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.

Canadian company Angstrom Power had a hydrogen-powered Motoslvr ready for CES 2008. The battery can last twice as long as the phone’s original while only having a 10 minute charge time. The new advance? This fuel cell has finally been shrunk to the size of a normal battery, fitting comfortably inside the cell phone.

Angstrom Power hopes to have its fuel cells commercially available by 2010, looking to gain a share in a market with hundreds of millions of devices.

Researchers have overcome a barrier with using silicon in batteries and believe they can make batteries that would power a laptop for up to 40 hours. This new technology could also be used in iPods and other music players, video cameras, and cell phones. Right now they are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of the technology, and expect the battery to be commercialized and available within “several years.”

Think you’re spending too much money on electricity? Want to find out which devices waste the most precious electrons? Enter Saverclip, a device that reads electric usage on any power cable it’s clipped onto.

The gadget can be attached to one or more power cords and displays the amount of power each device is using on an easy to read LCD display. It works by measuring the electromagnetic fields emitted by the devices it’s clipped on to, which is also how the Saverclip powers itself.

The only downside? This is just a concept. However, if the design ever comes to fruition, I’d be willing to plop down some cash just to have this for the cool factor. More pictures at the link above.