The Great Battery Challenge

How often do you think about batteries? If a battery is designed well, that means it is effectively doing the job, which gives us one less thing to worry about. Batteries are silent operators in the many things we use daily, and yet we don’t realize how beneficial the power they provide, truly is. For instance, when we take that leisure holiday in a canal boat or campervan, we don’t exactly think about how batteries power the critical devices or comforts we have within those types of vehicles. When you take that long-haul coach to Edinburgh, you don’t sit to think about the USB socket being battery-powered. They have always been silent operators, allowing us to use our connected devices on the go. However, there are challenges with this.

What is the great battery challenge?

As a society, we have become accustomed to using more and more energy. The alternating nature of solar and wind power production requires vast storage capacity. This can be generated through various arrangements, from pumped hydro to flywheels, even compressed air, but no technology is as impeccable and reliable as batteries.

In times bygone, the campervan we once traveled in comprised of a few lights and maybe a small radio. Fast-forward to today, we have advanced the campervan, adding a small TV, perhaps some air conditioning; can’t forget the mobile coffee maker and the trusty hairdryer. These reliant devices are a comfort that we have become used to, however, there is nothing wrong with having these creature comforts. It’s just a sheer consequence of development as we form more directable access to such novelties.  

Still, the batteries of yesteryear do not meet today’s needs. This is why lead-acid batteries are progressively being replaced by super capacitor battery technology like Green Tech’s product line.

Let’s tap into why super capacitor battery technology is better. It’s lighter, holds far more energy and lasts much longer than lead-acid. For context, we could only use a lead-acid battery of similar spec to power a small radio and a mere few lights in our campervan. But with super capacitor battery technology, we can also power a microwave, a hairdryer and a coffeemaker. The long-haul coach where we could slow-charge our mobile phone via USB is now enabling us to run our laptop and charge it via the USB sockets on the go. This accessibility and convenience are far more beneficial for the end-user and are entirely due to better batteries.

How can we be on our way to living on a cleaner planet and overcome this sustainable roadblock?

At Green Tech, we’ve approached the battery design not from a linear economy (traditional commercialization) point of view, but from a circular economy angle – there’s a lot of recoverable energy stored inside used super capacitor battery, and through research and engineering, we have found a way to extract as much value out of them as we can. We are developing methodologies for testing, failure prediction and performance optimization that complement our compression assembly technology, thus making sure no precious resources are wasted and the batteries can be maintained and upgraded.

Take our new Essential battery for one, it is anything but ordinary. Our design engineers have studied and tested a variety of methods with thorough precision to create an advanced solution that is easy to take apart, service or upgrade and put back together as a fully renewed product with an extended life. With the future in mind, we aspire to engineer our lithium-ion batteries with a significant increase in battery life, optimum material uses and reduction of waste; thus, allowing you to positively impact our environment, economy, and society. 

We are on the journey to accelerate access to cleaner energy storage around the globe. Our technology allows you to have all those creature-comforts without the consequence of contributing to the waste problem, which makes our batteries by definition ‘a better battery’ for this conventional world. Our conveniences don’t need to come at the cost of the environment, so powering the microwave, hairdryer and coffeemaker won’t be as harmful as it once was.