For decades, we’ve been trying to harness and convert energy from one form to another in hope of meeting our day-to-day power requirements. In winters, we use electricity to keep our home warm and cool in summers. Smarter Energystar homes improve this model but they still don’t remove the need for Power plants.

NanoHoldings would change our lifes forever.

The Future of Energy is all about Clean and Renewable energy that doesn’t require any of the oil, coal and nuclear power plants. Energy is going to be Free!

Watch the video, I’m sure you will be amazed.

Pythagoras Solar has come up with new Glass windows that fit into your apartments, offices and generate electricity throughout the day. In addition they can be used to control the light and heat entering the rooms. The company is calling it the industry’s “first energy efficient, transparent and high power-density photovoltaic glass unit”.

The new product could show up in curtain walls, skylights or windows. It both blocks the sun to keep it cool inside and captures sunlight to create solar energy.

The video below talks about how the Solar windows work:

And a preview of how much these solar Windows would cost:

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Scientists have built the world’s  smallest petrol engine that is tiny enough to power a Watch.

The mini-combustion engine can run for two years on a single dose of a light fuel.

To give you an estimate of the power, it produces 700 times more energy than a conventional battery despite having a size less than a centimetre long . If the technology continues to innovate with the same pace, it could be used to power laptops and mobile phones for months.

Energy evangelists believe that this new mini-motor can make batteries look conventional and even phase them out in half decade.

The engine has been produced by engineers at the University of Birmingham.

“We are looking at an industrial revolution happening in peoples’ pockets. The breakthrough is an enormous step forward. Devices which need re- charging or new batteries are a problem but in six years will be a thing of the past.”

These tiny engines would find applications in other fields such as medical, military gadgets, and future robots.

Today, charging an ordinary battery to deliver one unit of energy involves putting 2,000 units into it. This is due to the fact that energy is wated at several steps before it is effectively stored. On the contrary this engine produces energy locally,  and hence  is far more efficient.

Micro engines have been produced several times in the past, but all of them failed at dissipating heat to surroundings, and burned themselves over a small period of operation. The Birmingham team overcame this by using heat-resistant materials such as ceramic and silicon carbide. They brought together all the engineering disciplines, both materials, chemical engineering, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering.

We’re excited about this more than Bloom Energy,  a new Energy revolution.

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BMW is hoping to change this.  Most manufacturers rely on traditional — and heavy– steel car bodies, but the BMW hopes that carbon fiber components could lead electric cars into the future.

Mitsubishi has released its first electric car series under the rather uninspiring model designation i-MiEV. It’s a simply furnished compact car with an oval body and lithium-ion batteries under the floor panel. With one charge of the battery, the vehicle can travel 100 kilometers (62 miles) in summer or 60 kilometers (37 miles) in winter. It costs ?34,390 ($45,240).

Nissan’s electric car, the Leaf — set to hit the German market next year — faces the same cost-benefit plight. Even so, European automobile journalists saw fit to name the Leaf their “Car of the Year.”

Car manufacturers are building sedans and high class models of electric cars, making them bulky and inefficient for battery lives.

BMW is attempting to break the cycle. BMW, 3 years from now,will launch a new construction type to Cars called as  Megacity Vehicle (MCV), which won’t contain steel or aluminum bodywork. Instead, it will have a light alloy frame in the car floor and a body made of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP).

CFRP is a dull black material which has a chemical structure similar to that of diamonds. It is sturdier than steel and weighs less than half as much. The MCV body will be 250 to 300 kilograms (550 to 660 pounds) lighter than that of a conventional electric car of the same size, compensating fully for the additional weight of the batteries.

BMW is alone in pursuing the concept — the boldest idea currently under development in the automobile world, and one which is an economic riddle for the competition. CFRP materials have been available for nearly 50 years and are used in the aviation and aerospace industries, in car racing and, most recently, in rotor blades for wind turbines. Still, the idea of mass-producing cars from the material would appear to make little sense.

CFRP is 50 times as expensive as steel. However, company engineers have set a goal of a tenfold reduction in production costs for CFRP. That would spell a true revolution in industrial engineering.

The Joint venture

The joint venture of SGL and BMW produces these carbon fibers, 10 times thinner than a human hair, in the northwestern United States. The manufacturing process consumes an enormous amount of electricity, but hydroelectric power is cheap in the mountainous state of Washington.

