"Battery breakthrough could cut recharging to seconds"

[Gibbo]

Battery breakthrough could cut recharging to seconds - 12 Mar 2009 - Computing

 

Pretty amazing news if it pans out. No more "arrrgh, I've not got any batteries charged up!"

[SYNACK]

Pretty dangerous too, with the discharge rate you could probably get electricuted by your cellphone battery if it suddenly got wet. Might finally stop teachers from spilling coffee on their laptops though - "If you spill, you die", literally .

[ICT_GUY]

Saw this the other day, its going to make flying my electric planes far more fun.

[Martin]

Covered last week in El Reg!

 

Some interesting comments

 

mb

[ICT_GUY]

You mention that special wiring would be required to charge a phone at full tilt. Can you imaging the cable required to charge a 50KWh EV battery in seconds? More than that can you imagine the internal wiring to the battery pack?

 

As for the capability to discharge in seconds can you imagine what would happen if you were to short the terminals on a 50KWh battery capable of discharging in seconds? The arc would certainly give you a nice tan.

 

It all sounds nice in theory, but the devil is in the application.

 

Nice and very true. My flight packs (lithium polymer) are 12V 2200mah packs with a maximum discharge of 40amps. That's a lot of juice, and they can get very very hot.

 

I do hope it works though.

[Butuz]

Problem is you simply won't be able to achieve 2 second charges with the electricity supply you have at home, it would blow your fusebox to high heaven! So everyone would have to upgrade to an industrial power supply in the home, imagine what that will to to your electricity bills!

 

Andrew

[ICT_GUY]

I would be very happy to be able to charge my packs at 12amps on a 12V power supply, 40 amps or more on a home supply at 12V should be fine. ???????

[Butuz]

I would be very happy to be able to charge my packs at 12amps on a 12V power supply, 40 amps or more on a home supply at 12V should be fine. ???????

 

But it would take 132 amps to charge your pack in 1 minute, 1584 amps to charge your pack in 5 seconds. What 12v PSU would you use to do that?

 

By the way your lithium polymer packs should not be getting very hot during use. If they are, you might be overdischarging them, or not have enough airflow (plane or chopper?).

 

Butuz