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Pentagon contest sparks ideas for better
batteries
By DINESH RAMDE, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
(09-24) 16:35 PDT Madison, Wis. (AP) --
The final phase of a high-stakes military contest began this
week in the California desert as teams tested battery systems
designed to be powerful enough to sustain soldiers' energy needs
but light enough for them to wear on their vests.
The million-dollar contest aims to relieve troops who use battery-powered
equipment such as night-vision devices and GPS units. The current
batteries come with a "heavy" price — they add
as much as 20 pounds to soldiers' loads.
The Defense Department hopes to provide lighter batteries that
pack a stronger punch, allowing soldiers to carry more equipment.
To encourage the development of such power systems the military
launched the Wearable Power Prize competition, which culminates
with testing and judging within the next two weeks.
The requirements are stiff. The battery system must generate
an average of 20 watts of power for 92 straight hours, weigh
less than 9 pounds and attach to a soldier's vest.
Troops on average carry enough batteries to produce 150 watts
per hour, said John Hopkins, the program manager for the competition.
That amount of power can run a standard laptop for 10 hours.
The power system that wins the contest should produce three
times that amount — about 480 watts per hour — a
mark Hopkins calls aggressive but attainable.
"The bar is high — that was always the intent from
the beginning of the competition," he said. "But clearly
we believe it's doable."
Almost 170 teams entered the competition announced in November.
That number was whittled down to the 48 teams who began competing
in Twentynine Palms, Calif., on Monday. The three winners will
be announced Oct. 4, with first prize worth $1 million, second
prize $500,000 and third place $250,000.
The entrants range from large corporations and universities
to individuals who ran late-night experiments in their garages
after putting the kids to bed.
Rayovac-Remington, the Madison-based division of Spectrum Brands
Inc., has a team of 10 engineers who have worked on the project
since January.
Team leader Greg Davidson wouldn't reveal many details about
their entry but said it built upon the company's lithium-ion
research, which has led to batteries for products like high-definition
TVs and network printers.
"We're confident we've met all of the requirements,"
he said. "But anything can happen on contest day, so yeah,
we're a little nervous."
The contest does not allow the use of hand-cranked power systems.
Hopkins said a person can produce about 30 watts of power with
two hours of manual cranking but the effort is exhausting.
"The goal here is to give power to soldiers, not extract
it from them," he said.
UltraCell Corp., an entrant based in Livermore, Calif., has
made smaller power systems for the military. The firm makes
fuel cells, which combine hydrogen gas with oxygen to produce
electricity. Whereas a battery eventually runs out of juice,
a fuel cell can run as long as fuel is available.
Ian Kaye, UltraCell's director of advanced technology, said
it was challenging to meet the contest's dual requirement of
tripling the power and halving the weight.
"With the specifications we're given here, it's really
pushing the limits for everybody in the power business,"
he said. "It's realistic but very aggressive."
He declined to preview UltraCell's entry except to say it relies
upon the company's fuel-cell expertise.
Hopkins, the contest spokesman, said the winners will gain access
to top military officials who have purchasing authority. Pentagon
officials also will keep an eye out for promising technologies
that get disqualified on technicalities, for example if an entry
fails to run for 92 straight hours because a wire becomes disconnected
after 91 hours.
That's the fear of Mahlon Wilson, a former fuel-cell engineer
with the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. After
he was downsized in January, he used his severance package to
finance the 60-hour weeks he invested in a one-man run at the
top prize.
Wilson devised a fuel-cell process that runs on methanol. That
provides hydrogen as a fuel source and carbon monoxide as a
heat source to power the process. But the prototype he's entering
is the original one he built and tested, leaving him worried
that something might wear out during the competition.
"There's a lot more things that can go wrong than can go
right," said Wilson, who named his company Aviani after
his wife's maiden name. He's still buoyed, however, by the idea
that his single-person operation granted him the freedom and
creativity that his deeper-pocketed competitors may have lacked.
Beyond the military applications of the entries, Hopkins said
the newer technologies could eventually trickle into the public
sector. Perhaps the know-how generated in the desert could lead
to longer-lasting laptop batteries, he speculated, or to products
for outdoors enthusiasts or emergency professionals.
On the Net:
Department of Defense Wearable Power Prize contest: www.dod.mil/ddre/prize/index.html
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/09/24/financial/f163512D64.DTL
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