Report looks to perpetual equipment by avoiding batteries
Batteries have serious limitations of cost, weight, space, toxicity, flammability, explosions, energy density, power density, leakage current, reliability and maintenance, says the report, and while lithium-ion batteries will dominate the market for at least ten years and probably much longer, no lithium-ion cell is inherently safe and no lithium-ion battery management system can ensure safety in all circumstances.
“The negative material recycling value of modern batteries is a threat to the environment because it may lead to uncontrolled disposal. Add to that the depletion of limited cobalt reserves and one can see that even the start of a journey towards battery elimination can give valuable wins,” said Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of IDTechEx.
The Battery Elimination in Electronics and Electrical Engineering 2018-2028 report examines many ways of eliminating batteries, from large electric buses with supercapacitors enjoying four times the life to small electric buses with no energy storage for traction. Hundreds of thousands of buildings already have electronic climate controls and electric actuators with no energy storage, pointing the way to how the Internet of Things can succeed, says Harrop.
The replacement of batteries with long life energy storage is covered: the alternatives have better safety and suitability for use in planned smart materials. However, the main focus is complete elimination of energy storage by new forms of energy harvesting that are almost continuous, including technologies to add to energy harvesting to provide the continuity of electricity supply that leads to less or no battery, such as dynamic charging of vehicles through roads.
The report ranges from eliminating energy storage from sensors, building controls, cellphones and robot ships, to the development of Internet of Things nodes without batteries – key to mass deployment using technologies developed by companies such as EnOcean in Germany. This differs significantly from the way in which electric vehicles and mobile e-cooking move to no batteries. The report also looks at the grid without energy storage, currently a hot topic in that industry and finally, the evolving energy harvesting technologies for battery replacement.
For more see www.IDTechEx.com/batteryelimination
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