Battery high tech and the need for news follow-up

A model helicopter hobbyist validates the claims of the A123 advanced lithium ion batteries. Eager to find light-weight, high-powered batteries for his remote controlled helicopters, Gary Goodrum disassembles battery packs designed for DeWalt power tools and rebuilds them for airborne use. He found that the A123 batteries live up to their billing, providing good power and fast charging at low cost. Also, they lack the tendency to burst into flames found in competing lithium polymer batteries.
What’s really cool about this story is that Goodrum is a hacker using the batteries for his hobby. He doesn’t have the same incentive to optimism that infects the manufacturer, their funders, and vendors of vaporware electronic cars like the GE Volt. He just wants the batteries to fly his toy helicopters.
It’s easy to find a stream of announcements about cool new energy technology on blogs like Renewable Energy Access and The Energy Blog. It’s harder to find follow up to the press releases. What happened to the Green Fuel algae cogeneration technology pilots, intended to use CO2 emissions from smokestacks to grow algae, which is converted to biofuel? How about the wave energy pilot off the cost of Washington State? The press releases, verbatim or lightly rewritten, cover the initial optimism, but what happened then? It would be great if there were more stories that covered follow up and validation to the enthousiastic product announcements and pilot deployments.

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