NOVA: Search for the Super Battery

Speed4goal · 2018-05-06T21:13:17.000Z

Could it be a money thing? Let’s say they did release a battery that went 5000 charge cycles instead of 500 and had the same or better charge and discharge characteristics. If people by less batteries then it’s less money. Most companies want something to have a finite life so you spend more money.

Kinda like the pharmaceutical companies, healthy people don’t buy medicine. Why cure something that gets billions a year in research money

I only bring this up because we had some pretty cool stuff in the military that won’t see the light of day in the civilian market for a very long time. No one will believe me anyway and it’s probably best but I’ll throw it out there. They have a backpack not overly heavy that a soldier can wear. And it will wirelessly transmit electricity. For so many miles around. And you can power your computers GPS whatever you need with it. Works great in Afghanistan mountain to mountain. It’s mostly your specialty units that have them. Your regular guys wont But in the civilian science they say they hadn’t perfected wireless electricity. It’s been perfected for a very long time ever since Tesla first did it. But military science is kept separate from civilian science. The batteries everyone wants are already invented guarantee it

BlueSwordM · 2018-05-06T21:23:51.000Z

There is also cost though. If someone had a 5000 cycle 90-100% DOD 3,5Ah 18650 cell, people would be all over it, especially if it can sustain 15A+ discharge rates and keeping up with that cycle life claim.

However, if it costs 20x more than the standard 3.5Ah 18650, most companies would not be suing them in their products.

We want the best, affordable, safe, long lasting, and high capacity battery. Building a good battery is extremely hard.

Also, what kind of battery pack is that military bag using? Must be enormous to be able to beam such high power, and heavy, really heavy. Adding to that, is it using radial wireless power distribution, like most wireless power transmission do, or is is using beamforming/concentrated power transmission? Because that ones exists, but isn’t used outside of specialty applications and the military for… safety reasons.

Lightbringer · 2018-05-06T21:57:44.000Z

Speed4goal:

Could it be a money thing? Let’s say they did release a battery that went 5000 charge cycles instead of 500 and had the same or better charge and discharge characteristics. If people by less batteries then it’s less money. Most companies want something to have a finite life so you spend more money.

Oh, no! Not the “planned obsolescence” catfight again!

Speed4goal:

Kinda like the pharmaceutical companies, healthy people don’t buy medicine. Why cure something that gets billions a year in research money

Well, yah, but every time I ever bring up that point, I get called a “conspiracy nut”.

Why cure cancer when you can simply “manage” it for years if not decades?

And with all the tek journals I get, “pioneering breakthroughs” using gold nanoparticles, stem cells, retrovirus therapies, “targeted therapy”, infrared/radiotherapy heating, etc., umm, when was the last time, or any time, you heard anyone being treated with any of those?

So I just quietly smile and nod when I hear people extolling all the good people in research and pharmcos who would love to be heroes and finally cure cancer, that money doesn’t mean anything to them.

Guess people have “planned obsolescence”, too. Keep them coming back for more therapy that gets billed sometimes 10kbux/mo, rather them just cure them and have happy’n’healthy customers.

But yeah, back to batteries (before I get dogpiled on)), incremental improvements is what it’s all about. Keep people happy enough with “longer running” doodads, just until they get used to it and start demanding more performance. Instead of having to recharge your mp3 player, phone, etc., pretty much every day, sometimes twice per day (old boss used to keep his phone in a charging stand every lunch because it’d run out of juice so fast), give ’em a few days worth of runtime. When phones get bigger hungrier displays, have to stream video, etc., and performance goes to Hell again, improve the battery tek a little more, and make ’em happy enough to buy new batteries (and new phones, mp3 players, etc.).

Whups, guess that sounds like “planned obsolescence”…

Speed4goal:

I only bring this up because we had some pretty cool stuff in the military that won’t see the light of day in the civilian market for a very long time. No one will believe me anyway and it’s probably best but I’ll throw it out there. They have a backpack not overly heavy that a soldier can wear. And it will wirelessly transmit electricity. For so many miles around. And you can power your computers GPS whatever you need with it. Works great in Afghanistan mountain to mountain. It’s mostly your specialty units that have them. Your regular guys wont But in the civilian science they say they hadn’t perfected wireless electricity. It’s been perfected for a very long time ever since Tesla first did it. But military science is kept separate from civilian science. The batteries everyone wants are already invented guarantee it

Yeah, it’s years or decades before it ever becomes COTS.

