The future of cheap battery power is bright

One of the future innovations I've been anticipating is the revolution in battery technology which should take place over the next few decades. In Robert Heinlein's novel Friday, he depicts a future where a revolutionary leap in energy storage, called a shipstone, leads to the creation of a corporate conglomerate which has extraordinary influence over world events due to it's monopoly on cheap power. Whether or not a revolution in battery technology will ultimately lead to a world governing corporate plutocracy or not, the rapid growth in our ability to store energy cheaply and efficiently promises to offer an explosion in battery powered devices which will change the way we live our lives.

MIT's Technology Review brings to us the recent development of a simple, cheap salt and pepper battery created from cellulose and a salt solution.

Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have made a flexible battery using two common, cheap ingredients: cellulose and salt. The lightweight, rechargeable battery uses thin pieces of paper--pressed mats of tangled cellulose fibers--for electrodes, while a salt solution acts as the electrolyte.

The new battery should be cheap, easy to manufacture, and environmentally benign, says lead researcher Maria Stromme. She suggests that it might be used to power cheap medical diagnostics devices or sensors on packaging materials or embedded into fabric.

The advent of cheap new battery technology, coupled with the rapid advances in solar electricity generation, we may soon see a real world equivilant of Heinlein's shipstones. Cheap power stored in cheaply and efficiently. That's a future I've been waiting for.