Leland Teschler • Executive Editor If you wandered around the Society of Automotive Engineers’ annual trade show earlier this year, you would have seen a number of ideas aimed at cutting power consumption in electric vehicles. One development in that category was from a company called BetterFrost. It devised a more energy efficient windshield defroster.…

ZapBatt has partnered with Toshiba (TOSBF), merging its proprietary Artificial intelligence (AI) software technology and next-gen battery hardware with Toshiba’s lithium titanium oxide (LTO) battery cells to create a new battery option for the micro-mobility marketplace. This combined solution enables lithium titanium oxide to be a faster, smarter, and more economical battery system while allowing…

A battery is not an ideal finite power supply. The energy stored in a fully charged battery cannot be supplied to the digital circuitry to its full extent because the amount of energy a battery can provide depends on the current drawn from the battery itself. In other words, the higher the discharge current, the…

There are many alternatives to Li-ion batteries, including fuel cells, various types of supercapacitors, redox flow batteries, novel Li-based chemistries such as lithium-sulfur (LiS), and more. This FAQ focuses on alternative non-lithium rechargeable battery chemistries, including calcium-ion (Ca-ion), magnesium-ion (Mg-ion), sodium-ion (Na-ion), zinc-ion (Zn-ion), iron-air (Fe-air), and sodium-sulfur (NaS) that can be more readily integrated…

Designers have choices and tradeoffs when choosing the ideal Li-ion battery chemistry. Batteries affect the cost, lifetime, and usefulness of an application. An optimal energy storage system is critical to ensure the life and performance of an application, so it’s essential to start with the best battery chemistry for the job.  This FAQ reviews six…

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are complex electrochemical and mechanical systems that are the subject of dozens of international safety standards. In this FAQ, we’ll discuss the key environmental aspects of LIB safety, review the top 5 LIB safety standards, and consider the use of custom-battery testing rooms for the safety of testing personnel. Many of the…

The speed at which a battery can be recharged is measured using the ‘C-rate,’ where ‘C’ is the battery’s capacity in mA or A. At a 1 C rate, a battery can be completely recharged in one hour. The speed of charge primarily depends on the voltage. For example: For small batteries used in portable…

Expansion of grid-scale energy storage is important to enable the transition to variable renewable energy (VRE) sources such as wind and solar, and a green energy economy. The use of battery energy storage systems (BESS) is a key to enabling the growing penetration of VREs. BESS installations are classified as behind-the-meter (BTM) or front of…

Marelli expands its range of battery management technologies for electric vehicles with a new state-of-the-art Wireless Distributed Battery Management System (wBMS). This technology eliminates the wired physical connections typically needed in other Battery Management systems (BMS) architectures, allowing for greater flexibility, increased efficiency, improved reliability, and reduced costs, all crucial aspects of electric vehicles. Marelli […]

Varta will present its broad product portfolio of microbatteries, which make a wide range of future-proof applications possible, at Computex in Taipei starting today. Varta’s microbattery product portfolio ranges from rechargeable lithium-ion button cells to nickel metal hydride button cells, primary silver oxide cells, primary lithium button cells and cylindrical lithium batteries to hydrogen gas…