outlined<\/a> its plans to triple production capacity for lithium-ion cells at its Japanese factories by expanding existing facilities and adapting some of its automotive manufacturing facilities to make batteries. The company is also considering adapting its Kansas plant to make more datacenter batteries.<\/p>\nThe reason for this push is AI, which Panasonic notes is stoking demand for servers and therefore also for sources of backup power. The Japanese company therefore thinks that by 2029 it can sell \u00a5800 billion (US$5 billion) of batteries in its 2029 financial year, roughly quadrupling its current sales.<\/p>\n
Panasonic claims customers have already agreed to buy around 80 percent of the products it will need to reach that target, and to enjoy 80 percent market share.<\/p>\n
That leaves buyers who aren\u2019t already Panasonic customers bidding for a fifth of its output \u2013 assuming it can scale production as planned \u2013 even as they scale AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Panasonic puts its batteries into rack-mounted units designed to sit among servers and other compute infrastructure and keep them operating for a few minutes \u2013 so they\u2019re basically uninterruptible power supplies. The company\u2019s kit can also be used to store energy and release it when energy prices spike, to help reduce power bills.<\/p>\n
The company is also working on supercapacitors as a source of backup energy.<\/p>\n
Designers of electronic products use conventional capacitors as a reservoir of energy that\u2019s needed ASAP. Camera flashes are the classic use for a capacitor, and the devices suit that role because they store a little energy and discharge it rapidly.<\/p>\n
Supercapacitors can store more energy and deliver it more slowly. They\u2019re also a denser energy storage medium than batteries.<\/p>\n
Panasonic says it will use supercapacitors \u201cto absorb fluctuations in power load\u201d and will start to send them out of factories during its 2027 financial year.<\/p>\n
Hopefully in sufficient quantities that they improve Panasonic\u2019s overall supply of energy storage kit before hyperscalers buy it all. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major memory makers have already sold all the kit they can make this year, creating shortages and price…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-496359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}