Speed4goal · 2018-05-06T21:58:06.000Z

BlueSwordM:

There is also cost though. If someone had a 5000 cycle 90-100% DOD 3,5Ah 18650 cell, people would be all over it, especially if it can sustain 15A+ discharge rates and keeping up with that cycle life claim.

However, if it costs 20x more than the standard 3.5Ah 18650, most companies would not be suing them in their products.

We want the best, affordable, safe, long lasting, and high capacity battery. Building a good battery is extremely hard.

Also, what kind of battery pack is that military bag using? Must be enormous to be able to beam such high power, and heavy, really heavy. Adding to that, is it using radial wireless power distribution, like most wireless power transmission do, or is is using beamforming/concentrated power transmission? Because that ones exists, but isn’t used outside of specialty applications and the military for… safety reasons.

I don’t know the specs or how it works. But it broadcast 360 degrees. The range was miles. And it was light enough one man can carry it and his rifle and ammo and body armor. If you look at the radio backpacks. It was about that size. We arnt told anything we don’t need to know. If it broke IDK if he knew how to fix it or not. You don’t really ask questions he wouldn’t have answered anything anyways. There’s a lot of things I keep my mouth shut about one is because I signed a 50 year nda. But also because no one would ever believe me. I’m better off trying to convince people Bigfoot exist then some of technology we have.

Lightbringer · 2018-05-06T22:16:08.000Z

BlueSwordM:

There is also cost though. If someone had a 5000 cycle 90-100% DOD 3,5Ah 18650 cell, people would be all over it, especially if it can sustain 15A+ discharge rates and keeping up with that cycle life claim.

However, if it costs 20x more than the standard 3.5Ah 18650, most companies would not be suing them in their products.

The military would. Money’s no object. “The best for our troops! (No matter what the co$t to the taxpayer.)”

Only after it gets declassified, and/or when economies of scale bring down the cost sufficiently, will it trickle down to the consumer market.

Early microwave ovens used to cost over 1kbuk in, what?, late-1970s bux? And they were pretty anæmic by today’s standards. Now, 30bux can buy you a disposable microwave oven. Hell, don’t like the color of the display, junk it and buy another one for 30bux, 25bux on sale.

12” laserdiscs? Audio-DAT? Ceedees? Even a lotta NASA tek eventually made its way down to the civvie market. Emphasis on “eventually”. But it needed a market to pay for it, initially. Whether snobby audiophiles/videophiles or just “early adopters”, they helped bring down prices.

So an Überbattery is entirely possible… once it’s introduced and enough people buy them.

BlueSwordM:

We want the best, affordable, safe, long lasting, and high capacity battery. Building a good battery is extremely hard.

Sure, we do. But flashaholics and vapers are a minor market. Need something like a Tesla to jumpstart (haha) the market.

BlueSwordM:

Also, what kind of battery pack is that military bag using? Must be enormous to be able to beam such high power, and heavy, really heavy. Adding to that, is it using radial wireless power distribution, like most wireless power transmission do, or is is using beamforming/concentrated power transmission? Because that ones exists, but isn’t used outside of specialty applications and the military for… safety reasons.

Hell, I wonder how many radar-techs and even Wild Weasel pilots end up getting all sorts of cancers years after the fact.

As great as Tesla (inventor, not car company) was, I’d be scared $#!+less if wireless tek ever became mainstream. Enough mutations, and who knows what would happen to the average life-expectancy. Like there’s not enough electrosmog as it is…

Lightbringer · 2018-05-06T22:19:49.000Z

Speed4goal:

I’m better off trying to convince people Bigfoot exist then some of technology we have.

Hey, he does.

Little known fact… he’s only a size 11.

BlueSwordM · 2018-05-06T22:24:26.000Z

Mutations would not be the problem, but rather burns.

I would not want a 100W beam try to go through me. Imagine having on your skin a 21700 Emisar D4 with XP L2 emitters. That would burn through your flesh.

Also, by we, I mean the guys who want an affordable 600km+ car, and electric boats, and electric planes.

I hope that last one would be possible though.

Along with off grid guys and gals, everybody wants better batteries, not only us flashlight gurus.

Lightbringer · 2018-05-06T22:45:08.000Z

BlueSwordM:

Mutations would not be the problem, but rather burns.

Tesla’s idea was to have various distribution sites pretty much blanketing an area. Unless you were too close to the “antenna”, you shouldn’t be burned. ’Though just like sleeping with an electric blanket, I wouldn’t want to be in an EMF-frappe 24/7.

