Electro answers call for military cranking power

Electro Energy Inc. in Danbury said the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency has awarded the company a competitive contract for the manufacture and delivery of batteries for the U.S. Army Kiowa Helicopter. The batteries will be made in Electro Energy”™s Colorado Springs, Colo., facility, which has also made batteries for the B-1 bomber, the B-2 stealth bomber, the B-52 heavy bomber, and the Apache and Cobra attack helicopters.

“We supply batteries for the starting application for the Apache and Cobra,” said Timothy E. Coyne, the company”™s chief financial officer. The batteries for the Kiowa will also be used to start the helicopter rotors. “They need a very powerful burst of energy to get those rotors moving,” he said.

“The company has a long history of providing batteries to the U. S. armed services,” said Michel E. Reed, president and CEO. The contract for the Kiowa helicopter requires batteries that are “highly durable and reliable” and “meet the most difficult mission and battlefield requirements,” he said.

The company did not disclose the value of the contract “as a matter of practice,” Coyne said.

Electro Energy announced earlier a contract award from Lockheed Martin to develop “very high specific energy cells” for use in the High Altitude airship ”“ “really a blimp at high altitudes that is not launched into space,” Coyne said. The lighter-than-air unmanned vehicle will be put into a geostationary position and will have both military and civilian communications applications, he said.

“Solar panels will store energy in the batteries for use when the vehicle is on Earth”™s dark side of rotation,” Coyne said. “The batteries recharge when it comes back to the bright side.”

Electro Energy is collaborating with Rutgers University”™s energy storage research group to incorporate advanced materials into the company”™s proprietary bipolar wafer cell battery technology to achieve higher energy than current batteries for the lighter-than-air vehicle project.

Electro Energy”™s Colorado Springs plant with 26 employees makes aerospace-grade high-quality batteries and components for satellites, aircraft and other specialty applications. The Danbury headquarters and research and manufacturing facility develops and makes rechargeable bipolar nickel-metal hydride batteries. It has 20 employees, with another 13 in Gainesville, Fla., in the company”™s manufacturing facility, which Electro Energy acquired last year.

“We spent the past year or so refurbishing the facility, which had been idle for some time,” Coyne said of the former Union Carbide battery-manufacturing plant. The plant is capable of high-volume manufacture of batteries for military and commercial applications, including batteries for hybrid vehicles.

“We”™re in the process of beginning the manufacture of high volumes of rechargeable lithium ion cells packaged into battery packs,” Coyne said. The battery packs will be tested internally, then sent to potential manufacturers of power hand tools and lawn and garden tools for evaluation. The battery packs promise to be lighter, more powerful and easier to recharge than anything currently on the market.

The Florida plant is also obtaining the U.S. military”™s battery requirements that are now manufactured in Japan and China. “Under the Buy American Act, the military needs to establish domestic capability and has been actively seeking a domestic source for the manufacture of its batteries,” Coyne said ”“ including batteries used in weapons systems and on mobile communications systems “We believe we can do that in the very short term” at the Gainesville plant, he said.