Living Green: Braille Battery

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Posted: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 4:09 pm | Updated: 1:12 pm, Wed Jul 31, 2013.

SARASOTA - A Suncoast company is on the cutting edge of battery technology. Braille Battery creates environmentally friendly batteries and charges them with help from the sun.

Some of the fastest and most technologically advanced cars on Earth carry a Suncoast product on board. The entire Indy Car series, along with Formula 1 and Nascar championship teams, use Braille Batteries.

Company founder and president Blake Fuller is a racer at heart and a former winner of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb and that's how it all started. "One of the heaviest things that are in cars today are the batteries, and the batteries are typically 40 to 60 pounds.  And it always astonished me that I would get into a very high level competition car and here was this 100 year old technology sitting there. And so what we did, over the course of the last 10 years, was to begin to develop the world's best batteries here in Sarasota, Florida by making them lighter," says Fuller.

Not only lighter, but greener too. All of Braille's lithium ion batteries that are made here, need an initial charge before they're shipped out. Braille does that with solar panels. They also power some of the equipment in Braille's factory and shade the roof, helping to cut down on cooling costs.

The batteries themselves have no heavy or hazardous materials inside, and can be recycled or disposed of without worrying about toxic waste. They can also be used in an expanding line of products. "This battery right here is actually one that can start a motorbike and it weights one pound, so what we're able to do is buy a direct replacement, pull out the existing battery, and drop back in something that can that can be held in the palm of your hand and it's a really great step forward in technology," says Fuller.

Braille Battery is a small company with only 25 employees. But they're having a huge impact on the future of high performance, eco-friendly batteries. For more information, visit

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