More significant cost reductions are to be achieved once the black mini-threads arrive in an industrial park outside the town of Wackersdorf in Bavaria. Here, on a site once meant for processing spent nuclear fuel rods, an unusual textiles factory is setting up shop to serve the auto body construction industry.

Four knitting machines, each as large as a train car, take up most of a 7,500-square-meter (80,700-square-foot) factory floor. But instead of producing material for T-shirts and jeans, the outsized machines produce carbon fiber fabric, at speeds no other manufacturer has even approached.

BMW, however, is using a compression mold that can harden CFRP components in just 10 minutes at 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit). A different chemical mixture of resin and a hardening agent, together with the enormous pressure in the mold, make this process possible.

The power for these bursts of speed comes from a battery packet with a storage capacity of 42 kilowatt hours. At the current state of lithium battery technology, just the vehicle’s battery set-up would cost ?40,000 and weigh more than half a ton.

The car’s potential range is also easy to deduct. With the engine performing at full capacity, the batteries would be drained in the space of 10 minutes — if they were even chemically capable of withstanding such a rapid discharge.

At this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans race, Audi sent a prototype of its high-voltage, high-speed car out to take an extra lap around the course, meant to illustrate the great potential of such a vehicle. The driver, though, was under orders not to drive at full speed — company engineers weren’t sure the batteries would last the entire lap if he did. One lap at Le Mans is 13.6 kilometers (8.5 miles) long.

Related: Long lasting battery: 5min charge drives Electric Car 600km

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Second biggest source of Energy consumption is the Lighting. We can chose LED light bulbs to illuminate Home and workplaces, effectively saving as large as 90% of the Energy spent by traditional Incandescent tubes/bulbs. Earlier, CFLs were considered as an effective replacement, but with advent of White LEDs, much higher efficiencies have been attained.

Philips, LG,and other leading electricals have started bringing great LED lamps to the market. A single 5 watt LED bulb would easily outperform a 25watt CFL and that too with a pure white light.

LED vs. CFL vs. Incandescent Energy efficiency

The reason is obvious, LED is the most effiecient since it completes almost all of the electrical energy into Light and very minimal amount of energy is dissipated. However a traditional light bulb spends more energy in  heating than emitting light.

Going by approximate figures a 60 watts Incansescent = 20 watts CFL = 3.5 watts LED

Lifetime

The lifetime of an LED bulb is nearly 50, 000 hours (~6 years), when run continously. Which is insanely great as compared to 8,000 hours of CFLs and  1200 hours of Incandescent bulbs.

Directional

Unlike other sources, LEDs tend to be directional due to their inherent design. However, newer designs with multiple LEDs aligned at different angles into a same bulb, make it possible to cover a wider area.

Time to Reach maximum Light

LEDs are instantaneous, taking only nano seconds. Incandescent takes order of 2-5 seconds. CFLs are slowest, taking upto 30 seconds to emit maximum lumens of energy.

Environmental friendliness

• Toxic material: LEDs and CFLs are both environmental friendly as they donot have mercury.
• Carbondioxide Emissions: Lower energy consumption decreases CO2 emissions and hence LEDs do 451 pounds/year, CFLs 1051 pounds/year, and Incandescent does 4500 pounds/year.

Drawbacks:

LEDs: They are realtive expensive today, but should get cheaper as cost of production is low. Another disadvantage is that its almost impossible to find High power LED bulbs. I haven’t seen many options above 10watts.

CFLs: They are not as efficient and take alot of time to reach full power.

Incandescent: Everything about them is actually a disadvantage.

Comparison of Real world performance:

Here is a comparison of LED against CFLs, Incandescent light sources:

Here’s a Philips LED:

another comaprison:

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Same is the case with the batteries that are used to power Electric cars.  Such cars have very long charging time, for instance, a minimal charge takes 30 minutes or more. And when you actually wish to move, it would need that charge.

One company has made the first breakthrough by inventing a Lithium Polymer battery that puts every other battery manufacturer to shame. DBM Energy has been manufacturing batteries that allow forklift trucks to operate in warehouses for 28 hours between charges. Their latest creation is called KOLIBRI, which has been deployed into a car and the results are pretty amazing.

The battery was put to test using standard Audi A2, a battery operated Electric car. With everything stock except for the battery, the car was set to benchmark the battery power.

