Rajeev Gopal

Electrochemical Explosions: Pushing Batteries to the Limit

Cutting through the cylindrical casing, a sharp sizzling sound began emanating from the battery. Suddenly a few sparks shot out and flames immediately engulfed the metallic casing. Spurred on by the escaping gases, the battery twirled around like an angry firecracker, pointing its fiery top at each one of us as if ready to dispense its revenge. Fortunately, the flames soon petered out and with one last pop, only the burnt shell remained. If you asked me a few weeks ago if I would be in the middle of a parking lot playing doge-ball with a demented battery cell, I would have commended you on your extravagant imagination. However, such activities are a necessary task in a startup pushing the limits of its battery packs.

Going into the final year of my PhD in the EECE department with my research orientated around batteries, I was quite fortunate to find a local startup dealing in my field. Upgrade Energy run by Matthew Barnard provides an assortment of battery packs to individuals and companies. Individual cells are sourced and engineered into packs. These range in capacity, type and form factor to satisfy any potential need a customer may have. Additionally, with their new line of smart-batteries, the performance and lifetime of their packs are greatly increased compared to what’s traditionally available on the market.

While assembling cells into a pack may seem straight-forward, the task is more complicated, especially for a fledgling company. Apart from the challenging engineering involved, every other aspect to turn the product into viable business also had to be addressed. Whereas most companies would have a collection of people tackling different aspects, in a startup these responsibilities fall onto the few individuals inside it. This meant we constantly had to push our boundaries and learn new things to overcome ever-evolving problems. From figuring out how heat was distributed in the battery pack, to reaching out to new potential customers, and even becoming impromptu fire fighters, there was no specific role we had to confine ourselves to. It gave me the freedom to dip my toes into something new and gain a deeper understanding of what it took to run a successful company from behind the scenes.

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Designing and building a new battery pack from the ground up was a project I took a great affinity to. We spent many nights performing multiple tests to ensure the cells we chose behaved as expected. I simulated the airflow through the pack and iteratively came up with a design which satisfied all our requirements. I learnt that many aspects which work well on the computer screen can be a nightmare in reality. Take for example routing a thick cable, in the virtual world a simple click and drag would suffice, but once physically assembling it, I became painfully aware of the difficult design constraints I had put on myself. This project not only leveraged the strengths gained from my research field but also allowed me to use my creativity in design and 3D printing to come up with a tangible product.

Ultimately, I enjoyed my experience at Upgrade Energy. The talented individuals showed me that working hard and being passionate about an overlooked market are prerequisites in developing a successful business.