The Palmer Tech Powercell: Felicity Smoak Solved Batteries
Felicity Smoak, my favorite primetime hacker/superhero/tech company CEO and her sidekick Curtis Holt put me out of business last night, as well as anyone who has anything to do with energy storage in 2016.
Though few details were given, the implication was that this small cell, roughly 10cm by 5cm by 1cm, can
- “Charge an electric car for thousands of miles”
- “Power [an] entire building”
Running the numbers, assuming that 85 kWhr gets you ~300 miles:
Volume = 10cm * 5cm * 1cm => 50 cm^3
Capacity = 85 kWhr/300 miles * 1000 miles => 283.333 kWhr
Energy Density = Capacity/Volume => 5.667 kWhr/cm^3
Really quite impressive. How does this stack up to today’s best batteries (not just cells?) For purposes of visualization, let’s use the 10-kWhr Tesla Powerwall; one 50 cc power cell appears to be equivalent to 28 10-kWhr Powerwall modules. A scale comparison brings the extent of the innovation home:
Details on chemistry (and the requisite nuclear reactions), pricing and availability were not available at time of publication.
More details here.
