Defense runs $1 million contest to find a lighter battery

The Defense Department is running a competition this week to find a way to cut the weight of batteries that ground troops carry into combat by as much as 80 percent.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Today's high-tech troops have to tote a heavy battery load to power a range of devices, including radios, Global Positioning System gear, receivers and small computers. For a soldier in a forward air control or SEAL team, for example, the weight of the batteries alone can be between 20 to 40 pounds for a four-day mission, says Ian Kaye, director of advance technology for UltraCell Corp., one of the entrants in the competition.

Twenty industry teams are showing off their lighter battery packs in the Wearable Power Prize competition being held at the Marine Corps Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif. Defense would like the power sources to weigh 8.8 pounds and produce an average of 20 watts of power during a 96 hour period. The winner takes home a $1 million prize.

Defense conceived the competition as a nontraditional way to find a solution to the heavy battery load by using innovative equipment that includes fuel cells as well as batteries, said Cmdr. Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman. The competition is sponsored by William Reese Jr., director of Defense research and engineering.

The competition already has proved a grueling challenge, with only six teams remaining. The teams were to take part in the final phase on Thursday of the bench test of the vest-mounted equipment, with a field test slated for Friday. Only two entrants that are battery manufacturers remain in the competition, the Ray-O-Vac division of Atlanta-based Spectrum Brands Inc. and Utralife Corp., based in Newark, N.Y.

Four companies that developed fuel cell systems remain in the competition: Adpative Materials Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich.; the DuPont/SFC smart fuel cell team from Wilmington, Del.; Jenny 600S, based in Middleburg, Va.; and UltraCell from Livermore, Calif.

Teams eliminated in early tests include those backed by large Defense contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Dynamics as well as all the small entries, such as Team Aviani, a one-man effort led by former Los Alamos National Laboratory fuel cell researcher Mahlon Wilson.

UltraCell's fuel cell uses methane for fuel, which is the mixed with air to generate electricity, Kaye said. To cut down weight, the company replaced the fuel cartridges used in its commercial fuel cell with lighter weight bladders -- much like the ones runners use. Kaye declined to disclose further details of the UltraCell entry, except to say the company "sprinkled a lot of pixie dust" on the commercial product to meet Defense requirements.

Whether or not UltraCell wins the prize, Kaye called the competition a "valuable exercise, as we have learned what kind of pixie dust [will] make our power systems better. It will help us make our commercial systems better."

Wilson, who financed his fuel cell system with severance pay from Los Alamos, said the competition was the most rewarding of his professional career. Even though he lost, Wilson said he was pleased that the competition managers still invited him to participate in the test.

His entry failed, Wilson said, because it did not meet power conversion requirements to various voltages, and not because it could not generate raw power. He viewed the power conversion requirements as an electronics challenge beyond the scope of the test.

Kaye disagreed. He said battlefield systems must produce power at the voltages needed to run military equipment.

Although the requirements Defense established are "aggressive, they are definitely achievable and someone will win the prize," Kaye said.