Altairnano • Argonne National Lab • Boston-Power • Cadex Electronics, Inc.
Coatema Coating Machinery GmbH • Cymbet Corp. • Dell, Inc. • Ecos • Edison Welding Institute
Electric Power Research Institute • Elithion • EnerG2 • Exide Technologies • Frost & Sullian
General Electric • Exponent • Hawaii Natural Energy Institute • HOMER Energy, LLC
International Battery, Inc. • Micro Power Electronics, Inc. • Microchip Technology Inc.  
Navigant Consulting Inc. • Nexergy • NETZSCH Fine Particle Technology
Netzsch Instruments North America LLC • Oak Ridge National Lab • Palladium Energy • Ricardo, Inc.
Saft Groupe SA • Sakti3 • Technical Materials, Inc. • Texas Instruments, Inc.
TÜV SÜD America, Inc. • Underwriters Laboratories

Tuesday, October 19th

8:00 Welcome and Introductions

8:05 Keynote Presentation
Battery Market Updates and Trends
Vishal Sapru, Industry Manager - Energy and Power Systems • Frost & Sullivan

9:00
How US Battery Manufacturers and Suppliers are Changing the Game: A Panel Discussion
US battery manufacturers and suppliers are not only shaping the battery industry and enabling emerging markets such as electric and hybrid vehicles, but they are also re-energizing the US economy with stimulus dollars as part of the Recovery Act. Hear from industry-leading companies on their new facility capabilities, R&D projects, goals and potential market/industry impacts.
Ann Marie Sastry, CEO • Sakti3
John Battaglini, VP of Business Development • International Battery
Chris Wheaton, Chief Operating & Financial Officer • EnerG2
Dr. Paul Cheeseman, Vice President, Global Engineering and Research • Exide Technologies

10:10
The Cost of Safety, Designing for Safety and the Changing Li-Ion Battery Pack Regulatory Requirements
The characteristics that make lithium battery packs so desirable to consumers also make them the target for regulation and safety testing. With risks like overheating, thermal runaway, hot gas venting and fire, adherence to safety regulations has to be a top priority. Battery safety starts with cell selection and cell supplier qualification, building safety into the design, then confirming with testing and agency certification. However, from IEEE to CTIA to UL and UNDOT, there is an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies and testing requirements to migrate through along with the complex decisions on the internal safeguards to use in the battery pack design. This presentation reviews the cost of safety; discusses the reasons for battery failure; presents ideas for building safety into the battery pack design, selecting cells and cell suppliers and testing for safety; and finally reviews the various country regulations, agency certification needs and testing requirements and any new and pending regulations.
Dr. Like Xie, Vice President of Technology • Palladium Energy
Dr. Kerry Lanza, Strategic Marketing Manager • Palladium Energy

Safer Li-Ion Battery Design and Development Using Thermal Analysis and Adiabatic Calorimetry
Thermal analysis and calorimetry play an important role in the development and understanding of safer, high performance Li-Ion batteries. There has been a considerable amount of work to develop new methods, instruments, and software to help battery researchers cope with the ever increasing demand for challenging battery applications. It can also be a challenge for the battery researcher to know what’s available, what the benefits are and what the limitations are. The emphasis of this presentation is to provide some guidance and advice so researchers can make more informed choices in getting the right solutions.
Peter Ralbovsky, Calorimetry Expert • Netzsch Instruments North America LLC

Ready for the Grid: How Battery Storage will Support Renewable Energy and the Smart Grid
The value of grid storage has been vastly increased in recent years by changes in the electric power enterprise.  If the cost of lithium ion batteries falls to levels below $500/kWh, it is likely that these batteries will have a bright future in stationary applications. There is still a great deal of work that must be done, however, before battery storage can be considered truly “grid ready.”  Learn the steps that the industry must take to make grid storage a mainstream technology and how the battery industry can take part in this process.
Haresh Kamath, Strategic Program Manager for Technology Innovation • Electric Power Research Institute

10:50
Overcoming Battery Pack Design Issues
With the advances in battery technology, there is a definite need for a system level approach to pack design in order to meet different form, fit and function topologies and connection schemes. To deliver the proper battery pack for a specific application, four key variables need to be considered: electro-chemistry, mechanical, environmental and electrical design. Addressing these variables results in a pack where individual cells work together effectively and safely to provide much higher performance for a particular application.
Stephen Christo, Director of Product Management • Boston-Power

