Technical Editor Margery Conner's PowerSource streams the latest developments in electronic power design and related technologies. Follow Margery on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/margeryc.
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Blog
Thursday, December 11, 2008
HP taps Boston Power’s long-life li-ion battery for laptops
Dec 11 2008 10:01AM | Permalink |Comments (6) |
Boston-Power announced yesterday that HP will offer Boston-Power’s long-life rapid-charge lithium ion battery Sonata as an upgrade option to HP customers. The battery, which has a 3-year warranty, supports at least 1000 charge-discharge cycles before experiencing any degradation in its charge capacity. Compare this to the normal battery’s charge-discharge number of about 200 cycles. Boston-Power CEO Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud described the degradation over time of a conventional laptop battery: “The common user experience is that you typically are delighted with battery performance out-of-the-box, then two months later you see half the run time, and three to four months later half of that.”
What if you’re not in the market for a new laptop right now but your battery pack has passed its 200-cycle point and you are now less-than-delighted with it? If you currently have an HP laptop, the chances are good you can still upgrade to a Sonata: Lampe-Onnerud estimates that the Sonata is compatible with 80-90% of existing HP laptops.
HP is emphasizing the longer life of the environmentally-friendly pack by branding it as their Enviro pack. The packs will sell for a $20-30 premium over a conventional battery pack.
Related entries in: Power Sources/Controllers | Power supplies | Power Supplies |
Reader Comments
at 12/11/2008 8:58:26 PM, Peter G. said:
I think Boston Power's CEO is greatly overstating the rate of degredation of conventional laptop batteries.
For example, Apple says that its laptop batteries (which come from the same suppliers that other OEMs use) are rated to retain 80% of the rated capacity after 300 full cycles.
www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
Lampe-Onnerud's description, by comparison, suggests the 80% point is somewhere around 24 cycles.
To me, this means Lampe-Onnerud is simply lying in order to make her batteries seem better.
Also, your statement that Boston-Power's batteries "supports at least 1000 charge-discharge cycles before experiencing any degradation in its charge capacity" is contradicted by the datasheet linked under "technical specifications" on the Boston-Power website, which states that there is a 20% degredation after ">800" cycles.
www.boston-power.com/assets/documents/2008-08-19_Sonata_Datasheet.pdf
Further, the datasheet figures say that the energy density of the Boston-Power batteries is 177 WH/kg (4.4AH * 3.7V / 92g), which is lower than some competing batteries, which come in at 200 WH/kg or more.
It would be interesting to compare the rated capacity of otherwise equivalent HP laptop batteries (in size or weight) between conventional and Boston-Power cells.
Perhaps you could post a followup at some point dealing with these issues?
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at 12/12/2008 1:43:14 PM, WPU said:
This is what I complain, medias including this one copy only public relation papers from theit appetizing customers without checking the content, which should be their responsibility in front of their readers to be serious.
at 12/12/2008 10:28:57 PM, lens said:
I think they have said that their energy density IS less than the more aggressive Li+ cells. The implication is that they make up for it by getting more volume with the prismatic shape. Of course that means for equivalent power, PB's batteries will likely weigh more than competition. The other implication is that a less aggressive chemistry will also supply more charge cycles. This is believable, but of course not yet proven in the market. I think there is something real here, but it is (and even BP admits this) incremental at best. It may not be Nobel Prize material, but it may make them some money. Only the press needs a "breakthrough". The market can still reward you without one.
at 12/13/2008 12:17:21 AM, Markus Unread said:
"80% of the rated capacity after 300 full cycles" with Apple's batteries - I really doubt that. I should say that I have never seen anything close to that. Lion's don't like full-charge high-temp environments and that describes most of my customers' Apple laptops.
I'll bet that, if the OEM's had more than a 90 day warranty on the batteries, they would have a lot better aging statistics. At 90 days, poor lifespan becomes a profit center.
at 12/13/2008 2:18:57 PM, Paul Radley said:
All my Thinkpad batteries have degraded to 50% of initial lifetime within the first six months. If Apple's don't do that, I'd bet they are made of unobtanium. I wish the PC reviewers would run some extended battery life tests--running 50, or even 100, 12-hour charge-discharge cycles taks a while, but not a prohibitive time.
at 12/14/2008 1:12:40 PM, kdb_geneva said:
My recent laptop battery - type LiFePO4 - had degraded in capacity by 50% in approx. 12 months --> equivalent to approx. 400 cycles. It seems the lifetime data of that industry are based on accelerated tests with low DOD (depth of discharge). A calculation shows: at a 10 hr (7+5hr) charge/discharge cycle just provides 730 cycles per year. Hence 3000 cycles take easily over 4 years real time. Four years ago the new technologies (LiFePO4) of Li-ion did not yet exist. Therefore a lot of speculative data or accelerated tests at low DOD with little real value are provided.
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