With approx. 6 minutes of charge, the car traveled whooping 375 miles (600km) over a journey of seven hours averaging speeds of 55mph. On finishing the drive, CEO of DBM offered to recharge the phones of the reporters as it still had some juice left. 6 min charge time for 100 kWh – it is important to know with what kind of a fast charger it was done, but in anyway – if battery can sustain 2500 cycles with this kind of fast charger – it is another breakthrough. Question will in Charging Infrastructure, but it is 6 min for 100 kWh – too good to be true for a Lithium Metal Polymer!

The drive is now called Munich-Berlin project, with which DBM wanted to know if its batteries would work for road cars rather than just forklifts, and without a doubt it looks promising for almost everything from trucks to cars.

Comparison with Other batteries : Over 300 Wh/kg – to put it in perspective – Nissan Leaf 24 kWh battery will be less than 80 kg! We have heard that Renault Fluence 24 kWh battery weight is 240 kg.

One final piece of good news about this battery is DBM believes it can manufacture it cheaper than the other lithium ion batteries being developed. That means the premium for an electric car using a DBM battery solution should be lower than the competition.

Welcome to the future where Short Charges, Extended Battery life has become a reality. DBM seem to have solved both problems with wide range of battery options of batteries that charge insanely fast, and batteries that last really long.

This car is definitely was not optimized for optimal battery performance, if in future lighter cars are made, the efficiency could be even better.

375 miles for a 5 minute charge is something that anyone would beg for, making it to be more than enough for most journeys.

So when exactly are we getting these in EVs? It would take sometime till some car manufacturer holds the deal with DBM and puts these powerhouse into commercial cars. Going green would now be more easier.

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This supercomputer named Grape-DR, resides in the Department of Information Science at the University of Tokyo. On the specs side it has 64 Intel Core i7-920 processors and an accelerator chip that can achieve 200 gigaflops with a lightbulb’s worth of power.

The power consumption is freaking low, and that’s why they Top the Little Green500 List of energy-efficient supercomputers, achieving 815.43 MFLOPS per Watt which now outperforms IBM’s located in Germany, capable of 773.38 MFLOPS per Watt.

As one could figure out, the Grape-DR supercomputer, in addition to be the greenest is apparently also the messiest of all. It pairs its 64 Core i7 processors with four Grape-DR accelerator chips, each of which consumes only 50 Watts of power giving out 200 GFLOPS of processing power. All together the chips improve the efficiency of the supercomputer as high as 5x Times. Being the greenest does not mean fastest— Its peak performance is 23.4 TFLOPS, putting it way behind even the 500th in the list. But that’s fine, Mother nature loves it ore than any other.

via Ubergizmo

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ARM manufactures high-performance mobile computing chips. Of course, these processors cannot match the performance offered by x86 processors but there’s something that still make them attractive, more attractive than x86 processors for server farms.

ARM’s  CEO Warren East said that servers based on ARM multicore processors should arrive within the next twelve months. The current architecture, designed for client-side computing, can surprisingly be also used in server applications.

Though the implementations of ARM have traditionally been aimed at relatively low performance optimized for minimum power consumption, but, we are seeing higher speed, multicore implementations now pushing up to 2 GHz. ARM’s A9 at 2 GHz has four cores, which makes them a viable candidate for servers. However, the main difference an ARM-based server processor would offer is the addition of high-speed communications interfaces.

No matter how fast these buses are, speed is definitely not an advantage ARM would offer. However, with a growing concern to reduce the amount of energy consumed by servers and server farms, ARM processors offer a great deal, especially the multi-core options in the higher range. ARM might solve part of the problem by offering a Green ServerFarm that would operate at less than 20% of the energy of the current Intel, AMD x86 server processors.

Obviously, we won’t see these processors being deployed in high-performance farms. What looks possible is that it might limit its options to the print and storage server market.

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A startup based in CA called Transonic Combustion has developed a fuel-injection system it says can improve the efficiency of gasoline engines by more than 50 percent. What this means practically is that a vehicle equipped with the technology gets 64 miles per gallon in highway driving, which is in fact far better than so-called greener hybrid cars (like Toyota Prius) which gives 48 miles per gallon. Also, hybrid cars are cost several times more than the test vehicle developed by Transonic.

What makes the new Injection system Better?

The key is in heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion. The more intuitively you do it, better combustion you can yield, which in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to propel a vehicle. The company treats the gasoline(petrol) with a catalyst that “activates” it, partially oxidizing it to enhance combustion.

Transonic’s injection system varies from direct injection in two ways: it uses supercritical fluids and doesn’t require a spark to ignite the fuel, something which totally new in petrol engines. The supercritical fluid mixes quickly with air when it’s injected into the cylinder.

