According to Redlands police Lieutenant Bill Cranfill: "This new charging system is rugged, reliable, fast and even looks like it will add to battery life, because it never over or undercharges. Our officers now want units in all our squad cars."
This compact DC-DC unit can be mounted in police and fire vehicles and can charge a variety of electronic gear carried by the first responders, using the vehicle's battery as the source. This technology has been developed with help from a grant made by the Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization (OTTC) at Cal State San Bernardino. OTTC makes grants following competitive solicitations for proposals at various times during the year. The funds come from the Office of Naval Research's Center for the Commercialization of Advanced Technology.
GEM Power has received three grants from the Cal State San Bernardino program since 2003, with most of the money going to prototype development, testing and evaluation. OTTC receives Department of Defense funds through the Office of Naval Research's Center for Commercialization of Advanced Technology (CCAT) program. OTTC then manages the grant process which helps firms to get down what is usually called "the last mile" in the commercialization process.
GEM Power company president John James said: "Thanks to the CCAT funding we got through OTTC, we've been able to take a technology we originally developed for military use to charge aircraft batteries and adapt it for use by first responders, like police, fire and paramedics. OTTC funds paid for the prototype units used in the Redlands PD field trial along with input from other public agencies gave GEM Power the valuable feedback. GEM began the charger design utilizing first responders' inputs, and the field testing is a continuation of GEM's belief that users are part of the product development cycle."
The "Intelligent Battery Charger" works by adding a computer chip and a sophisticated software program that pro-actively checks the battery every two seconds to check on its condition and provide additional charging as needed. Rather than having the charger "force feed" the battery, the GEM Power system lets the battery itself control how it's charged. This typically results in several key benefits: (1) charging is faster, up to twice as fast as with so-called "rapid chargers"; (2) batteries never get either overcharged or undercharged; and (3) as a result of the perfect charge level, batteries last up to three times longer than with traditional rapid chargers or trickle chargers.
