Renewable energy continues its technological march. New developments in solar panels grab headlines almost daily, and energy conversion rates increase regularly – but there is a limit to what we can do with solar panels until battery technology improves as well.
Sadly, batteries have remained relatively unchanged for decades, but that’s all about to change.
The Battery Bottleneck
Consider the size of your phone. It doesn’t matter if you have the latest and greatest smartphone, an old flip phone or something in between. The battery remains the largest component within, thus dictating the overall size, weight and thickness of any mobile device.
An iPhone might just be the most advanced mobile technology – all crammed into a millimeters-thick brick. But if you were to crack it open, you’d see a minuscule circuit board next to a comparatively massive battery.
And it’s gotta be that big because we need all that juice to run those trillions upon trillions of calculations every day. Who knew swiping through Tinder or flicking down your for-you page on TikTok required so much energy?
But, what if a battery’s energy capacity wasn’t so directly tied to the battery’s size?
What if the battery became the smallest component in your phone? And what if there was an energy-dense battery capable of running your entire house at night?
We may be seeing that mystical-sounding battery sooner than you might think…