Once the fuel is injected into the piston, the heat and pressure are enough to cause the fuel to combust without a spark (similar to what happens in diesel engines). Ignition can be timed to happen just when the piston is reaching the optimal point, so it can convert as much of the energy in the gasoline into mechanical movement as possible, without wasting energy by heating up the combustion chamber walls, as happens in conventional technologies. In order to make it possible, Transonic has developed proprietary software that lets the system adjust the injection precisely depending on the load put on the engine. Other Improvements include smaller engines boosted with turbocharging, improved valve timing, and direct injection, in which fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber rather than into an adjacent port.

The Scope

The aim is to increase the efficiency of existing combustion engines and not make them costly.  Transonic’s approach is “a promising way to improve on conventional direct injection.”

Mike Rocke, Transonic’s vice president of business dev, says that at a steady cruising speed of 50 miles per hour, the test car gets 98 miles per gallon.

The company has recently demonstrated the technology in its own test engine, and says it is currently testing it with three automakers. The company, is supported by venture-capital investments from Venrock and Khosla Ventures. They have plans to manufacture its system itself, rather than licensing the technology, first factory in 2013followed by production of cars by 2014.

Possibly we will have lots of EVs by that time. We’ve to wait and see which approach works best for us.

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The new patents, over the last week, deal with cooling and heat control in laptops.

Heat dissipation has always been a big challenge for both chip and Laptop/notebook manufacturers.

Out of the 4, the most important patent application describes a “solid state cooling system” that uses – instead of fans or conductive materials – thermoelectric cooling through the so-called “Peltier effect.” Named for French physicist Jean Charles Athanase Peltier, this effect describes the cooling or heating that happens when current is forced through a junction of two different metals. When current flows in one direction, it can cool the metal by as much as 5° C.

According to AppleInsider, One of the  invention involves the use of air flow meters and thermal sensors placed in open areas of a laptop’s case to detect the speed and temperature of the air inside the chassis. If air flow slows, like when a particular vent is blocked by external object, the system could take that into consideration, either increasing the speed at which the fans spin or by reducing the performance of the processor so that it generates less heat. Even Intel chips have the capability of doing the latter, also known as passive cooling.

In addition, one of the patents talk about using ports such as USB, FireWire and Ethernet, as secondary vents to bring cooler air into the housing and for dissipating heat through connectors. In order to achieve this, the notebook case would be designed so that the location of the ports improves airflow in parts of the chassis where heat builds up. However, the vents would make use of a “hydrophobic material” to block liquids, but not air, from entering the case.

The last one talks of using heat-conductive assemblies to cool components inside the case of a laptop by dissipating the heat to the laptop’s hinge which are connected by a wrapped heat pipe to a graphite “heat spreader”. another purpose of the heat spreader is to dissipate as much heat as possible so that casing doesn’t heat up.

All in all, these 4 innovations when combined together can build the first Fanless, coolant-less, Notebook. And the same battery would be able to to give 15-20% more life.

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As per stats from NationMaster, US alone uses 20.6 Million barrels of fuel everyday, followed by china at 7.5 Million

and India ranking 5th at 2.7Million. Even when burnt efficiently, this much fuel leads to 10,000s of tonnes of harmful gases/smoke to the environment. We need to bring it down to zero, Bloom Energy could be the first and automobiles the next one.

I’m not talking about high-end and fancy EVs like eWolf 2, which are way above what most people could afford. We need something that’s affordable, efficient and robust. Tata had introduced Nano: World’s cheapest car at $2,000 (or Indian Rs. 1,00,000) a price for which would, ordinarily, get you a MacBook. Tata is all set to take it to next level with world’s cheapest Electric Vehicle (EV), next year.

(image credits)

Tata Motors (the owners of Jaguars) claims that the Nano EV offers the “practicality of a real car”, compromising nothing in the pursuit of providing environment-friendly personal transportation for the modern consumer. It will seat four individuals comfortably in its spacious interiors. It will have a top speed of up to 160 km and an acceleration of 0-60 kmph in under 10 seconds.

Nano EV will be powered by super polymer lithium ion batteries, and Tata Indica Vista EV, would  provide superior energy density to conventional batteries.

In early 2011, they plan to unveil Tata Nano EV alond with Indica EV, and this keeps me excited. Tata’s product may or may not capture the market but will set the trend and build concept of  ”Affordable Green Cars”.