BlueSwordM:

Along with off grid guys and gals, everybody wants better batteries, not only us flashlight gurus.

We all do. But once they give up the good stuff, vs letting it trickle out a little at a time, they got nothing more in reserve.

If someone comes up with a LiHGd cell that triples or quadruples energy density, people will at some point get used to them and sneer at current Li cells, NiMH, alkies, etc. But then what? Once people get used to 21700 performance in a 14500 form-factor, there is no “up”. Not until the next miraculous breakthrough.

Better (for the battery cos) to just tweak chemistries and such, to wring out a little more performance at a time, and make people happy enough to be willing to buy new for that incrementally better performance.

It’s a much more sustainable business model.

dhvl1357 · 2018-05-06T23:00:22.000Z

LOL following

Speed4goal · 2018-05-07T02:14:18.000Z

The wireless things are slowly trickling down to the civilian market at a snails pace. Like the new charging doodads that can charge your phone from a couple feet away. And att I read somewhere is trying to get away from landlines completely. But they have to slowly build a new grid for it. Very slowly it will trickle down. I wouldn’t be surprised I’ll be dead if my young kids grandkids is the time wireless electricity will be in the civilian market as standard.
Tesla was way ahead of his time. The only reason his backers cut him off was because they couldn’t find a way at the time to meter and make money off electricity that was sent through the atmosphere. And he was working on ways to produce electricity from the atmosphere itself. That’s why he set up in colorado springs because of the severe thunderstorms in that area. And there’s a reason the govt swooped in as soon as he died and confiscated all his papers and works.

There was another guy one of his assistances that had some papers and a guy picked up a bunch of books at a estate sale and never heard of Tesla. And he posted online that he found some papers. And was trying to get some more info about this Tesla guy. And surprise surprise his house was broken into and only thing taken was all the papers, the floppy disks with that info and his computer was wiped clean.
People also have a hard time understanding that what you see in all the tech magazines and online is civilian science. They think their are at the cutting edge of technology and they are led to believe that. The science that’s done at wright Patterson airforce base, groom lake, s4, etc is military science and in some areas 50 to 75 years of what civilian science is today. That’s the real cutting edge stuff. Like drones the size of fly’s there just now admitted to. Theyve had fly size drones for 25 years now.

BlueSwordM · 2018-05-07T02:08:56.000Z

Doubt it. Efficiency is lower when compared to wired, even when beamforming.

Wired will always be better in terms of power transmission.

Speed4goal · 2018-05-07T02:33:52.000Z

BlueSwordM:

Doubt it. Efficiency is lower when compared to wired, even when beamforming.

Wired will always be better in terms of power transmission.

This is why I like these discussions people not believing helps keep me safe. To understand where science really is you have to throw out everything you think you know about it. Civilian science isn’t military science. All the tech magazines you see are at least 50 years behind the military. Just like 25 years ago the military had the equivalent of 16k resolution and now we are just getting 4k today the last 4 or 5 years. And it will be another 25 years or so before we get to that 16k in the civilian market as standard. What the civilian science thinks is cutting edge is really cutting edge to them they are led to believe it. The real science is done on secure military installations. And only the best and brightest civilian scientist are allowed in and then you won’t hear from them again. They stop publishing papers. They fall off the map pretty much until the military is done with them. Like said above these scientist are given a unlimited budget truly unlimited to get what the govt wants out of them. More money goes into the USA black budget then anything else from Congress. And it grows yearly. Wasting a few billion on failed projects until they get it right is nothing. No university can afford to do that
Just like the fly sized drones they’ve had for 25 years now. And if there saying that it’s been longer. Literally they’ve been able to be a fly on the wall and spy on whoever or whatever they’ve wanted to. Your now just seeing cameras the size of a grain of sand, and ants holding micro chips. These is ancient tech for the military. They have these stuff for decades now

BlueSwordM · 2018-05-07T02:32:54.000Z

I’m not saying that I don’t believe you. I do believe you.

I’m just saying that for the same distance, wired power transmission will always be better than wireless power transmission. Pushing electricity through air is harder than through a wire.

Also, we have had 16k panels for a long time. You just needed really big pixels and panels. How power hungry was that hardware though? Trying to push 16K resolution today on 4X Titan Vs requires nothing short of 2000W including the monitors. Imagine how much power a supercomputer would need to consume to push that many pixels through a massive monitor that would consume just as much power back then.

