The advances in technology over the past 50 years have been simply incredible and unmatched in the history of humankind. With cloud computing now on the verge of completely transforming the way in which we use technology, mobility of information processing has now become the forefront of change. However, changes in battery technology have been very slow by comparison. Batteries are now the weak underbelly of the technology revolution.

Issues With Batteries

The issues in battery technology are classic engineering issues, where a balance between conflicting resources must be created.

The major issues associated with battery use include the following:

• Duration of charge
• Time required to recharge
• Physical size constraints
• Heat generated during recharge
• Lifetime cycle of charge/recharge

Recharging a battery generates heat, which is why most recharging systems for small technology items have external chargers. Internal charges, such as those in a laptop, must have design considerations to dissipate the heat created.

There is also a general trade-off between the size of the battery and the length of time it can generate electricity, or the amount of electricity that can be created. Since many of the most recent advances have been in smaller devices for mobile use, the downside has been the short time period of battery life.

This short charge-generation time, however, has been a conscious design choice, as the small size and ability to generate enough electricity to run semiconductor based devices is what has created the new market for mobile technology.

The lithium-ion battery was the enabling battery for almost all mobile technology devices.

The Lithium-Ion Battery

Lithium-ion batteries are relatively new in the history of batteries, but without their invention, the entire mobile nature of technology today would not likely exist.

The lithium-ion battery provides enough power to run most mobile instruments and 12 volt electronic designs, such as laptops.

However, lithium-ion batteries have the following limitations:

• Recharge to charge time ratio is high
• Charge/recharge cycle limited to approximately 500 times
• Complete discharge without timely recharge can kill battery
• Heat generated during charging requires dissipation design

Cellular phone batteries today appear to hold their charge for a meaningful length of time, often several days, but this is because cell phones spend the majority of their time in a low-activity state.

Anyone who has used a smartphone phone for GPS navigation, where both the display and the GPS system are constantly in use, knows that at best, a three to four hour running time is possible. Smartphones used for GPS navigation generally must be continually plugged in order to use for any meaningful length of time.

Nevertheless, the trade-offs involved in lithium-ion battery designs have been worthwhile, as it enabled huge new markets such as the cellular phone market, to be developed.

To visualize how the lithium-ion battery has enabled the explosive growth of the cellular phone market, it is helpful to remember what the very first cellular phones looked like. They consisted of a handset similar to landline style phones, but connected to a briefcase size device, most of which was devoted to the battery capability.

It was not until the first lithium-ion commercially available battery arrived in 1991 that the cellular phone market really exploded.

In fact, it might be argued that the explosion in the cellular phone market would not have occurred if the lithium-ion battery had not arrived. Who would carry around a cell phone that required a battery the size of the laptop computer?

The Frustrated New Advances

Nevertheless, the lithium-ion battery still has many limitations, primarily usable charge time.

What this means is that all mobile applications that might be developed that require constant use of battery energy are currently frustrated by the limitations of battery technology.

Just as pure electric cars usefulness has been frustrated by the frequent need to recharge, mobile devices that operate continuously have yet to be developed because battery power limits the usefulness of such devices of functionality.

This begs the question: what battery technology do we not have today that is preventing an expansion of functionality in the cloud computing world?

The answer to this question is likely to provide the next quantum leap forward in technology.

Battery Companies

There are many companies and research institutions working on new battery technologies.

We have not yet researched in depth the companies listed below, but provide them for those readers interested in battery technology.

There are also numerous private companies working on next-generation battery technologies, including the following:

• ActaCell: Lithium Manganese Spinel batteries, Google.org is an investor
• Seeo: Higher energy lithium-ion batteries, Google.org is an investor
• Leyden Energy -- Heat resistant lithium-ion batteries
• Planar Energy -- solid-state batteries, which promise smaller physical size, rapid recharging (measured in seconds), and longer

Some of these companies received funding for development of new battery technology from the stimulus package passed in 2009, which funded projects for hybrid and electric cars. Some have therefore diverted attention from new mobile-enabling technology towards car applications. There are also several others companies working on new battery technologies specifically for use in electric or hybrid cars, and not on batteries that might enable more advanced mobile technologies.

Conclusions

The state of battery development is currently holding back major new advances in mobile and other technologies, in our opinion. Any new revolutionary development in the battery industry could easily prompt another major rollout in new technologies - and investment opportunities.

We intend to follow the development of the battery industry more closely in the coming years.

Comments may be emailed to the author, Robert V. Green, at aheadofthecurve@briefing.com