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PowerMeter provides a great interface to monitor, track, analyze, and optimize power usage. Now manufacturers can integrate various appliances to enable advanced Energy monitoring. Google PowerMeter is a software application being was developed to help consumers track their home electricity usage. The development of the software is part of an effort by Google to invest in Green and Renewable energy initiatives

The API will make “energy information more widely available to consumers”.

Google has laid-out data model and the accompanying protocols to ensure that Google PowerMeter provides consumers access to their energy consumption with utmost care in maintaining the user’s privacy and control on access to the information.

In addition, google is providing some code samples to get developers started in building their first device which integrates with powerMeter.
If you are interested, checkout google’s  PowerMeter blog for timely updates on the service.

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Google with it’s Google Energy, is trying a similar approach.

Update: BloomEnergy is now Live, details at the end

The future is all about generating your own cheap electricity in greener ways, and a US startup believes that they have found a solution – “Powerhouse in a Box”.

Bloom energy, formerly “Ion America”,  comes-up with something that is truly powerful, and revolutionary. K.R. Sridhar has built what he claims to be a fuel cell that can power a typical US home for a year with zero emission. This equals 2 European and 4 Asian houses 24/7 x 365 days, that’s alot of energy.

KR had worked previously with NASA to build a handy device that could actually produce Oxygen for Mars. But the idea was dropped by the agency, and KR reversed the invention to make it a fuel cell.

Currently, these boxes cost $700,000-$800,000, but eventually in 5-10 years, there will be one in every home – and Sridhar thinks he can get the cost below $3,000 for a unit to make that happen.

Two of these boxes combined together makeup to a size of a brick, and they need to be surrounded by a larger unit that takes in an energy source (such as natural gas)of upto size of refrigerator.

The fact  is that they’re already installed at datacenters in companies like Google, eBay, FedEx and others. Four of these Bloom Boxes have apparently been powering a Google datacenter for the past 18 months. eBay says their five boxes have saved them over $100,000 in electricity costs over the past 9 months.

Watch the Video Coverage from CBS:

The technology will be unveiled to public on wednesday, 24th feb, the countdown is already clicking on their website. Stay tuned for the unveiling, we will keep you updated @taranfx.

Update: BloomEnergy is now Live

Energy Saver: Built with our patented solid oxide fuel cell technology, Bloom’s Energy Server™ is a new class of distributed power generator, producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site.

Fuel cells are devices that convert fuel into electricity through a clean electro-chemical process rather than dirty combustion. They are like batteries except that they always run. Our particular type of fuel cell technology is different than legacy “hydrogen” fuel cells in four main ways:

1. Low cost materials – our cells use a common sand-like powder instead of precious
   metals like platinum or corrosive materials like acids.
2. High electrical efficiency – we can convert fuel into electricity at nearly twice the
   rate of some legacy technologies
3. Fuel flexibility – our systems are capable of using either renewable or fossil fuels
4. Reversible – our technology is capable of both energy generation and storage

Each Bloom Energy Server provides 100kW of power, enough to meet the baseload needs of 100 average homes or a small office building… day and night, in roughly the footprint of a standard parking space. For more power simply add more energy servers.

At the heart of every Energy Server™ is Bloom’s patented solid oxide fuel cell technology.

Each Energy Server consists of thousands of Bloom’s fuel cells. Each cell is a flat solid ceramic square made from a common sand-like “powder.”

Each Bloom Energy fuel cell is capable of producing about 25W… enough to power a light bulb. For more power, the cells are sandwiched, along with metal interconnect plates into a fuel cell “stack”. A few stacks, together about the size of a loaf of bread, is enough to power an average home.

In an Energy Server, multiple stacks are aggregated together into a “power module”, and then multiple power modules, along with a common fuel input and electrical output are assembled as a complete system.

For more power, multiple Energy Server systems can be deployed side by side.

In addition to Bloom’s unmatched performance, this modular architecture offers…

• easy and fast deployment
• inherent redundancy for fault tolerance
• high availability (one power module can be serviced while all others continue to operate)
• mobility

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In December, Google took steps to form Google Energy, a subsidiary formed with sole purpose of buying and selling electricity in bulk. In January, the company filed a request, and yesterday Google Energy has been granted an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission(FERC) to buy and sell energy at market rates. Then there was the announcement that the company was developing low cost mirrors for use in solar panels. And, of course, there’s the Google PowerMeter, which allows users to track electricity usage, as long as they have the proper equipment to upload the data.