It’s not always about cost, but also power and size. The military had 20 000 lumen lights that could throw a kilometer for a long while, but could you hold it in your hand and only use 8 cells to power it, while not needing active cooling? While now we have them that fit in our hands.

However, the military do have some technology that interest me a lot, like how they are pushing 100s of watts through the air without hurting someone, or having a 10kW laser burning through everything.

There is more to it as you said however.

Enderman · 2018-05-07T02:37:21.000Z

BlueSwordM:

I’m not saying that I don’t believe you. I do believe you.

I’m just saying that for the same distance, wired power transmission will always be better than wireless power transmission. Pushing electricity through air is harder than through a wire.

Also, we have had 16k panels for a long time. You just needed really big pixels and panels. How power hungry was that hardware though? Trying to push 16K resolution today on 4X Titan Vs requires nothing short of 2000W including the monitors. Imagine how much power a supercomputer would need to consume to push that many pixels through a massive monitor that would consume just as much power back then.

It’s not always about cost, but also power and size. The military had 20 000 lumen lights that could throw a kilometer for a long while, but could you hold it in your hand and only use 8 cells to power it, while not needing active cooling? While now we have them that fit in our hands.

However, the military do have some technology that interest me a lot, like how they are pushing 100s of watts through the air without hurting someone, or having a 10kW laser burning through everything.

There is more to it as you said however.

People also used to say that flying machines made of metal weren’t possible. Maybe watch what you say… you never know what devices will exist in the future, maybe power transmission through photons which travel at the speed of light, faster than electrical signals in a wire.

2) You can’t SLI titan Vs so you can only use one at a time to drive displays. Having 4 will not increase performance unless it’s for rendering or number crunching.

Speed4goal · 2018-05-07T03:15:26.000Z

I wish I knew the specs on some of the stuff. They would show us the targets and what we needed to know. Sometimes it was people sometimes it was equipment. Usually Russian,or Pakistan and we would go get it. Besides facial recognition they could see someones fingerprints from satellites. They could also use ears. Every human has unique ear pattern. They could verify a target by getting a good photo of a hand. I was a highly trained trigger puller basically. I got to see and use some amazing stuff. But I wasn’t on the tech side of that stuff. That was above my security clearance. Our body armor wasn’t the usual sapi plates we could get shot multiple times and not have penetration. It could even take a grenade blast. It was basically like that dragon skin body armor. When they invest so much into you. They don’t want you to die. We had stuff to pick up unique heat signatures. All kind cool stuff. We got showed how to use it and trained with it and that was it. Your only told what you need to know. You had to be self sufficient. And sometimes hide out for a week or more. Sometimes you only get one chance to get a target and you have to know it’s the right one without a doubt. And if we did get killed there was nothing on us to link the body back the the govt. Like I said above most won’t believe any of this and I hadn’t said anything to specific that would break my nda. But this is about as far as imma go my first couple years or so wss normal infantry type stuff. The last 3 years was were all the interesting stuff happened. I had to extend my contract out 2 more years to be able to go into it. I decided to not reenlist again because I just knew I wouldn’t survive if I did. Just a gut feeling, learned to always trust it and it’s gotten me out some bad situations.

wle · 2018-05-07T15:51:29.000Z

Speed4goal:

Could it be a money thing? Let’s say they did release a battery that went 5000 charge cycles instead of 500 and had the same or better charge and discharge characteristics. If people by less batteries then it’s less money. Most companies want something to have a finite life so you spend more money.

Kinda like the pharmaceutical companies, healthy people don’t buy medicine. Why cure something that gets billions a year in research money

I only bring this up because we had some pretty cool stuff in the military that won’t see the light of day in the civilian market for a very long time. No one will believe me anyway and it’s probably best but I’ll throw it out there. They have a backpack not overly heavy that a soldier can wear. And it will wirelessly transmit electricity. For so many miles around. And you can power your computers GPS whatever you need with it. Works great in Afghanistan mountain to mountain. It’s mostly your specialty units that have them. Your regular guys wont But in the civilian science they say they hadn’t perfected wireless electricity. It’s been perfected for a very long time ever since Tesla first did it. But military science is kept separate from civilian science. The batteries everyone wants are already invented guarantee it

there is a 5000 cycle battery now
if you only discharge 10% (standard li-ion) , it will last 5000 of those light cycles
which is fine as long as you are OK with it being 10x as big and 10x as expensive

wle

Enderman · 2018-05-07T16:01:05.000Z

wle:

there is a 5000 cycle battery now
if you only discharge 10% (standard li-ion) , it will last 5000 of those light cycles
which is fine as long as you are OK with it being 10x as big and 10x as expensive

wle

“Battery cycles” are defined as the number of times that a battery’s capacity is drained and refilled from it.
If you discharge it 10% and recharge it, you have completed 10% of a cycle.
It is not how many times it is partially drained and recharged.

