Avionics News March 2015 - 21

environmental issues remain high. Factor in the mitigation
costs of manufacturing waste that long existed for lead-acid
batteries with the inability to sell the old technology; they
apparently begin to get out of against the production and
post-production costs of producing them.
Meanwhile, lithium-ion battery technology appears to
follow a cost curve comparable to that of other technological
advances: At first expensive, they have already dropped
below the point of costs holding them back as a boutique
technology.
So research on better battery solutions continues.
IBM, for example, is working on an advanced battery -
one that improves on power density but won't produce the
heat or fire potential of some existing lithium-ion designs.
According to Bloomberg News, IBM's effort to build a better
battery began in 2009 at a meeting it organizes annually with
government agencies and engineers.
IBM's "lithium-air" concept depends on the release of
electricity when lithium - a metal - reacts with oxygen. If
brought to market successfully at a commercial level, IBM's
lithium-air battery would provide the energy equivalent of a
gallon of gasoline per weight of the battery, according to the
company.
But again, this is years out and possibly longer before it
trickles into aviation.
Meanwhile, lithium-ion battery packs are increasingly
present in general aviation, as backup or standby power
for panels and instruments, and in the main-ship battery
compartment, where they serve as the heart of the electrical
system.
With the emergence of technologies that mitigate the heat
and thermal-runaway issues, lithium-ion designs appear
poised to find a welcoming market in both general and
commercial aviation.
TSOs and ETSOs help True Blue Power
advance lithium-ion technology
Named one of the three biggest aviation technologies
of 2013 was battery health systems based on embedded
fiberoptic sensors. While this Popular Science observation
went to print describing a technology for diagnosing
problems with batteries of the future, True Blue Power was
about to introduce general aviation to a new-technology
main-ship battery design, one model with its own built-in
monitoring and charging control.
By November 2014, the True Blue Power division of MidContinent Instrument Co. held its second and third technical

standard orders from both the FAA and the European
Aviation Safety Agency. True Blue Power's first TSO arrived
in April 2010 for its TS835 Emergency Power Supply for
electrically powered instruments.
Just a few months after unveiling its new line of main-ship
batteries in the fall of 2013, True Blue Power gained its first
TSO for a lithium-ion main-ship battery, the TB17 for lightturbine and piston aircraft. Then last fall, the company gained
its second main-ship battery TSO and ETSO for the larger
TB44 model, giving it three different lithium-ion-battery
TSOs.
All three employ the same proprietary Nanophosphate
chemistry developed at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and commercially produced by A123 Systems
Inc. and licensed by True Blue Power.
According to the company, True Blue Power is in the
process of integrating the TB17 and TB44 on 11 OEM
business-jet and rotorcraft platforms. The company also
is engaged in an aftermarket effort to STC its batteries in
Beechcraft's Bonanza and King Air, Cessna's Caravan,
Pilatus' PC-12, and Bombardier's Dash-8 twin propjet
airliner.
True Blue Power's design addresses safety concerns at
multiple levels, starting with the chemistry, as well as the
design of individual cells, the containment package and
the integration of those sophisticated electronic protection
systems mentioned earlier.
The benefits? All those things aircraft operators, owners
and maintainers have sought for years.
True Blue Power's batteries provide a significant weight
savings - about 40 percent compared to older, lead-acid and
nickel-cadmium alternatives. Then there's higher energy
density of lithium-ion, which in this application comes in at
about three times the energy per pound compared to lead-acid
solutions and better than alternatives like NiCad.
The company also noted that these batteries' engineering
should help lower cost of ownership through a 50 to 90
percent reduction in scheduled maintenance. This is the result
of increased durability, two-year maintenance intervals,
efficient engine starts and gaining two to three times longer
useful battery life.
All these gains but without the potential for a dangerous
thermal-runaway.
And we've seen only the beginning of this shift. Bad
news for that old hydrometer and the companies that make
them. But ultimately good news for aircraft owners and
maintainers. q
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Avionics News March 2015

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