So Google is all set for becoming the Electricity supplier? No, instead, Google wants more control over the high energy costs of its many data centers, and also aims to become greener.

“Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets. We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits.”

“We don’t have any concrete plans. We want the ability to buy and sell electricity in case it becomes part of our portfolio.”

Clearly, there’s a possibility that Google might become an energy provider sooner or later. There is some expectation that Google will actually enter the energy business at some point, whether it sells direct to consumers or partners with existing utility companies. Google will innovate in Greener ways of producing electricity and then sell it off at a much competitive price to the market.

But why would Google want to do something of that kind? Well ,the answer comes from the visionaries, the co-founders who are way to obsessed and inspired by so many things in life. Larry Page and Sergey Brin always have something new to talk about, and it’s never limited to IT.

All in all, Google is now social (Buzz), extended reach to Home Gigabit Internet as ISP, developing Mobile OS, Netbook OS and now they will power them all with, evidently, cheaper Electricity.

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Recommended operating temperatures
Operate iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between zero and 35 degrees Celsius (32 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit). Low or high-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly.

Recommended storage temperatures
Store iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between -20 and 45 degrees Celsius (-4 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit). Don’t leave the device in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range.

Symptoms of overheating

• iPhone will no longer charge
• iPhone display will dim
• Weaker cell signal

iPhone temperature warning screen pops up if the phone is overheating.

(Credit: Apple, Inc.)

The iPhone’s internal and ambient temperatures can spike when it’s performing multiple functions simultaneously. Specific instances include using the iPhone while it’s charging, using Wi-Fi during phone calls, and accessing data services during phone calls. I’ve alsoexperienced the iPhone 2G gets warm during very long phone calls and during normal charging, but in 3G S, this problem is more amplified. Reports of discoloration on white iPhone 3GS models have been blamed on overheating.

Tips for keeping your iPhone cool

• Some external cases–especially those that were designed before the iPhone was released and were not properly tested–can prevent heat from dissipating properly. Be especially wary of silicone covers, as they tend to act as insulators.
• Power down various internal circuitry by putting the device in Airplane mode. Go to the Settings menu and slide Airplane Mode to On.
• Don’t leave the iPhone in a car on a hot day or in direct sunlight for extended amounts of time.
• Use of certain applications like mapping and gaming for extended periods might lead to the iPhone overheating. Limit the length of these activities if possible.
• iPhone temperature warning screen appears (see above)

Meanwhile, the iPhone user manual states:

“You cannot use iPhone while the temperature warning screen is displayed except to make an emergency call. If none of the above measures succeeds in lowering the internal temperature, iPhone automatically goes into a deep sleep mode until it cools. You cannot make an emergency call when iPhone is in this mode. Move iPhone to a cooler location and wait a few minutes before trying to use iPhone again.”

A Fox News video covering the iPhone overheating issue can be viewed on Comcast’s Web site. According to that video, your iPhone will shut down if the temperature inside the iPhone reaches 113 degrees.

While it is clear that overheating can happen, in all fairness, this is true of just about any electronic device. What’s more, talking on a cell phone for a long period has caused other handsets to heat up, too. Is your iPhone 3GS overheating? Has the case shown any discoloring?I don’t think so. changing the color of a glazed plastic requires atleast 150 degree celsius, which is never observed on a phone unless kept in Microwave oven.

What are these tiny computers we speak of? The chief executive of Marvell Technology Group, one of the companies manufacturing these tiny power-plug sized computers, told the New York Times.

What’s in the plug? It’s a tiny plastic box that you plug into an electric outlet. There’s no display. But there is an Ethernet jack to connect to a home network and a USB socket for attaching a hard drive, camera or other device. Inside is a 1.2 gigahertz Marvell chip, called an application processor, running a version of the Linux operating system.

They envision a future of tiny ubiquitous computers that do everything from serve files to control home appliances. The plugs currently run $99, but they project prices will fall to $40 within the next two years. We’re dying to hear what projects you’d cook up with access to cheap $40 wall wart sized computers.

While the battery aspect of this netbook will interest most, I’m personally more interested in the actual hardware that powers the device. It’s powered by an x86 system-on-chip called the Vortex86MX from Taiwanese company DMP Electronics. Its processor is an x86-compatible with ARM-like power consumption (1.2W!) which runs at 1.0Ghz.

