Batteries...

A thread of 2 messages, 16 March 1992 to 19 March 1992, in the order they were sent.

#3855 Batteries...

George W Herbert · 16 March 1992

Once long long ago, while I was doing battery tradeoffs
for a UC Berkeley/NASA study on Mars Spacesuits,
I got bored and checked the numbers for the Traveller
batteries against what we had around today for real.
It turns out that we're just about right, and that
the projection for TL9 is about in line with what
is reasonable to guess will be usable by 2010.
Even more impressive is that the TL10 and 11 entries
are _also_ on line with that theoretically will be
state of the art in 2030 and 2050 8-) (Note that as
an engineer, I don't put much faith in more than 10
year development prediction, but it's nice to know
that the traveller stuff agrees with presumed reasonable
values...).

The only thing that's high is cost.
The given costs are roughly in line with space-rated
battery costs.
One could presume that less tough (and less tested...)
batteries for ground vehicles are possible and
cheaper.
Radio shack, for instance sells TL7.5 NiCad batteries
for about 65% of Traveller figures, and you could
probably halve that for bulk purchases at wholesale.

- -george william herbert
[email removed]       [email removed]

#3864 Re: TML biweekly: Msgs 3852-3860 V25#10

Jim W Lai · 19 March 1992 · reply to #3855

>Date: Mon, 16 Mar 92 12:08:39 PST
>From: [email removed] (George W Herbert)
>Subject: (3855) Batteries...
>
>Once long long ago, while I was doing battery tradeoffs
>for a UC Berkeley/NASA study on Mars Spacesuits,
>I got bored and checked the numbers for the Traveller
>batteries against what we had around today for real.
>It turns out that we're just about right, and that
>the projection for TL9 is about in line with what
>is reasonable to guess will be usable by 2010.

Hm, I wonder if we're getting a bit higher on the battery tech chart.  I got
those figures at last.  A Michigan company, Ovonic Battery Co., claims to have
solved the corrosion problems with metal hydride batteries by means of a
particular alloy for the electrode.  The design is similar to NiCad, with the
metal hydride replacing the cadmium as the negative electrode.  They claim the
sealed battery exhbits almost twice the energy densities of NiCad, has a
recharge time of only 15 minutes, and last the life of the car.  What TL
would this battery, assuming their claims are accurate, correspond to?
(I'm pulling my reference out of Popular Science.)  Apparently this battery
is cheap enough that Hyundai has signed with them, and Chrysler is considering.

Meanwhile, BMW engineers say that their current sodium-sulfur batteries have
four times the storage capacity of the same-weight lead-acid batteries.
Unfortunately they last only one year.

Maybe someone out there could calculate what these translate to in TL numbers?
[Yes, I'm hoping that we've achieved TL 8.5.  :)]

Discover magazine (I am told) has an interesting article on the capability of
the electric car engineered by GM and another firm.  It uses conventional
lead-acid batteries and apparently will be affordable and practical for urban
use.

Oh, and that was an interesting comment about discount (and unreliable) tech.
Hm... Honest H'gurna's bargain basement fusion plants?