Portable Power Conference and Expo
September 21-23, 2003
San Francisco, CA

Dennis Sieminski, P.E.
Portable Energy Consulting
Fullerton, CA

The Portable Power Conference and Expo was produced by IDG (www.idgworldexpo.com) and TIAX (www.tiax.biz) to bring together people who collectively determine power solutions used in portable products, including battery manufacturers, fuel cell developers, power conversion devices, power management semiconductors, and the portable device OEM’s power specialists. The conference consisted of presentations, panel discussions, and a vendor exhibition area. In addition, lunches and evening cocktail receptions provided an opportunity to see the exhibits, meet colleagues, talk to presenters, and make new contacts. The conference was host to about 300 attendees and 25 exhibitors.

Several pre-conference tutorials covered a range of topics: Advanced Power Source Technology Update, Smart Batteries, Advanced Capacitors, and Ergonomic Product Design for PDAs and Wireless Handsets.

The main conference featured a presentation on wireless data’s ability to drive growth in handsets by Donna Dubinsky, founder and CEO of Handspring Corp. Acer President J. T. Wang, spoke on separating the OEM and branded business in portable computers, and Panasonic’s CTO, Dr. Paul Liao, spoke on design trends in consumer electronic products and their influence on power. Intel’s Kamal Shah shared details of programs he is working on, including his chairing of the Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group (www.eblwg.com). Topics covered during the balance of the conference can be grouped into several headings: status of the rechargeable battery business, highlights of battery R&D, new developments in small fuel cells, power management trends, and portable product development news with emphasis on portable computers, cell phones and PDAs.

Status of the Rechargeable Battery Business

As Hideo Takeshita, vice president of the Institute of Information Technology, presented extensive data on the rechargeable battery business, including sales by chemistry, size, manufacturer, application, and price, a couple of key points emerged – Li-ion has become the battery of choice in portable computers and cellphones, displacing NiMH. This trend is apparently continuing in digital audio, video and PDAs. The power tool market is the one exception. NiCd still very much dominates there.

With regard to company leadership, Sanyo has the top market share followed closely by Sony. These two leaders are separated by a sizeable gap from followers MBI, SDI, BYD, and LG Chemical. The average cell price is $3.50, but there is still concern on pricing being soft with Chinese companies still dropping prices as they try to get traction in the marketplace. From the OEM standpoint, the major battery users are Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Dell and H-P. The major applications are notebooks and phones. Digital video, audio and PDAs represent the next largest device grouping. The battery industry sees the best opportunity for major growth coming from an entirely different sector than portable products – transportation. Motor-assisted bicycles, electric scooters and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) may offer the rechargeable battery industry a whole new sector to develop. Toyota is developing Li-ion batteries internally, and Sanyo is heavily involved with NiMH for HEVs.

In factoring the direction of the battery business, several salient forces must be considered. Japan-based companies dominate the rechargeable industry, U.S.-based companies dominate the primary business, Li-ion technology will be viable for a very long time to come because no real alternatives are on the horizon, many large consumer electronic companies are vertically integrated in battery technology, Chinese manufacturing seems to offer the least cost globally for mature battery products, and a solution to long runtime for portable devices still remains elusive.

Cell and Battery R&D

Li-ion energy density has shown a two-time improvement in the past decade, enabling some dramatic developments in portable products. However, we are at the end of that cycle, and chances for significant improvements in energy density are not being contemplated. Instead, incremental improvement, with 450Wh/liter, is a future target. Besides energy density, research efforts are focusing on cost, improved safety, and attributes needed for new applications, such as HEVs (e.g., high charge rate acceptance).

Energy density improvements rely on being able to implement new materials like LiFePO4 and LiNiMnCoO2 for cathodes, and Sn-coated carbon and Si-based materials for anodes. The use of modeling is growing as a tool to accelerate product development, e.g., thermal analysis and microkinetics.

Product reports by a number of Li-ion manufacturers show that Li-polymer performance is the same as Li-ion and, in fact, may have better capacity retention at high temperatures and much less thickness change as a function of cycling, state of charge or number of cycles. Thermal problems in portable computers are a major challenge for battery life because cells in battery packs suffer permanent degradation when exposed to high temperatures.