The Gecko EduBook has other goodies too, such as an internal SD card for storage (it also has an IDE slot) as well as internal space for a Bluetooth or WiFi dongle. It has an 8.9″ 1024×600 display, and the CPU/RAM module is removable, and can carry anywhere between 256MB and 1GB of DDR2 RAM.

The cool stuff is of course that it can be powered by a set of 8 NiMH AA batteries, which can power the netbook for 4 hours; you can also buy a normal battery pack which will power it for 6 hours. This makes the machine ideal for environments where AA batteries might be all you can buy, for instance in emerging markets.

By default it comes with Ubuntu Linux, but it can also run Windows XP and Windows CE. It will become available in July for 200 USD, with an 8GB SD card and a WiFi module. Barebone models will also be available for 110-130 USD.

Shall i discharge it to peek and then full charge or subsequent small charges are better? Is there a memory problems with Li-ion batteries?

Here are the answers to all your questions and many more. In-depth:

Battery research is focusing heavily on lithium chemistries, so much so that one could presume that all portable devices will be powered with lithium-ion batteries in the future. In many ways, lithium-ion is superior to nickel and lead-based chemistries and the applications for lithium-ion batteries are growing as a result.

Lithium-ion has not yet fully matured and is being improved continuously. New metal and chemical combinations are being tried every six months to increase energy density and prolong service life. The improvements in longevity after each change will not be known for a few years.

A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges.

Although lithium-ion is memory-free in terms of performance deterioration, batteries with fuel gauges exhibit what engineers refer to as “digital memory”. Here is the reason: Short discharges with subsequent recharges do not provide the periodic calibration needed to synchronize the fuel gauge with the battery’s state-of-charge. A deliberate full discharge and recharge every 30 charges corrects this problem. Letting the battery run down to the cut-off point in the equipment will do this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate. (Read more in ‘Choosing the right battery for portable computing’, Part Two.)

Aging of lithium-ion is an issue that is often ignored. A lithium-ion battery in use typically lasts between 2-3 years. The capacity loss manifests itself in increased internal resistance caused by oxidation. Eventually, the cell resistance reaches a point where the pack can no longer deliver the stored energy although the battery may still have ample charge. For this reason, an aged battery can be kept longer in applications that draw low current as opposed to a function that demands heavy loads. Increasing internal resistance with cycle life and age is typical for cobalt-based lithium-ion, a system that is used for cell phones, cameras and laptops because of high energy density. The lower energy dense manganese-based lithium-ion, also known as spinel, maintains the internal resistance through its life but loses capacity due to chemical decompositions. Spinel is primarily used for power tools.

The speed by which lithium-ion ages is governed by temperature and state-of-charge. Figure 1 illustrates the capacity loss as a function of these two parameters.

Permanent capacity loss of lithium-ion as a function of temperature and charge level.
High charge levels and elevated temperatures hasten permanent capacity loss. Improvements in chemistry have increased the storage performance of lithium-ion batteries.

The mentioning of limited service life on lithium-ion has caused concern in the battery industry and I will need to add some clarifications. Let me explain:
If someone asks how long we humans live, we would soon find out that the longevity varies according to life style and living conditions that exist in different countries. Similar conditions exist with the batteries, lithium-ion in particular. Since BatteryUniversity bases its information on the feedback from users as opposed to scientific information derived from a research lab, longevity results may differ from manufacturer’ specifications. Let’s briefly look at the various living conditions of the lithium-ion battery.

The worst condition is keeping a fully charged battery at elevated temperatures, which is the case with running laptop batteries. If used on main power, the battery inside a laptop will only last for 12-18 months. I must hasten to explain that the pack does not die suddenly but begins with reduced run-times.

The voltage level to which the cells are charged also plays an important role to longevity. For safety reasons, most lithium-ion cannot exceed 4.20 volts per cell. While a higher voltage boosts capacity, the disadvantage is lower cycle life. Figure 2 shows the cycle life as a function of charge voltage.

Effects on cycle life at different float charge levels (Choi et al., 2002) Higher charge voltages boost capacity but lower cycle life.

There are no remedies to restore lithium-ion once worn out. A momentary improvement in performance is noticeable when heating up the battery. This lowers the internal resistance momentarily but the condition reverts back to its former state when the temperature drops. Cold temperature will increase the internal resistance.

If possible, store the battery in a cool place at about a 40% state-of-charge. Some reserve charge is needed to keep the battery and its protection circuit operational during prolonged storage. Avoid keeping the battery at full charge and high temperature. This is the case when placing a cell phone or spare battery in a hot car. Running a laptop computer on the mains has a similar temperature problem. While the battery is kept fully charged, the inside temperature during operation rises to 45°C (113°F).

