New EV Charging Solution Uses Switching Battery Solar Technology
GILROY, Calif., April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new type of battery system, Switching Battery, offers a glimpse of hope for electric vehicle (EV) charging from renewable energy directly.
"All commercially available batteries are non-switching," says Kannappan Chettiar, the Singapore-born founder of the battery tech startup Switching Battery Inc.
The Switching Battery is a new type of hardware with PCB that connects all the batteries to a renewable energy source as well as to the load, simultaneously, using software. The Switching Battery does two things differently compared to non-switchable batteries. Firstly, it charges and discharges the batteries instantly using two independent switching circuits at 50-60Hz with transistor switches. Secondly, the switching circuits enable a new "voltage shifting" technology.
The technology behind the patent-pending Switching Battery is relatively simple. While batteries cannot be arranged in both parallel and series in the same circuit, batteries can be arranged in parallel and series in two separate circuits with two separate independent cycles to form a new battery connection method called para-series.
The para-series arrangement produces a new technique for energy flow called "voltage shifting" when the first battery circuit is connected to the renewable power source, such as solar panels, in parallel initially to be charged. The circuits then switch to a second battery circuit that is timed precisely and connected to the load in series, thus enabling a higher voltage to the load.
Voltage shifting technology is useful where there is a space constraint for solar panels, such as in electric vehicles, as the Switching Battery takes over the voltage requirement to drive the load. The technique is also useful for all other renewable energy such as wind turbines that may be affected by slow wind speeds.
"The Switching Battery is like a flexible water tank that is able to squeeze all the water out by constantly shifting between a wider parallel arrangement and a taller series arrangement that makes it more efficient in extricating all the electrons from the batteries," says Chettiar.
Chettiar is an education entrepreneur who has worked with reputed universities such as London School of Economics, University of London, Golden Gate University and University of New Brunswick to offer these courses in Singapore from 1990 until 2017. The battery research was initially undertaken by his education group, Stansfield College, in 2005 through its India campus. Chettiar continued the battery research with a team of independent experts from around the world after he left Singapore to pursue his full-time studies in Energy and Clean Technology at Berkeley School of Law.
The Switching Battery will be commercially available in early 2022.
About Switching Battery
Switching Battery is a startup founded by Kannappan Chettiar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kannappan-chettiar-7a505a16a/.
The website for Switching Battery is currently under construction. Preliminary information is available at www.switchingbattery.com.
Details of the technology are available from U.S Patent Publication No. 2020/0112184 A1 titled "Energy Storage System and Method to Improve Battery Performance by Battery Connection" published on April 9, 2021, and supplemented by recent additional patent filings on March 26, 2021 (USPTO 17/213,621).
Press and Media Contact:
Kannappan Chettiar
e-mail: chettiar@berkeley.edu
Tel: +1 (831) 643 5919
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Switching Battery
First prototype of 100-battery system with patent-pending para-series battery connection method
