meeting report
Portable Power Conference and Expo
San Francisco, CA USA
September 12-14, 2004
- Portable Energy Consulting
- Dennis.Sieminski@adelphia.net
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 Li-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: Li-ion update, fuel cell technology, smart battery technology, user interfaces, and AC/DC power budgets.
The Li-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, LiMPO4 type, Ni-based oxides and Mn spinel; transition from LiCoO2 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 &emdash; 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 20W direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) for the army; Toshiba’s 0.1W DMFC for cellphones, 1W 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, Kamal 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).
It may surprise you that Microsoft is the major player in the field of speech recognition. They have assembled a staff of the top people in the field and backed them with over $1 billion. Hussein Kanji of Microsoft provided insight into the drivers behind Microsoft’s investment. For starters, one consideration is that in many environments, hands and eyes are busy, and conventional input/output devices are awkward and power consuming. All phone transactions and many in-car activities cover two huge user universes. Less obvious but perhaps more far reaching is the fact that some major languages (think Chinese) lend themselves to speech input as opposed to manipulation of visual characters. Using Percent Machine Error Rate as a metric of progress, there is an encouraging trend line that goes from 25% to 5% during Microsoft’s development history begun in 1993. In 2007, speech is expected to play a key part in Windows. You might want to try out for yourself where the technology is today. If you have Windows XP, go to Control Panel, click the Speech icon and explore the Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech tabs.
Main Conference Topics
I have organized the information from the various keynotes, feature presentations, talks, and exhibitions into several main topics: status of the rechargeable battery business, battery R&D, small fuel cell and alternate power development, power management trends, and portable product development news. Following is my summary on these topics.
Status of the Rechargeable Battery Business
Hideo Takeshita, vice president of the Institute of Information Technology Japan, has established himself as an institution and utility for those who need to closely monitor the immediate pulse of the rechargeable battery business. He slices and dices his extensive data into myriad looks at the business. Sales by chemistry, size, manufacturer, and application are examined from all angles. Here are some key points to take away this year. The 8% increase in cobalt prices are making manufacturers take action to maintain margins, e.g., switching from LiCoO to lower cost alternatives. Sales for 2004 were good, continuing the 11% growth rate of the last four years. However, the projection for 2005 brings that trend to an end. Why? Fundamentals underlying the drop seem to be that high penetration rates have already been achieved in major portable product markets and improved battery performance and quality has reduced battery replacement frequency. With regard to company leadership, Sanyo maintains its top market share followed by Sony and then a cluster of followers &emdash; MBI, SDI, BYD, and LG Chemical. The average cell price is at ~$2.66 leveling from the steeply declining curve of the past. There is still overcapacity in this market. The migration of production to China is still continuing and the contest remains among Japan, Korea, and China. The major OEM battery users are Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Dell, and HP. The major applications are notebooks and phones. Digital video, audio, and PDAs represent the next largest device grouping. The best opportunity for major growth for the battery industry may be coming from an entirely different sector than portable products &emdash; 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 one auto company that is developing Li-ion batteries internally. Sanyo is heavily involved with NiMH for HEVs.
In factoring the long-term direction of the portable battery business, I think three salient forces need to be considered as main drivers: Japanese companies dominate the industry with several large consumer electronic companies vertically integrated in battery technology, a major boost in energy density for portable devices does not appear anywhere on the horizon so Li-ion technology looks like a safe manufacturing bet for a VERY long time to come, and Chinese manufacturing seems to offer the least cost globally for mature battery products.
Battery R&D
Li-ion energy density has shown a 2x improvement in the past decade. This has enabled dramatic developments in portable products. However, we are at the end of that cycle. More modest gains may be possible longer term with new materials such as LiFePO4 and LiNiMnCoO2 for cathodes, Sn-coated carbon and Si-based materials for anodes, or with alternate systems like Li-S as developed by Sion Power. Besides energy density, however, research efforts that can have a big influence on the market are lower cost materials, improved safety, and attributes needed for new applications, such as HEVs, e.g., high charge rate acceptance.
An interesting presentation was given by Dr. Steven Visco, V.P. of research, Polyplus Battery on the possibilities for Li/Air and Li/Water cells. Practical cells with 1500 Wh/kg and 3000 Wh/l may be thinkable using high conductivity polymer glass membranes to protect the Li, allowing ions to pass while isolating the Li surface from the runaway reactions typical with these cathode materials. Visco showed engaging videos of lab demonstrations of such cells yielding discharge rates around 1mW/cm2.
Developments in Small Fuel Cells
The narrow prospects for energy density improvement in batteries and the seemingly insatiable power demand in portable products continue to drive interest in small fuel cells. MTI Microfuel Cells, Motorola Labs, Neah Power Systems, Sony, and Toshiba contributed to the conference.
Alan Soucy, COO of MTI MicroFuel Cells, limited his presentation to general statements for their passive, neat DMFC battery hybrid and a partnership with Gillette/Duracell for developing fuel cartridges for consumers.
