July 2009 Newsletter – The $2 billion everlasting battery

When was the last time you charged your phone; yesterday, today, how about never!

The U.S. Government approved this month $2 billion of funding for battery development, couple this with the Nokia’s new power harvesting method means that you could never have to charge your phone again!

While the funding is largely earmarked for incremental improvements in existing battery technology, this should ensure a tripling of capacity over the next 3 years. On the outside track are the likes of researchers from St Andrews who are playing with air (well oxygen) to squeeze 10 times the capacity out of batteries weight for weight, or the folks at MIT who have improved charging times by up to 100 times!

More startling are Nokia’s new developments where they are implementing ways to use background radio waves to recharge phones. Literally all you’ll have to do to charge your phone (or laptop) is nothing, it will draw power from the environment around it. While the plug-less phone is still many years away we have already seen benefits of this technology every day. Every time we take a tube journey our Oyster cards draw a few microvolts of power from the radiowaves used to communicate with them thus bringing themselves to life!

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