MEETING REPORT

Advanced Battery Technology, Dec 2004 by Sieminski, Dennis

Portable Power Conference and Expo September 12-14, 2004

Background

The Portable Power Conference, held this year in San Francisco, California, at the Argent hotel, has been an annual event for the last ten years. It is produced by TIAX (www.tiax.biz) and IDG (www.idgworldexpo.com). A main objective is to bring together the people in several industries who determine the solutions to power in portable products. This conference continues to take on greater significance each year because increasingly the answer to portable power is becoming a much wider ranging, collective and collaborative problem. At the moment, the potential for new features, capabilities, and functionality in portable devices outstrips the ability to power them in consumer friendly ways. This puts a major obstacle in growth plans for portable device makers. The crux of the issue facing the industry is that energy demand is far greater than battery technology alone can provide, and beyond the best efforts of power management which has been able to make up for the shortfall the last few years.

The new solutions apparently are going to have to be much more widely based, multi-discipline, collaborative and very innovative. It will involve the full hierarchy that plays a part in bringing energy to the end product running from material technologies, components, products, systems and infrastructure.

Among the group of practitioners at this conference are battery manufacturers, fuel cell developers, engineers in power conversion devices, EE's in power management semiconductors, component designers, and portable product OEMs. This Conference is unique in this holistic approach to the issue of portable power, but this accurately reflects the reality of the main issue facing the portable product industry. So, it provides a timely and needed nexus.

From a historical perspective, the portable device market really took off and became an industry unto itself during the 1990s with the advent of portable computers and cellphones. Portable computers went from a separate, barely manageable, piece of luggage to a drop-in article for a brief case and backpack. The cellphone followed a similar path. In 1983 a brick-sized phone was used to make the first call, and when we see 1980 circa movies with these devices (typically used as a status symbol) they seem amusing relics. Both of these products owe a major portion of their success to radical improvements in battery technology. Today, portable products are again at a market juncture. Opportunities for new products, services and markets exist, but only if they can meet consumers raised sense of sensibilities on form factor, ergonomics and convenience. However, this time around, the solution to the energy problem is at a different order of complexity. There is no equivalent Ei-ion waiting in the wings.

The conference consisted of presentations, panel discussions, and a vendor exhibition area. The planning of the conference, the venue, the logistics, and speaker lineup were exceptional. It was an excellent opportunity to meet a cross section of people in this industry and develop an appreciation for the issues in a short period of time. The lunches and evening cocktail receptions all worked together to allow attendees to see vendor exhibits, meet colleagues, talk to presenters, and make new contacts. About 400 people and 25 exhibiting vendors attended.

Pre-conference Tutorials

There were several pre-conference tutorials that were useful for getting up to speed on various topics: Ei-ion update, fuel cell technology, smart battery technology, user interfaces, and AC/DC power budgets.

The Ei-ion update gave a comprehensive and well-organized dissection of the complex science of cell development, providing an overview of the base technology. In addition, an abundance of material was provided allowing one to pursue topics of individual interest with the desired degree of detail. For example, topics included status of new cathode materials, LiMPO^sub 4^ type, Ni-based oxides and Mn spinel; transition from LiCoO^sub 2^ to Li(Ni-Mn-Co)O2 to reduce Co cost; instrumentation and modeling tools for safety analysis and characterization.

The fuel cell technology program looked at the decision branches underlying current development efforts - active versus passive; neat, diluted and reformed fuels; FC only versus hybrid. Examples of fuel cell hardware by various companies illustrated the state-of-the-art and design direction. Ball Aerospace 2OW direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) for the army; Toshiba's O. IW DMFC for cellphones, IW for portable devices and 13W for laptops computers. MTI's DMFC-battery hybrid for handheld devices.

The user interface session provided a look at the latest developments in advanced displays, voice I/O, pointing devices, and biometrics. Microprocessor history has been described as having three ages: Mainframe (one computer/many people) PC Age (one computer/person) and "Ubicomp" Age (many computers/person). Since I/O goes hand in hand with microprocessors, its considerations likewise have grown in significance. For power people, displays represent a significant amount of the energy budget. So Intel's Mobile Platform Group represented by Jennifer Colegrove was a font of information on power usage of displays, from watches to laptops. OLEDs represent a hopeful path but degradation and cost are still issues. Another Intel contributor, Kama! Shah, focuses on making mobile PCs last all day. In that effort, one of his tasks is chair of the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (www.eblwg.com).