Neah Power Systems’ CTO, Leroy Ohlsen (www.neahpower.com), outlined the differentiating technical elements of Neah’s small fuel cell technology program and their marketing plan. A three-dimensional 350 micron thick porous silicon (Si) electrode, flowing electrolyte, form the basis of the system and there are open and closed system versions. The closed system uses an on-board oxidant (hydrogen peroxide) and captures the water for disposal. An open system uses regenerated nitric acid from oxygen. The 3-D porous Si is expected to provide more active catalyst sites than typical carbon-based membranes allowing them to get to their goal of 200 mW/cm2 versus 20-50mW/cm2. Flowing electrolyte through it eliminates methanol crossover. Carrying the oxidant onboard is definitely a distinguishing approach. While it gives up the weight savings of using oxygen from the air, the resulting closed system eliminates the very troublesome water management problem and confers the battery-like advantage of being able to operate in all kinds of environments without concern about contaminants whether airborne or liquid. With this approach, Neah believes they can still get a two-to-three-time improvement over standard Li-ion battery runtime. On the marketing side, Neah sees the military and select commercial applications as the early adopters. The consumer market follows much later as the technology matures, prices come down, and user behavior patterns are better understood.
&emdash; Jerry Hallmark, Motorola Labs’ manager of energy technologies, provided an update on their MeOH steam reformer (Gen3) FC approach. The reformer is 5x5x0.5cm and will give their 2.5kg active system (including fuel) a projected gravimetric energy density of 700-1000Whr/kg based on delivering 25W. They have built pilot working models in an effort to get a practical handle on the advantages and problems associated with reformed fuel and direct fuel approaches. The balance of plant consists of air blowers and fuel pump.
Fumio Ueno of Display Devices & Component Control Center, gave an overview of Toshiba’s active and passive DMFC programs. Active fuel cells are contemplated for low power wearable devices, e.g., MP3, wireless headsets. Toshiba has a 100mW prototype, 22x56x4.5mm, 8.5g (there is a 9.1mm thick version) which carries 2 ml (1.6g) of MeOH. This is sufficient to power an MP3 player for 20 hours. They have an active DMFC 13W, 270x70x55mm, 1200g with a 100ml fuel cartridge which provides 10 hours of operation of a notebook computer.
Yoshio Nishi, president of Sony’s Materials Lab, led the team that commercialized Li-ion in 1991. He summarized the overall position of fuel cells versus batteries. A key starting point in the comparison is that fuel cells typically have poor power density. This is due to the diffusion characteristics of oxygen in the cathode and the high overpotential (a catalyst better than Pt will be needed). Also, low proton conductivity in polymer membrane electrolytes is crippling. So, a hybrid is the most likely technical outcome. The market question is whether the cost of such hybrids, like an FC charger, is acceptable, particularly if the design criteria in areas like safety testing will be equivalent to that imposed on cells.
Power Management
What makes power man- agement difficult is that most piecemeal solutions have been applied and now a top down holistic design approach that incorporates power manage- ment in the architecture of the device is necessary. In this type of approach, there is opportunity to effect significant improve- ment but with that is significant difficulty in executing the full array of options. These include items such as: processors designed specifically for optimal energy usage, dynamic voltage and frequency management, reducing the number of voltages in the system to a minimum, integrated synchronous buck regulators, lowest voltage devices available, shutting down circuits not being used, smart batteries with accurate fuel gauging and low power displays. A breakdown of energy usage in portable computers has 33% going to the display (with 75% of that backlighting), 10% CPU and 10% power supply. The PC Extended Battery Life Working Group started in October 2002 (www.eblwg.org) and has four focus areas: user model research, suppliers recommendations, alternative power and power management.
Portable Product Developments
Portable products represent visions on how life changes when you can connect and disconnect from the information pool when and where you want. For those of us who read Dick Tracy and have now experienced it, this is a place to look for the next icon of technology’s possibilities.
Portable computers represent 27% of the PC market. And the projection is for this to be 50% by 2008. Lower prices, acceptable performance, small footprint are making them an alternative to desktops and playing an increasing role in personal use and entertainment. Tablets are taking hold with a segment of users dubbed "corridor warriors." The device is very similar to notebook computers but has a screen which also functions as an input device. This construction brings unique thermal issues because it has half the volume and surface area of a notebook. Since tablets are designed to be carried, weight and weight distribution are important; battery placement is key. The target is to have three to six hours of battery life.
Handhelds - PDAs and Phones
Cellular subscribers passed the 1 billion mark in 2002 and are projected to be 2 billion by 2006. That means that one-quarter of the world’s population will have a phone, with North America and Western Europe accounting for 50% of the users. With many different models in the market today, we will be able to see the emergence of preferences for features and ergonomic form factors in this type of device. Colorful epitaphs of the customer base abound in the cellular marketing world &emdash; connected youth, technopreneurs, low mobility misers, and mobile safety netters are some examples. The titles do capture and convey a sense of the market complexity and the difficulty in providing differentiated features and services while maintaining a healthy business footing. The breakdown of market share by company reveals that 70% of the market is in the hands of five makers &emdash; Nokia 37%, Motorola 17%, Samsung 9.7%, Siemens 8.5%, Sony-Ericsson 5.2%.
Similarly, PDAs are growing. Sales increased 12% from last year. In portable gaming Sony Playstation and Microsoft PS X, see a doubling in five years. Providing the right content in the right format will be key to opening a number of new markets in handhelds. The success of Apple’s iPod is what product designers are looking for. The Table from Strategy Analytics above provides a chronological and evolutionary taxonomy to the portable device world. Also, check Gizmodo.com as a resource for keeping up to date on gadgets, gizmos, and cutting-edge consumer portable electronics.
