EEStor Ultracapacitor Shuns Publicity

Clean Break has an interesting post, much of what I have copied verbatim, on a new ultracapacitor made by start-up company EEStor of Austin TX.  I thought the technology was potentially so important that a record of it was needed on the Energy Blog.  The company is very wary of publicity and the following, which Tyler meticulously chased down, is about all that is known about their technology:

• It is a parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric.
• It claims that it can make a battery at half the cost per kilowatt-hour and one-tenth the weight of lead-acid batteries.
• As of last year selling price would start at $3,200 and fall to $2,100 in high-volume production
• The product weighs 400 pounds and delivers 52 kilowatt-hours.
• The batteries fully charge in minutes as opposed to hours.
• The EEStor technology has been tested up to a million cycles with no material degradation compared to lead acid batteries that optimistically have 500 to 700 recharge cycles,
• Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle.
• With volume manufacturing it's expected to be cost-competitive with lead-acid technology.
• As of last year, EEStor planned to build its own assembly line to prove the battery can work and then license the technology to manufacturers for volume production
• EEStor's technology could be used in more than low-speed electric vehicles. The company envisions using it for full-speed pure electric vehicles, hybrid-electrics (including plug-ins), military applications, backup power and even large-scale utility storage for intermittent renewable power sources such as wind and solar.
• They have an exclusive agreement with Feel Good Cars, a Canadian manufacturer of the ZENN, a low speed electric car, to to purchase high-power-density ceramic ultra capacitors called Electrical Storage Units (ESU).  FGC's exclusive worldwide right is for all personal transportation uses under 15 KW drive systems (equivalent to 100 peak horse power) and for vehicles with a curb weight of under 1200 kilograms not including batteries.

None of these claims except construction and cost are significantly better than other ultracapacitors. Although they sometimes refer to the technology as a battery, it is clearly an ultracapacitor.

Clean Break's resources were:

Kleiner Perkins' Latest Energy Investment, BusinessWeek online, Sept., 3, 2005
Feel Good Cars, Toronto, ON, Canada
MCL Capital Inc. announce Agreement in Principal with Feel Good Cars (In section on History and Nature of the Business this agreement refers to FGC's agreement with EEStor)

Technorati tags: ultracapacitors, energy storage, energy, technology

Comments

[Mulrooney]

52 kwh for a 400 pound unit? Do they really make ultracapacitors that will provide that?

Is it possible that they are describing more than one product--an ultracapacitor and also a storage battery?

[Jim from The Energy Blog]

Yes ultracapacitors(modules)are made that big. It is one product, only an ultracapacitor, no battery. Maxwell makes modules that big, but they consist of many ultracapacitors wired together in one package and will sell units consisting of more than one module. EEStor is much more secretive, but I would expect that they do it the same way.

[Engineer-Poet]

That's good enough to spell the end of the internal combustion engine.  Even if you cannot discharge it faster than a ten-minute rate, that's 312 kW or almost 420 horsepower.

Man, what a time to be alive.

[Michael Cain]

If accurate, 52 kWh in a 400 pound package is a specific energy of just over 285 Wh/kg, roughly a factor of 20 improvement over previous ultracaps, and would be better than the best lithium rechargable batteries commercially available today. At $2100 for the unit, the price per kWh is about half that of lead-acid. Unless the volumetric factor is completely out of hand, these are a real replacement for batteries, and become the storage medium of choice for a number of applications.

[Nathan Williams]

How are ultracaps on leakage over time? Not that batteries are that great on that front, but still.

[Michael Cain]

How are ultracaps on leakage over time? Not that batteries are that great on that front, but still.

One of the numbers that gets tossed around is that today's ultracapacitors take about 45 days to leak down to one-half the voltage, or about one-quarter of the energy. Given an exponential decay, that's about 3% of the energy per day. Not great, but in applications where there's constant charging and discharging going on -- say, driving around town in a vehicle with regenerative braking -- it's probably not a big deal. OTOH, putting one on the shelf and letting it discharge completely does not affect its ability to be recharged, something that is not necessarily true for batteries.

[Engineer-Poet]

That implies a relatively constant drain of 60-odd watts; over 200 million vehicles, just maintaining the capacitor charge would take 12 GW.  Not trivial.

[JesseJenkins]

"just maintaining the capacitor charge would take 12 GW"

Right, but if I'm not mistaken, that's no different than other batteries including Li-ion and NiMH which also have similar self discharge rates.

[Michael Cain]

That implies a relatively constant drain of 60-odd watts; over 200 million vehicles, just maintaining the capacitor charge would take 12 GW. Not trivial.

True, but technology does not stand still and they may be able to improve on this. 12 GW is non-trivial, but against the 2004 base of 963 GW of generating capacity (EIA figures), it's 1.25%. It would be useful to estimate the generating capacity that would need to be added to run a fleet of 200 million vehicles and compare that to the 12 GW. From a different perspective, some back of the envelope scratching suggests that this leakage would be less than the current level of leakage through linear power supplies and electronics with badly designed "sleep" modes.

If I can have an electric car with decent range and good performance, that can be "filled up" quickly, I swear to you that I'll find someplace else to save that 60W leakage :^)

[Jim from The Energy Blog]

According to the Maxwell website "An ultracapacitor will lose about 1.2% of it's energy per day." That is considerably better than 3% a day and would cut the 12 GW down to 4.8GW. No such info is available for EEStor. I believe Ihave read somewhere in the ultracapacitor propaganda that their discharge rate was lower than that of batteries. I missed out on most of this discussion because my computer was down, but thanks for the contribution by everybody.

[Randall]

No Battery watering ( Lead-Acid), no Battery Management system ( all types) , lower weight, smaller motors, better acceleration.