Advancement of Ultrasonic Metal Weld Tooling for Battery Applications
Li-Ion batteries are finding increasing application due to their high voltage, high power density, and low weight compared to competing battery chemistries. Assembling Li-Ion batteries, however, presents new manufacturing challenges. One major difference, Li-Ion cell technology requires dissimilar tab materials. Assembling these batteries requires joining of the thin aluminum, copper or nickel tabs, often in multiple-layers and to thicker (and often dissimilar) interconnects. When compared with other potential welding processes, ultrasonic welding is able to consistently produce reliable joints. Additionally, the process produces minimal heat, requires no flux, can be used with coated materials, produces low-resistance joints, and is low cost. A collaborative study with EWI and the Ohio State University was conducted to study the effect of ultrasonic tool designs, weld parameters and the number of foil layers on the weld quality. This presentation will discuss the approach and results of this study.
Matthew C. Bloss, Project Engineer • Edison Welding Institute

Analyzing the Role of New Battery Technologies in Hybrid Power Systems with High Penetrations of Renewable Power
Batteries play a crucial role in hybrid power systems that utilize a high proportion of wind or photovoltaic power. HOMER Energy has helped design hundreds of hybrid power systems. These systems have varied in size, quality of the renewable resource, penetration of renewable power and load and customer characteristics. It has also been used to analyze a wide variety of battery types, including many flavors of lead-acid, nickel, lithium, zinc, vanadium and competing energy storage technologies, such as flywheels and pumped hydro. Some of these new battery technologies have characteristics that dramatically alter optimal design and operational strategies. This presentation offers an overview of the insights that can be derived from economic optimization of the design and operation of hybrid systems under a very diverse sets of real world conditions. Examples will be provided from HOMER’s 40,000 member user base in developed and developing countries.
Peter Lilienthal, Ph.D., President & CEO • HOMER Energy, LLC

11:30 - 2:00 Networking Lunch in the Exhibit Hall

2:00
Using Lithium Polymer Batteries in Commercial Devices
Commercial, medical and military equipment manufacturers are recognizing the benefits of Lithium polymer batteries, so these thin and custom shaped cells are now used in large, complex, multi-cell packs.  Lithium polymer batteries had been used almost exclusively in single-cell consumer applications like cell phones or MP3 players until recently. The advantages and limitations of lithium polymer cells relative to metal-cased cylindrical and prismatic lithium-ion cells will be explained. Topics covered include the range of dimensions, current delivery capabilities, cycle life, environmental constraints, packaging considerations and supplier assessments. Finally, we will discuss design considerations that device manufacturers must consider when designing a device that utilizes lithium polymer cells in complex commercial applications.
Dr. Robin Sarah Tichy, Technical Marketing Manager • Micro Power Electronics, Inc.

Busbar Joining of Dissimilar Anode and Cathode Metals: The Role of Intermetallic Compounds
High-power battery cells commonly have an aluminum cathode assembly combined with an anode utilizing a variety of steel, copper and nickel electroplating. Metallurgically joining an interconnect or busbar between a series of cells poses a challenge to the pack assembly engineers. Vibration, strength, and corrosion concerns for the pack are especially demanding in the automotive sector, and the metallurgy of joints must be fully understood. The complex weld nuggets and subsequent heat-affected zones created by laser, ultrasonic, and resistance welding are reviewed in this presentation. Clad and electroplated composite materials are evaluated as new alternatives for optimizing metallurgical combinations in weld zones. A comparison of strength and toughness for various weld combinations is presented.
Joseph Kaiser, Vice President, Product Development • Technical Materials, Inc.

Datacenter Trends Creates Sweetspot for Entry of New Materials
Non-traditional computing environments like containers, pods and cloud computing are changing the demands on power storage. Current options leave too few choices. And the new set of power storage requirements is no longer best filled by lead-acid batteries. This has left a gap, or sweet spot, for the entry of new energy storage materials in the datacenter to address the issues of available space, mobility and environmental conditions.  This session begins to define the sweet spot entry point for new battery materials in datacenters, ideal battery types, likely early adopters and long term strategies for new entrants to flourish in the IT industry.
William Muscato, Product Manager for Power Infrastructure Products • Dell, Inc.

2:40
Design Advantages and Comparisons of Large Format Li-Ion Batteries
Following its rapid rise to dominance in the consumer market driven by portable electronics, Li-Ion technology is now actively being designed and deployed in demanding applications ranging from electric and military vehicles to utility smart grids and energy storage for renewable integration. Because of its traditional use in consumer applications, the format for Li-Ion cells has been primarily focused on 18650 and 26650 cylindrical form factors. However, as the energy requirements and system complexities continue to increase, new large format prismatic cells are quickly being designed and deployed into many new applications. This presentation will highlight the relevant differences between traditional cylindrical cells and new large format prismatic cells. Relevant metrics and design criteria to be analyzed include power and energy density, system design and reliability, temperature performance and cost. Case studies in various applications will be presented highlighting the advantages of large format prismatic cells and guidelines for choosing the right cell for a given application.
John Battaglini, Vice President of Business Development • International Battery, Inc.  

