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Opinion
Power, Power, and Power
9/20/2006
I’m thinking that the test case for using the “nonlethal” weapon against American citizens – if it can’t be on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of course – had better not be against folks in wheelchairs or with hip or knee replacements. So broadcast power is out for now – unless we can pull it from some other dimension. But even then we’d have to ask the folks who live there first if we can have some, right?
Anyway, the search for safer and longer-lasting batteries g'es on. Fuel cells, of course, are on the horizon. There was a brief media flurry about some advances with those early last summer.
One of the coolest advances is in “thin-film” batteries, which use solid layers of materials to separate active materials in the battery from each other. Their key advantage is safety. They can’t explode like lithium-ion, but they also (a) allow the use of pure lithium (more capacity) and (b) are relatively immune to climate effects (cold/hot) on their durability.
Thin-film batteries are expensive to make, especially in higher capacities. But manufacturers are already gearing up to first use them to support low-power sensors in hostile climates, and then to be used in consumer products, such as built into layers of automobile tires as a built-in power source for air pressure sensors.
On the present-day personal front, I tried carrying multiple, pre-charged batteries for my laptop around with me. But it’s a pain trying to ensure that your collection of non-inserted batteries is in fact charged up.
Plus, there are other problems designers haven’t thought of. Just before my last trip to Washington, my dog chewed up my extra Dell battery. That’s right, “the dog ate my battery.” (Didn’t get to the core, but destroyed it.) It’s a real situation, but it’s a terrible excuse for not being able to take the meeting minutes in a room full of suits.
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