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October 5, 2015 Issue

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A Turnkey Solution Provider of Lithium Battery for OEM/ODM Business

 

 

Wilson Chan

CEO

 

Lithium Power, Inc.

www.lithiumpowerinc.com

  

Interview conducted by:

Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – October 5, 2015

 

CEOCFO: Mr. Chan, what is Lithium Power?

Mr. Chan: We are a battery technology company that focuses on developing lithium battery solutions for a variety of applications. We were founded in 2013 by a team of seasoned lithium battery engineers. We are located in San Jose, California.

 

CEOCFO: What are some of the uses for lithium batteries?

Mr. Chan: In the consumer market today, lithium batteries are already the preferred power source for portable consumer electronic products like smart phones, laptops and tablet computers. On the other end of the lithium power spectrum, Tesla uses lithium technology in a different way for its electronic vehicles. These are the most well known applications of lithium batteries.

 

CEOCFO: Are there general uses other than the consumer markets, such as manufacturing?

Mr. Chan: Any robot or other machine that is self-propelled or portable needs to take its power source with it, so applications for lithium power is exploding in manufacturing as machines take a larger role in production and monitoring processes. At Lithium Power, we work in various market verticals, designing power packs for drones and other robots, medical monitoring carts and other interesting technical innovations. To date, lithium power solutions are still a “new idea” for many of these development teams, so they partner with experts like our professional design teams to figure out the most elegant solution for incorporating the power source. Every lithium battery, if you want to use it to power your device, has to have a battery management system, or BMS, to support it. The more sophisticated your application, the more complicated the demands on the power source. The BMS actively manages that battery to maximize its duration between charges, its durability in various environmental conditions, and the like. We anticipate all these needs, which is the value we add to the partnership.

 

CEOCFO: How does the battery management system work?

Mr. Chan: Fundamentally, you need to design in a self-protection mechanism for your lithium batteries to prevent over-charging, over-discharging, overheating, excessive current and the like. For advanced applications, you have to install a “gas gauge” that communicates how much power is left, and you need to do the balancing for the cells when they are being charged to keep the load even. Battery cells do not balance by themselves, so from time to time, they will get out-of-balance. At this point, the battery pack will become defective. This makes the balancing function of the battery management system critical to long battery life.

 

The battery management system also has to manage different chemistry of lithium batteries, which varies by application. Some people use the battery for power, such as Tesla EV cars. On the other hand, for smart phones you need a high power-density battery. You want it stable and light, because you are carrying around in your devices, so the battery must be light and of high density for usage. Some people also use lithium batteries for storage, as for things like solar power. For the solar application, you need to find the right chemistry that can be durable and will operate in a wide range of temperatures, up to 50 degrees Celsius and down to –20 degree Celsius.

 

CEOCFO: Are most companies aware of the intricacies of lithium batteries or do manufacturers realize it after they have created a product?

Mr. Chan: You ask a very good question. We do see design teams that assume an off-the-shelf battery solution exists that will fit their need, and it usually doesn’t. Design engineers then find out that they need to kick off an unexpected battery design initiative, which can delay their main project. Beyond the technical issues of hardware and software, there is battery chemistry, thermal management, safety certification and issues of transportation that design engineers have to overcome. That is why we started this business, because our expertise is portable, just like the battery packs we create for robots! We can apply our own lessons learned and save design teams time and money.

 

CEOCFO: What are you selling today?

Mr. Chan: As I mentioned, we are working in key vertical markets. One that we are selling into is the replacement battery for the iRobot® Roomba® and other automatic vacuums. iRobot is a big name in the robot industry, but they are still using the old technology, nickel metal hydride batteries, which are not durable and come with a 6-month warranty for their battery. We can offer a 1 or 2-year warranty, because our batteries are durable and fully compatible with the machine’s charger. The second market is in the OEM/ODM business. Some of our customers in the medical market have used nickel metal hydride batteries before, and they had to hang the device onto the charger or it would lose power, because until the battery was fully drained you could not charge it, which is very inconvenient. With our battery, OEM customers can have the same size compartment for the battery and have more power. That means that the operating time of the customer’s devices can last a lot longer. Many medical devices ask for a battery service ability of more than 3 or 5 years.

 

CEOCFO: When you are talking with a prospective customer and introducing your battery technology, do they understand the value, or are they still skeptical?

Mr. Chan: Yes. They know our value. Many come to us having already wrestled with the challenge of designing in a lithium battery. There are very few lithium battery design companies that serve this market, so they find us eventually!

 

CEOCFO: Are you funded for the continued development? Are you looking for partners or investors?

Mr. Chan: Financing resources are not the main consideration at this point. We are searching for strategic partners. Based on my prior experience, if we want to grow this business in a healthy way, we need business partners who can work with us on the business strategies and bring the connections the company needs to grow.

 

CEOCFO: What surprised you as the company about how it has grown and evolved?

Mr. Chan: What surprised me most is that there is such a strong market for our services. People who want to use the lithium battery do not understand that they need to have the battery management system to get the most from the power source. That seems like an obvious conclusion to me, but I have been around battery technology for a long time. What doesn’t surprise me is that the market demand for custom-made lithium batteries is growing rapidly.

 

CEOCFO: Put it together for our readers. Why pay attention to Lithium Power today?

Mr. Chan: We have already done many designs and have built a solid operation for offering turnkey BMS solutions for the North American market. Let us look at this way. Lithium technology is a revolutionary step in the energy business. It will play a significant role when people want clean technology to replace carbon consumption. You need to save the power when you use natural resources like solar and wind, for example. Most of companies working within these market verticals on mechanical applications have limited resources. They need a professional supply chain to design, make and ship the battery product for them. We can provide that. From the supply chain to the end-customer application, there is no other company like us that can offer complete integration. We integrate everything, from the battery cell, to integrating a battery management system, to gaining the certifications we need to use our batteries in all of our various markets. (Medical, transportation, consumer, and so forth.) When their customers have field issues or need something new that they did not figure out in the beginning, we work together with them to fix the field issue, and offer a new solution for their customers’ future use. We call it a turnkey solution, soup-to-nuts, if you will. We are the first to present this into the market.



 

“Lithium power solutions are still a “new idea” for many of these development teams, so they partner with experts like our professional design teams to figure out the most elegant solution for incorporating the power source. Every lithium battery, if you want to use it to power your device, has to have a battery management system, or BMS, to support it.” - Wilson Chan


 

Lithium Power, Inc.

www.lithiumpowerinc.com

 

Contact:
Wilson Chan

(408) 837-0206




 

 



 

 


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