WalkIntoTheLight · 2018-05-07T16:17:25.000Z

Enderman:

wle:

there is a 5000 cycle battery now
if you only discharge 10% (standard li-ion) , it will last 5000 of those light cycles
which is fine as long as you are OK with it being 10x as big and 10x as expensive

wle

“Battery cycles” are defined as the number of times that a battery’s capacity is drained and refilled from it.
If you discharge it 10% and recharge it, you have completed 10% of a cycle.
It is not how many times it is partially drained and recharged.

I think his point was that if you want to take a Samsung 30Q 18650 cell, and call it a “300 mAh cell”, then it has 5000 cycles. You just have to make sure to only charge it as high as 3.8v, and not discharge it below 3.7v. That is, redefine the voltage of “full charge” and “depleted charge”, and you can cycle it 5000 times.

Similarly, you could also take that 30Q cell, and call it a “3300 mAh cell”. You just charge it up to 4.3v, and discharge to 2.5v. Then you have a 3300mAh cell, but it only has maybe 100 cycles.

Enderman · 2018-05-07T16:54:14.000Z

WalkIntoTheLight:

I think his point was that if you want to take a Samsung 30Q 18650 cell, and call it a “300 mAh cell”, then it has 5000 cycles. You just have to make sure to only charge it as high as 3.8v, and not discharge it below 3.7v. That is, redefine the voltage of “full charge” and “depleted charge”, and you can cycle it 5000 times.

Similarly, you could also take that 30Q cell, and call it a “3300 mAh cell”. You just charge it up to 4.3v, and discharge to 2.5v. Then you have a 3300mAh cell, but it only has maybe 100 cycles.

But… it’s not a 300mAh cell…
The capacity of a lithium battery isn’t arbitrary, it is a measured quantity from 4.2v down to 2.8v.
Just because you falsely advertise it as a 300mAh cell does not mean that it’s capacity is 300mAh and doesn’t mean it has 5000 charge cycles.
Those 300mAh might just be going from 3.9 to 3.8v, far from the full range.

One charge cycle is discharging and recharging the full capacity of the cell, aka 4.2 down to 2.8 and back up to 4.2.
Regardless of what it says on the label.

WalkIntoTheLight · 2018-05-08T10:17:35.000Z

Enderman:

WalkIntoTheLight:

I think his point was that if you want to take a Samsung 30Q 18650 cell, and call it a “300 mAh cell”, then it has 5000 cycles. You just have to make sure to only charge it as high as 3.8v, and not discharge it below 3.7v. That is, redefine the voltage of “full charge” and “depleted charge”, and you can cycle it 5000 times.

Similarly, you could also take that 30Q cell, and call it a “3300 mAh cell”. You just charge it up to 4.3v, and discharge to 2.5v. Then you have a 3300mAh cell, but it only has maybe 100 cycles.

But… it’s not a 300mAh cell…
The capacity of a lithium battery isn’t arbitrary, it is a measured quantity from 4.2v down to 2.8v.
Just because you falsely advertise it as a 300mAh cell does not mean that it’s capacity is 300mAh and doesn’t mean it has 5000 charge cycles.
Those 300mAh might just be going from 3.9 to 3.8v, far from the full range.

One charge cycle is discharging and recharging the full capacity of the cell, aka 4.2 down to 2.8 and back up to 4.2.
Regardless of what it says on the label.

Not really. The upper charge limit of 4.2v is arbitrary. It’s a compromise between capacity and cycle life. If you charge to 4.1v (which many do), you’ll get about twice the cycles but lose 10% capacity. If you charge to 4.3v, you’ll lose half your cycles but gain 10% capacity. Depending on whether you charge to 4.1v or 4.2v or 4.3v, changes the effective capacity of the battery.

Just because 4.2v is normally the voltage chosen, doesn’t necessarily make it the right one.

I get what you’re saying, but I also understand what his point was too. You can view it either way.

As for Ultrafire 12000mAh 18650 cells, well… I don’t know quite how they manage that.