Removing the battery from the laptop when running on fixed power protects the battery from heat. With the concern of the battery overheating and causing fire, a spokesperson for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission advises to eject the battery of affected laptops and to run the machines on a power cord. It should be noted that on a power outage, unsaved works will be lost.
The question is often asked, should the laptop be disconnected from the main when not in use? Under normal circumstances, it should not matter with lithium-ion. Once the battery is fully charged, no further charge is applied. However, there is always the concern is malfunction of the AC adapter, the laptop or the battery.

A large number of lithium-ion batteries for cell phones are being discarded under the warranty return policy. Some failed batteries are sent to service centers or the manufacturer, where they are refurbished. Studies show that 80%-90% of the returned batteries can be repaired and returned to service.

Some lithium-ion batteries fail due to excessive low discharge. If discharged below 2.5 volts per cell, the internal safety circuit opens and the battery appears dead. A charge with the original charger is no longer possible. Some battery analyzers (Cadex) feature a boost function that reactivates the protection circuit of a failed battery and enables a recharge. However, if the cell voltage has fallen below 1.5V/cell and has remained in that state for a few months, a recharge should be avoided because of safety concerns. To prevent failure, never store the battery fully discharged. Apply some charge before storage, and then charge fully before use.

All personal computers (and some other electronic devices) contain a battery for memory back up. This battery is commonly a small non-rechargeable lithium cell, which provides a small current when the device is turned off. The PC uses the battery to retain certain information when the power is off. These are the BIOS settings, current date and time, as well as resource assignment for Plug and Play systems. Storage does shorten the service life of the backup battery to a few years. Some say 1-2 years. By keeping the computer connected to the main, albeit turned off, a battery on the PC motherboards should be good for 5-7 years. A PC should give the advanced warning when battery gets low. A dead back-up battery will wipe out the volatile memory and erase certain settings. After battery is replaced, the PC should again be operational.

Longevity of high-power lithium-ion
Generally speaking, batteries live longer if treated in a gentle manner. High charge voltages, excessive charge rate and extreme load conditions will have a negative effect and shorten the battery life. This also applies to high current rate lithium-ion batteries.

Not only is it better to charge lithium-ion battery at a slower charge rate, high discharge rates also contribute the extra wear and tear. Figure 3 shows the cycle life as a function of charge and discharge rates. Observe the good laboratory performance if the battery is charged and discharged at 1C. (A 0.5C charge and discharge would further improve this rating.)

Longevity of lithium-ion as a function of charge and discharge rates. A moderate charge and discharge puts less stress on the battery, resulting in a longer cycle life.

Battery experts agree that the life of lithium-ion depends on other factors than charge and discharge rates. Even though incremental improvements can be achieved with careful use of the battery, our environment and the services required are not always conducive to achieve optimal battery life. The longevity of a battery is often a direct result of the environmental stresses applied.

Simple Guidelines

• Avoid frequent full discharges because this puts additional strain on the battery. Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not cause harm because there is no memory. (In this respect, lithium-ion differs from nickel-based batteries.) Short battery life in a laptop is mainly cause by heat rather than charge / discharge patterns.
• Batteries with fuel gauge (laptops) should be calibrated by applying a deliberate full discharge once every 30 charges. Running the pack down in the equipment does this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate and in some cases cut off the device prematurely.
• Keep the lithium-ion battery cool. Avoid a hot car. For prolonged storage, keep the battery at a 40% charge level.
• Consider removing the battery from a laptop when running on fixed power. (Some laptop manufacturers are concerned about dust and moisture accumulating inside the battery casing.)
• Avoid purchasing spare lithium-ion batteries for later use. Observe manufacturing dates. Do not buy old stock, even if sold at clearance prices.
• If you have a spare lithium-ion battery, use one to the fullest and keep the other cool by placing it in the refrigerator. Do not freeze the battery. For best results, store the battery at 40% state-of-charge.

Like the solar-powered charger, this pedal-powered charger is based off the previously mentioned MintyBoost charger (which is simply powered by AA batteries). As opposed to the MintyBoost, which is built to be as easy to assemble as possible, the geek quotient that lies within this Instructable is high. That said, if you’ve got the chops, time, and cash to pull it off (the motor they used cost a whopping $275), it’s a really fun idea.

How to Charge Any USB Device by Riding Your Bike [Instructables]