Sharp, partnering with battery specialist Eliiy Power, will soon start selling the world’s first storage battery for household electricity systems.

These new batteries will allow houses with solar panels to store the power generated by the sun overnight (a full day and a half if necessary), allowing them to operate independently of a power grid.

The companies involved hope that reducing the reliance on traditionally-generated power will help reduce Japan’s greenhouse emissions. Hopefully these batteries will make it to the States so we can do the same.

The price is expected to be around ¥500,000 (about $4,650) when the battery is released next year.

This new battery is expensive, but would pay for itself over time seeing as solar power is free after all of the equipment is installed. Besides, you’ll get that warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you’re polluting less.

Cell phones might soon have the ability to predict when they’ll be plugged in and could even intelligently estimate how many calls a user is likely to make over a period of time, based on findings in a paper[pdf] by researchers at Intel and Rutgers University. They would then use that information to provide better battery life.

The devised system, dubbed CABMAN (for context-aware battery management architecture
for mobile devices*), would be based on three main principles:

- The availability of crucial applications should not be compromised by non-important ones
- Opportunities for charging should be predicted to allow devices to determine how much energy they can expect to have, instead of simply going by the battery level
- Context, such as location information, can be used to predict charging opportunities

CABMAN would predict where it can be charged by learning which towers are nearby when it’s plugged in. Then, by tracking location and processing call logs, the system knows when to alert a user to plug the cell phone in or to stop using battery intensive applications (or not do anything at all if it thinks the phone will be plugged in soon). This, for example, could know when to turn off a phone’s music player on an airplane if the phone won’t be able to make any calls soon.

A prototype was tested using data from another project. The software was on average 12 minutes away from predicting charging opportunities - a great result. The future call time prediction didn’t work as well, so more time is needed to perfect that aspect.

This research is showing us a very interesting future for cell phones, indeed. With this kind of “smarts” our future phones will be all but bulletproof, predicting our behavior perfectly and adapting themselves to suit our needs. Hopefully the wait will not be too long.

* Yes, we know that “mobile devices” doesn’t start with an “N” and have no idea who was responsible for naming this project and why this slipped through.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of California at Berkeley have recently discovered a new way of making silicon into a better thermal conductor for turning even small amounts of heat into electricity. Unfortunately, they don’t quite know why it works. No matter, though, as the finding could one day free up power outlets all over our homes by getting rid of the need for chargers.

The scientists found a way to arrange and bend silicon nanowires in a particular fashion that lets them channel heat energy far more efficiently than current thermoconductors. They believe that the new method might be efficient enough to be able to charge the batteries in small technology.

Imagine a cell phone or iPod which will always work, simply because it’s stored in your pocket. This might even be an end to battery meters.

Coming from Australia’s CSIRO, “The UltraBattery is a hybrid energy storage device that integrates a supercapacitor with a lead acid battery in one unit cell.” Translation: a battery which is cheaper, lasts longer, and provides more power. The battery is aimed at use in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).

So exactly how much better is this thing, you ask? Here are the tech specs:
4x longer cycle life
50 percent more power than lead acid counterparts
about 70 percent less expensive than current HEV battery systems
faster charge and discharge rates

The battery has performed well in recent testing in an HEV which surpassed 100,000 miles. Hopefully these are released commercially soon. The world could use some more plug-in hybrids, and these batteries are sure to make plug-ins sell.