Power trends will pay off soon

The macro developments that will help drive the battery and LED markets are under way.

Improvements at the microlevel of power management have been slow but steady over the past few years, but the real action is at the macro, big-picture level, where a number of long-term trends are starting to make their mark.

Although many have been percolating, they will result in big changes in power management in the near future. Here are two of the most important trends.

New battery chemistries move close to commercial introduction

The incursion of battery power into areas dominated previously by corded devices-or internal combustion engines-has been a consistent trend in power management in the past decade.

Li-ion types, first introduced in the early 90s, still rule, but they require precise control of charging and temperature to avoid fires caused by thermal runaway.

Meanwhile, progress has been slow in developing commercially viable batteries using other chemistries such as lithium-sulphur, zinc-air and sodium-oxygen. Issues include availability and cost of the raw materials, stability or safety of the chemical combination, manufacturability, reversibility of the electrochemical reaction, dendrite formation and operating temperature range.

We are finally starting to see new battery technologies, with corresponding implications for battery management design. Oxis Energy hopes to introduce later this year a lithium-sulphur model, which has more than twice the energy density of Li-ion counterparts used in the Nissan Leaf. MIT spinoff Ambri has liquid metal batteries, which will be connected to the grid for the first time in 2015. The initial commercial project scheduled for 2016 is at a military base in Hawaii.

The slow decline of the incandescent bulb

It is a done deal. Traditional incandescent bulbs are driven into extinction by newer and more-energy efficient competitors and a helping hand from the regulators.

Replacements include CFCs, halogen incandescents and LEDs. The last, however, requires an offline switched-mode power supply with a power factor correction front-end to satisfy Energy Star requirements and operate in standard light sockets.

The real issue is not so much the circuit itself, but bringing down the cost, handling RFI and getting components that match the 10-year life span of the diodes themselves. Outside of residential and commercial lighting, high-brightness LEDs are now being adopted for automotive headlamps a decade after they first appeared in vehicle interiors.

To read the rest ofthe article and see the other three power trends, please go to EETimes.