Deciphering Cell Variations in Battery Manufacturing
The rechargeable battery market will see significant growth in the near future in sectors of portable devices and power electronics, renewable energy storage, powertrain systems for vehicles, and telecom backup power applications. More complex use of battery systems is also expected, where battery system management remains a challenging issue. Several barriers exist in the battery system management, even in dealing with small battery packs. A prominent one is cell imbalance in the pack before and after polarization. Several factors dictate a cell’s performance as reflected in the cell voltage and capacity, thus creating unique characteristics for a cell in a pack under polarization. Learn how to screen cells in a pack and how such screening can help manage pack behavior.
Matthieu Dubarry • Hawaii Natural Energy Institute
Bor Yann Liaw • Hawaii Natural Energy Institute

Sodium Metal Halide Batteries for Stationary Applications
This presentation will provide an overview of GE's new Sodium Metal Halide battery technology. Discover the key performance parameters for stationary applications such as UPS, telecommunications and utilities.
Ganesh Balasubramanian, Product Manager - Energy Storage • General Electric

3:20
Li-Ion Myth-Buster
Many widely held beliefs about Li-Ion batteries and their BMSs may be untrue, or at least not entirely accurate. In this session we will try to poke holes into some of those beliefs: that cell capacity depends on rate of discharge, and decreases with number of cycles; that fewer electrons come out of a cell than you put into it; that balancing protects a battery, allows use of the entire charge in a battery, and compensates for variations in cell resistance and capacity; that top balancing is counterproductive, and balanced batteries die more readily that batteries without a BMS; that Li-Ion cells will be damaged if allowed to go below a certain voltage; that there's no need for a BMS if using a CCCV charger and a motor controller with a low voltage cutoff.
Davide Andrea, Engineer • Elithion

Nanotechnology Manufacturing Techniques for More Efficient Lithium Ion Batteries
Nanoparticles can deliver the properties that battery manufacturers and OEMs are looking for in the next generation of secondary batteries: high energy density (capacity), high power density and high capacity at a lower total weight. In this session, we will lead attendees through the latest applications of nanotechnology for improved lithium-ion battery production and demonstrate real results from grinding trials of both anode and cathode materials. We will explore dry and wet grinding capabilities and discuss future techniques involving nanostructured materials in the production of batteries.
John Hill, Application Process Advisor • NETZSCH Fine Particle Technology
Steve Miranda, Director of Sales • NETZSCH-CONDUX

Lithium Battery Transportation Regulations
US and international transportation regulations for lithium ion and lithium metal batteries can be confusing and difficult to follow if they are not well understood. Non-compliant shipments can result in safety issues, fines, and be damaging to a company’s branding. Learn what it takes to ensure compliance with the current regulations and an overview of the proposed US regulations.
Mitch Matheny, Regulatory Affairs Manager • Nexergy, Inc.

3:55
High Temperature Li-Ion and Li-Thionlyl-Chloride Cells
Incorporating a power source into an application that operates at high temperature, presents a special design challenge for engineers.  When standard batteries are exposed to temperatures above 60°C for lithium-ion and 85°C for lithium thionyl-chloride, they suffer from performances issues as higher self discharge, capacity loss, internal resistance increase and from safety issues.  High-temperature batteries (up to 125°C for lithium-ion and to 150°C for lithium thionyl-chloride) are specially engineered for optimum performance at elevated temperatures. This session will explore developments in lithium-ion and lithium thionyl-chloride that allow for safe and reliable battery performance across a wide temperature range.
Olivier Girard, Technical Director • Saft Group SA

Upscaling New Battery Technologies from Lab to Fab
This presentation will describe the development of a Lab2Fab concept for Li-Ion batteries for a new generation of hybrid automotives. An overview on the different types of batteries and an explanation of their operating principles and different technologies will be provided. Then different coating technologies and coating parameters as well as different drying and curing solutions are explained in detail. The presentation will offer a complete overview on a battery fab designed for Li-Ion batteries for the newest generation for hybrid cars.
Thomas Kolbusch, Vice President • Coatema Coating Machinery GmbH

