want anything so foolish.

The battery technology for boats is lithium phosphate. Eventually, someone will invent a better battery for boats than lithium phosphate. The only battery technology in development that looks like it might be suitable for boats is lithium nickel manganese cobalt, but it is a side discovery of the search for better consumer electronics batteries. Aside from liquid metal, battery research is concentrated on improving on the power density and energy density of lithium cobalt batteries used in consumer electronics. A materials scientist working in battery research made the point that consumer electronics is the focus by telling me that about half of battery research is funded, directly or indirectly, by Apple. That may have been an exaggeration, but it made the point.

I'm really happy that the effort to find a better consumer electronics battery yielded lithium phosphate. Lithium phosphate is a little bit heavy for consumer electronics, but for boats it beats lead acid in every way, especially weight, usable life, and safety.
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Old 16-12-2012, 21:50   #36
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

As noted, private industry does very little basic research and almost none on their dime. But once the science is understood and prototypes developed in universities, private industry does a pretty fair job at commercializing it. Government grants are what keeps university labs open.

The Lithium batteries you want for your boat wouldn't exist without the government funded work by Yet-Ming Chiang at MIT in the early 2000's who found that doping the lithium batteries with different metals greatly improved energy density.

Another example of incredibly successful government spending that help cruisers?

How about GPS?
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Old 16-12-2012, 22:36   #37
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

I'll gladly gamble 25 cents on this program. Even if it just doubled the power or halved the price, it would be great.
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Old 17-12-2012, 08:14   #38
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

Anode + cathode + water = Oxygen + Hydrogen. Maybe a cheap and efficient way of compressing and storing both of these gasses for later use in a fuel cell would be a better way of storing energy than batteries? Just sayin. I think we need to look at other ways of storing energy than just by charging and discharging heavy, expensive, limited lifespan, environmentally unfriendly batteries. Kinetic? Those liquid metal batteries sound like kinda a bad idea for boats, to me.
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Old 17-12-2012, 08:30   #39
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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Why can't the free market do this?
Argh. More unnecessary gummint spending.

Just a single example



The Origins of the iPhone

There may be no better example of the invisible hand of government than the iPhone.

Launched in 2007, the iPhone brought many of the now familiar capabilities of the iPod together with other communications and information technologies made possible by federal funding:

The microchips powering the iPhone owe their emergence to the U.S. military and space programs, which constituted almost the entire early market for the breakthrough technology in the 1960s, buying enough of the initially costly chips to drive down their price by a factor of 50 in a few short years.

The early foundation of cellular communication lies in radiotelephony capabilities progressively advanced throughout the 20th century with support from the U.S. military.

The technologies underpinning the Internet were developed and funded by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1960s and 70s.

GPS was originally created and deployed by the military's NAVSTAR satellite program in the 1980s and 90s.

Even the revolutionary multitouch screen that provides the iPhone's intuitive interface was first developed by University of Delaware researchers supported by grants and fellowships provided by the National Science Foundation and the CIA.


Actually the fact is without worldwide government or pseudo-governement ( like military or space) investment, we wouldn't have half the discoveries we have today, nor would some of the world most significant scientists and physicists have been promoted ( Plank, Bohr, Einsten, Hawking, etc etc)

In general actually the Goubbermint tackles tasks nobody else wants to do, and you know what , in general doesn't actually do a half bad job of it.

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Old 17-12-2012, 08:47   #40
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Lead acid is on the way out. I work for a company that spends millions every year on batteries. In the past 3 years none lead acid batteries are slowly taking up more and more of our inventory.

Good for the gment spending some of its treasury IOU's on something other than Obama phones.

Oh. And on the CPU stuff, every one knows that solid state boundary doping technology was reversed engineered from that spacecraft that crashed in Roswell. Geeze.
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Old 18-12-2012, 09:36   #41
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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Anode + cathode + water = Oxygen + Hydrogen. Maybe a cheap and efficient way of compressing and storing both of these gasses for later use in a fuel cell would be a better way of storing energy than batteries? Just sayin. I think we need to look at other ways of storing energy than just by charging and discharging heavy, expensive, limited lifespan, environmentally unfriendly batteries. Kinetic? Those liquid metal batteries sound like kinda a bad idea for boats, to me.
Hydrogen storage makes sense for small to medium islands and other remote (off-grid) communities trying to rely on wind and solar power. I'll use the Falkland Islands to illustrate. Peak consumption in the Falklands is about 3,000 KW. About 40% of annual kilowatt hours are produced from wind, the rest from diesel. It's relatively expensive to import diesel and they don't want to be vulnerable to a blockade by a bully in the neighborhood which wants to make them into a colony. The problem is that the Falklands can experience periods up to two weeks without significant wind (that only happens about once a year, but it does happen).

Enough battery capacity to run for 24 hours, let alone two weeks, would be prohibitively expensive, regardless of which battery technology might be employed. The advantage of hydrogen is that they would need a method of producing up to 3000 KW from hydrogen, tanks to store enough hydrogen to run for at least two weeks, and electrolysis cells to produce the hydrogen. That's expensive compared to continuing to burn diesel, but dirt cheap compared to batteries and not wildly unreasonable on an island where size and weight are not constrained. However, I would not want all that on any sort of boat, though it might perhaps be the least bad option for a submarine.
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Old 18-12-2012, 10:01   #42
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

Sounds like the Falklands would be a perfect candidate for the air motor. India builds a cheap car that runs on compressed air and 160 cubic meters at 350 bar will power this car 120 miles. My own EV consumes around 300 whr per mile, so this small of tankage might produce 36 KWhr. Just run enough wind turbines that the excess energy can be store as compressed air and used to drive a generator when needed.
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Old 18-12-2012, 10:14   #43
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

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Sounds like the Falklands would be a perfect candidate for the air motor. India builds a cheap car that runs on compressed air and 160 cubic meters at 350 bar will power this car 120 miles. My own EV consumes around 300 whr per mile, so this small of tankage might produce 36 KWhr. Just run enough wind turbines that the excess energy can be store as compressed air and used to drive a generator when needed.
Interesting, but it sounds heavy for a boat. I think your diesel/electric arrangement is better for a sailboat.

BTW, I guess electric vehicles will eventually become dominant in the Falklands. Range is not an issue and the torque of electric drive would be good for the terrain (bogs).
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Old 18-12-2012, 10:37   #44
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In general actually the Goubbermint tackles tasks nobody else wants to do, and you know what , in general doesn't actually do a half bad job of it.

Dave
Not exactly pro unregulated government myself, but you put forward all the "pros" of a government with the right focus. Shame the US spends more on air con in Iraq then it does for the whole NASA budget.

But even with these obstacles it produces wonders.

Great post.

Thanks.
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Old 18-12-2012, 10:39   #45
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Re: Batteries 5x cheaper and 5x more power

I'm happy with solar and wind for my boat. I just tossed that out for the off the grid islands.
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