I wanted to share with you an article published by the Times Union:

Local startups look to tap into 'wearable' electronics market

By Larry Rulison Published 7:43 pm, Saturday, June 27, 2015

Albany

The Capital Region's fledging renewable energy economy appeared to take a major hit back in January when General Electric Co. significantly dialed down production at its $170 million battery factory.

GE, which has kept a skeleton crew of about 50 workers at the four-year-old plant, said the move was just a matter of timing and that it hadn't anticipated how slowly the market for batteries designed for the electric grid would take to develop.

Still, GE did move 400 people out of the battery business, although it insisted all of them would be offered new jobs within the company.

GE has not indicated when or if it will be able to ramp up the factory back to full production.

But when it comes to smaller, higher-margin batteries, such as those being developed for consumer electronics, especially "wearables" like the Apple Watch, there is a buzz right now.

Although together they employ fewer than a dozen people in total, several local startups are benefiting from this potential as the thin-film battery technology market is expected to grow from a $35 million market to a $3.4 billion market by 2021, according to WinterGreen Research of Lexington, Mass.

These thin-film battery startups include BessTech, a spin-off from SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany that developed a roll-to-roll, silcon-based method to make lithium-ion electrodes that improve battery energy storage by up to 40 percent.

CEO Fernando Gomez-Baquero says that BessTech, which has yet to start commercial manufacturing, is constantly being approached by consumer electronics companies that are looking to extend battery life as products become more complex and energy-hungry.

"Everybody is crazy for this technology," Gomez-Baquero said.

Pradeep Haldar, head of the clean-energy program at SUNY Poly and a mentor to Gomez-Baquero and other energy startups at SUNY Poly, says that the battery sector is today where the solar industry was 10 years ago — trying to prove itself on both effi8

ciency and price with fossil-fuel power plants connected to the electrical grid.

"Today, solar competes with the grid anywhere," Haldar said. "But batteries are in that (previous) phase right now."

Haldar said batteries that are designed to store energy on the electric grid for when the energy is needed most are technologically effective. But in terms of pricing, those large grid batteries cannot compete with high-efficiency natural gas power plants.

However, when it comes to consumer electronics, the market thrives on better capability, not price. Consumers are more than willing to pay more for a smart phone or tablet that can charge quickly and hold its charge longer. That premium is driving the smaller-scale batteries designed for the consumer markets.

"You're looking more for convenience," Haldar said. "You'll pay more for it."

Another local company looking to tap into the consumer electronics market is EnerMat Technologies of Clifton Park, which was founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduates who recently won $250,000 in funding from NYSERDA, the state's energy development agency.

PaperBattery Co. in North Greenbush, which develops capacitors that develop quick, powerful charges to electronics, has also received NYSERDA support and is also targeting the consumer wearable electronics market.

EnerMat is also developing a roll-to-roll manufacturing process similar to BessTech using graphene, which is a single-atom carbon material that has major advantages over traditional battery materials.

CEO Eklavya Singh says the technology, which is nearing the commercial phase, has gotten a lot of interest from the "wearable" electronics market and the automotive market. Singh said that cost is no longer the overriding factor in what manufacturers are looking for in battery technologies.

"You need very high performance," Singh said.

EnerMat has a development agreement with RPI, which has manufacturing equipment on its campus. And the company is looking to do pilot manufacturing at the BEST Test and Commercialization Center in Rochester, run by the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology consortium, also known as NY-BEST, which is based in Albany.

Bill Acker, the executive director of NY-Best, said that grid-scale battery technology will rebound and that consumer electronics batteries and energy technologies are very hot right now.

"The battery market is growing nicely in many sectors in addition to the highly talked-about electricity grid applications," Acker said. "Portable electronics, wearable devices and transportation are of particular interest to some local companies."

For its part, GE has been diversifying its battery business by outsourcing lithium-ion technology that differs from the sodium-nickel technology it makes in Schenectady. It has also been focusing on diversifying the types of energy storage products that it sells to customers, regardless of whether it's made by GE or others, as it tries to tap into huge needs such as incorporating variable wind-farm electric production into the grid.

"Our evolving strategy is focused on delivering full energy storage systems to help our customers provide flexibility to the grid," GE spokesman Nikolas Noel said. "That means we're not just offering a battery, but the goal is to provide a full storage solution, including other key components like the plant controls, power electronics and systems engineering."

lrulison@timesunio n.com • 518-454-5504 • @larryrulison

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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="628"] SUNY Poly VP Pradeep Haldar, left, and BESS Tech's Fernando Gomez-Baquero discuss battery technology in a SUNY Poly campus lab at CNSE Tuesday June 23, 2015 in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="574"] Lithium ion batteries and a silicon anode sheet, a component in the manufacturing of besstech batteries in a SUNY Poly campus lab at CNSE Tuesday June 23, 2015 in Albany, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="628"] GE employee Nick Esposito applies a carbon paint to the outside of the ceramic tubes that will be used in the company's durathon battery at GE's new battery plant on Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at the GE campus in Schenectady, NY.[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="628"] View of the building that houses GE's durathon battery plant on Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at the GE campus in Schenectady, NY. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)[/caption]