4:30
Changing Global Regulatory Requirements for Battery Powered Consumer Electronics
The scope of products that use lithium ion cells and batteries continues to expand dramatically on a global basis.  They offer significant advantages of higher power, greater capacity, and lower weight. The standard used for cells marketed in the USA is UL 1642, The Standard for Lithium Batteries.  The standard used for cells marketed in Europe, and many other countries, is IEC 62133:2002. However it is rare to find cells which have been evaluated to the IEC standard as the UL standard is more predominant. What are the latest trends in regulatory requirements for battery packs shipped internationally?  Learn what steps your company should take for regulatory changes. This presentation is being jointly developed by TÜV SÜD America, Inc. and Energy Assurance LLC.
H. Scott Griggs, General Manager Consumer Goods & Retail • TÜV SÜD America, Inc.

5:00 Cocktail Reception in the Exhibit Hall

Wednesday, October 20th

8:00 Keynote Panel
Battery Projects and Developments in Government Laboratories Panel
This panel discussion will feature the country’s leading government labs actively involved in battery research and development. Hear new projects that they are working on and new technologies that are expected to impact the market.
Jeff Chamberlain, Leader of Energy Storage Initiative • Argonne National Lab
Claus Daniel, Ph.D., Research Staff • Oak Ridge National Lab
Shriram Santhanagopalan, Senior Engineer • National Renewable Energy Laboratory

9:00 Featured Presentation
Designing Li-Ion Batteries into Your Application: The Critical Issues You Need to Know
The transition to lithium ion began long ago for smaller portable applications but now the transition to lithium ion batteries is occurring in other applications some of which were traditionally reliant on older battery technologies. This presentation will discuss some of the steps that are taken to implement the right Li-ion cell technology starting from the cell selection to regulatory testing and through to the battery management techniques required to best optimize the performance of the battery system for particular applications and markets.
Chris Turner, Director of Battery Technology • Nexergy

10:10
Battery Performance and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Other Electric Vehicle Adoption
Both initial battery costs and Federal tax credits on battery purchases for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles are important factors in the cost effectiveness of PHEV/EV relative to conventional vehicles, but battery performance also counts heavily. Discover how battery calendar life and deep discharge cycle life factors into customer PHEV/EV economics and expected adoption trajectory. Although Vehicle to Grid (V2G)/and Vehicle to Building (V2B) applications hold promise, we’ll describes some performance and other thresholds that need to be reached before V2G/V2B become cost effective.
Greg Ayres, Managing Consultant • Navigant Consulting, Inc.

A Simple Topology for Solar-Charged Battery Systems
Solar power chargers are convenient, in that they provide a completely wireless power system. Unfortunately, the stacked efficiency of the various switching converters typically results in a loss of 20 to 30 percent. The only option has been to use larger solar cells to compensate. Learn how when using a converter topology efficiency can be increased, while decreasing both cost and board space. The secret is a unified system that handles maximum power conversion for the solar cells, battery charging and load regulation. This presentation will discuss the topology in depth, including tradeoffs and the role of load regulation.
Keith Curtis, Technical Staff Engineer • Microchip Technology Inc.

New Advances in Li-Ion Battery Monitoring
Lithium technology is already a dominate technology for portable devices and is increasingly establishing itself in new applications such as hybrid vehicles. The Li-Ion battery is not one type but an agglomeration of a family of batteries with a rich variety of benefits for particular niches. However, as the chemistry has improved, it is becoming increasingly difficult to properly gauge and monitor this family of batteries. Discover two new unique approaches which may improve fuel gauging. One is based on a simple pulse method and the other measures changes in magnetic susceptibility.
Joern Tinnemeyer, Vice President - Research and Development • Cadex Electronics, Inc.

10:50
Commercial Applications of Lithium Titanate Batteries for Mass Transit
Advanced Li-Ion cells are a critical enabling technology for the market-readiness and commercialization of mass transit and heavy-duty hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) applications. Many commercially available battery technologies available to mass transit and heavy-duty HEV/PHEV transportation applications are based on Nickel Cadmium or Nickel Metal Hydride. These technologies often fail to meet the extended-life requirements for making commercial, mass transit and heavy-duty HEV/PHEV vehicles an economically viable solution. Additional barriers include loss in discharge power under extreme temperatures and general power fade over time. Discover innovations in Li-Ion cells (11 Ah and 50Ah configurations) that  replace graphite with a proprietary, high-surface area lithium-titanate oxide based anode material resulting in distinctive performance attributes including fast charge/discharge rates, high round-trip efficiencies, long cycle life, safety and ability to operate under extreme temperatures.
Terry Copeland, Ph.D., President and CEO • Altairnano

