from chemistry to pack
ATI’s 2026 Target Matrix vs the 2021 NASA Baseline Back in 2022 we covered NASA’s targets for electrified aircraft propulsion, which were deliberately broad: a single system level specific energy figure of 400 Wh/kg, a general expectation of “1000’s of cycles”, and a note that power demand would spike hard during takeoff and landing. That … Read more
A phone battery looks like a simple, sealed slab. Underneath that, five engineering problems are being fought at once, and each one constrains the others: what the electrodes are made of, how fast heat can be pulled out of a space the size of a credit card, how the charging circuit routes power without wasting … Read more
Battery engineering draws from more disciplines than almost any other field in engineering. A complete battery system requires electrochemistry, thermal engineering, power electronics, embedded software, mechanical design, materials science, and systems integration — all working together, all constraining each other. Most engineers arriving in the field are already expert in one or two of these … Read more
If you’ve spent your career in mechanical engineering, power electronics, software, automotive systems, or aerospace — and you’re now working on batteries — you’re in the right place. BatteryDesign.net is written by engineers, for engineers. The assumption here is that you can read a datasheet, you understand thermal gradients and control loops, and you don’t … Read more
CATL published a document in 2024 that looked at BESS lifecycle and durability [1]. BESS = Battery Energy Storage System and covers everything from Home, Commercial through to grid storage. In this instance CATL were looking at grid storage units. As they point out, the characteristics: when compared to automotive they see the challenges: This … Read more
After gathering lots of data on drones we thought it would be useful to pull together a simple drone power and energy estimation calculator. Plotting the average power demand, hovering demand and maximum power versus flight mass we start to see a relationship. OK, this is log-log and so lots of scatter. Hence: use this … Read more
Historically the inputs to an electricity grid have been large rotating machines that inherently have a large inertia. This means that even with a large change in demand in failure of a supply element the frequency is maintained. A small change in frequency is often an indicator that a change in supply is required. The … Read more
In the first instance it is all about requirements. What are the hard points, the inviable parameters? My first thoughts are around these headings: This post has been built based on the support of and sponsorship from: Quarto Technical Services, Eatron Technologies and About:Energy Initial sizing is around Electrical and Thermal. The Battery Calculations Workbook has some great tools to … Read more
Today, there are already ultralight aircraft powered by batteries, but what about commercial airplanes? Let’s demonstrate it on an example. I will use a 19-seat Dornier 228 as the example, it has a standard fuel capacity of 2390 L (~1900 kg) of fuel which is 22944 kWh of energy. The Dornier 228 consumes ~200 kg … Read more
What is different about the operation of a drone and hence what does this mean in terms of battery requirements? For a drone we are meaning an unmanned drone as used for photography or surveillance. The fundamental parameters are: This post has been built based on the support and sponsorship from: Eatron Technologies, About:Energy, AVANT Future Mobility, Quarto Technical … Read more