High Efficiency and High Safety LiFePO4 Battery Charger System for Industrial and Medical Applications
High efficiency, safe and fast battery charging systems are critical. Li-Ion batteries have been widely adopted and used in portable electronics applications due to its high gravimetric and volumetric energy densities. However, sensitivity to over-charging, its lower thermal run-away temperature, limited charge and discharge rates limit its applications. New emerging LiFePO4 battery chemistry has excellent over charging capability, high thermal runaway temperature, high charging and discharge rates. This presentation addresses the LiFePO4 battery charging and discharging characteristics and its charging requirements. High efficiency standalone synchronous switching buck based LiFePO4 battery charge controller and its system design considerations are presented for optimizing the charge system and improving the safety.
Jinrong Qian, Battery Charging Management -Advanced Portable • Texas Instruments, Inc.
Jing Ye • Texas Instruments, Inc.

Energy Policy in a Battery Charger World
Addressing plug load energy use continues to remain a relatively untapped opportunity to save energy and mitigate climate change.  While large stationary modern electrical appliances receive their power directly from the utility grid, a growing number of everyday devices require electrical power from batteries in order to achieve greater mobility and convenience.  This presentation will discuss the energy efficiency implications for battery charger systems (BCS) with a focus on energy use, testing requirements, and an overview of current BCS policy activity including the Department of Energy’s mandatory standards development and EPA/Energy Star’s voluntary program revision.
Jeffrey Swofford, Research Analyst • Ecos

11:30 - 1:00 Networking Lunch in the Exhibit Hall

1:00
Battery System Integration, Energy Management and Testing
This presentation looks at the requirements for automotive battery packs, including testing and the battery management system. It will highlight the differences between the requirements for hybrid vehicle, PHEV's and EV's. Using a real battery pack as an example the various steps required to specify, design and test the pack and configure / calibrate the BMS will be described. Thee focus will be on li-ion based packs, but it will be shown that some "micro" hybrid applications can be well served with lead-acid based solutions.
Neil Johnson, Senior Project Engineer, Advanced Systems Engineering • Ricardo, Inc.

The Evolution of Li-Ion Safety Testing Since the Laptop Battery Recalls of 2006
Since the internal short circuit issues in 2006 that resulted in massive recalls of laptop batteries, the industry as a whole has made great strides in cell safety. Underwriters Laboratories will describe the continuing evolution of lithium-ion safety testing and what it means for manufacturers. UL will offer insights emerging from UL’s R&D efforts and a look at the development of UL’s new testing procedures, standards and certification programs. In addition, attendees will learn more about changing UN regulations, IEC and IEEE standard efforts, CTIA certification efforts and changing certification requirements in Japan and Korea that are all intended to further the safety of lithium-ion batteries.
Laurie Florence, Primary Designated Engineer, Batteries, Capacitors, Fuel Cells and H2 Generators • Underwriters Laboratories

1:40
Embedded Energy for Pure Power Solutions
This presentation details advances in solid state energy storage device design that enables these battery-like devices to be co-packaged with other Integrated Circuits. This new Embedded Energy configuration enables new architectures and applications for System in Package and Lab on Chip devices that will be discussed.  Innovative packaging examples will be shown. The concept of Pure Power, where devices are “lifted off the grid” to improve device performance, will be detailed. Chip level grid power management techniques will be discussed.
Steve Grady, Vice President of Marketing • Cymbet Corp.

Notebook Battery Standardization Challenges
This presentation will examine why now may be the right time for battery pack standardization, and why a collaborative industry effort is the correct approach. It will outline a proposal for core pack design, strategy for improving transparency around safety validation, and supplier enablement. It describes the gap between what we have today in the market, and customer expectation and needs of driving technology faster and lower the price.
Stefan Peana • Dell, Inc.

2:15
Your Product’s Battery Failed – What Now?
Most consumer products are mass produced to achieve low cost, but still need to be reliable. However, some products fail before their expected life-span has passed.  Such failures can be benign in the sense that the product stops working.  This may lead to consumer complaints and loss of customers if the failure rate is unusually high and therefore, not meeting the expectations of the consumer. Other, more serious failure modes often lead to property damage, injuries, or even worse consequences. In the US, as well as in Europe, serious failure modes classified as a hazard to the user or the consumer must be reported to a consumer protection agency in the local jurisdiction. In this presentation, a systematic and scientific failure analysis methodology is discussed.
Jan Swart, Principal • Exponent

2:45 Conclusion of Conference