I'll take one.

( I think we can deal with any negatives about this technology, given the overwhelming number of positives ).

[plaunie]

I'll stick with my 26 lbs of gasoline for 52 kWhr.

Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle. - FALSE - unless it is superconducting - there will be some waste in the form of heat during discharge.

The batteries fully charge in minutes as opposed to hours. FALSE - see above - the limiting factor will become how fast you can dup energy into the storage system, which is usually a function of electrode design as much as how fast you can drive the reactions in the electrolyte. The electrode design problem will still be present in any capacitor design.

With volume manufacturing it's expected to be cost-competitive with lead-acid technology. - Nothing is cheaper than a lead acid battery

[Interested]

I hear that they are creating a pilot plant in Cedar Park TX

[Mukesh]

What is the trading symbol for EESTOR ?
Thanks in anticipation.

[F. william]

If USA want win terrisum, they need to invest more money in Company like EEStor instead of figthing war in fanatic countries. This will completely reduce dependency for oil from Middle EAST.

[David Navas]

patent application US 20040071944A1

As has been mentioned, the trick is high voltage. Try several thousand volts on for size. Now, how do you create a system that can extract that kind of voltage, and make it run from that very high voltage until it is fully discharge (ie: to a very low voltage)?

It's volume appears to be quite small as well,
btw.

[Free Energy]

Remember, that a super capacitor cannot simply be paralleled with a battery. For maximum storage, the VOLTAGE MUST VARY WILDLY from V max at full charge to V min at full discharge. So high power and very efficient power conversion electronics will be requires to make this “breakthrough: possible.
First, an input inverter must convert whatever charge voltage is available to a voltage that is slightly higher than whatever is already in the super-capacitor. (voltage to voltage inverter)
Then, the super-capacitor inrush current must be regulated so that the current is delivered at a charge rate that does not excessively load the input power source capabilities. (Input current regulation)
Then the desired output voltage must be supplied at the constant voltage desired by the load, while the voltage across the super-capacitor must be allowed to vary wildly with its charge discharge cycle!(buck-boost voltage regulator).
Lastly, the output current demand must be met while preventing damage to the output regulator or the super-capacitor itself from short circuit conditions.
( output current regulator with fold-back current limiting and electronic circuit breaker action).
While super-capacitor technology is racing forward at a fantastic pace, we should prepare ourselves by proceeding to develop the required power conversion electronics for our immediate applications.
Only with efficient and appropriate low-loss synchronous switching power conversion electronics already added to existing applications will super-capacitors become “Drop In Solutions” to become our long sought but heretofore only theoretical solution to meet our “Ideal Battery” requirements.

With Best regards,
FREE ENERGY
Patrick Ward
Richmond, VA
fossilfreedomATyahoo.com fossilfreedom@yahoo.com
fossilfreedomATyahoogroups.com fossilfreedom@yahoogroups.com
http://www.fossilfreedom.com

[Stephen Boulet]

From the patent application here, the discharge rate is "0.1% per 30 days which is approximately an order of magnitude lower than the best electrochemical battery".

Also, am I correct in calculating a 30.5 kW/hr per gallon of gas?

Stephen

[Gar Lipow]

I am very skeptical in general of super high charge rates for batteries or ultras or anything. Not the physical possibility, but the huge infrastructure requrements need to get peak electricy rates that high. Imagine if everyone had one, and 10,000 people happend charge a 52 kwh thing all at once. Talk about peak requirements! Of course the power companies could start putting those things in themselve

But really the solution is you don't need to charge that fast most of the time. For norma use you come home every night. Do a trickle charge over eight or ten hourse while sleep, shower and such - give our electric infrastructure a break. On the road, do the same at a hotel. If you need to travel regularly in one shot than a single charge will get - buy Plugin hybrid. If you have occasional needs, buy an electric and rent a plugin hybrid for
those occasions.

In terms of the weight compared to gasoline - don't forget all-electric cuts out not just the 26 pounds of gas, but the 26 pound gas tank, the engine. It pprobably cuts out the transmission; you can use axle motors and send different quantities of electricty to your wheels. And you are eliminating a lead acid battery which has a substantial weight. So on weight you come pretty close to breaking even - and 36% effiency for electricy generation at the power plant vs. 15% TOP efficiency for genration in an IC engine more than makes up for possible weight gain.

Remeber Solectria demonstrated the four passenger solaria with a 90 mpg range equivalent with nickel cadium. I calculate that based on generation in the current U.s. grid. If the electrix source was non-combustion hydroelectic and such the results would have been more like 200+ mpg.

[Eric Rouleau]

If these ultra-capacitor can store energy that fast, could it be possible that you could actualy harvest the energy of ligthning?

[craig]

tested to a million cycles? even at an unheard of rate of 15minutes per cylcle, that would take 28 years

[Thomas Murphy]

That is quite a claim for energy density for a capacitor. Obviously this company would keep the technology under wraps if it was real, but does anyone have any links to in-production capacitors anywhere near this value, or academics with published theories suggesting these levels as possible. The highest energy densities I found at a first look have been less than 10 Wh/Kg

[Bob Smith]

This cannot be an ultracapacitor, they don't have a dielectric (nor do batteries). To get 350Wh/kg (the number I saw was 52kWh and 336 pounds) is quite unbelievable. This is higher than lithium batteries, never mind ultracapacitors. Can anyone explain how this thing works?

[Bob Smith]

I just dug through their patent to answer my own question. It's a REALLY BIG dielectric capactor! Running 31F at 3500V in 336 pounds gives them 350Wh/kg.
I really hate to think what would happen if a single one of all those parallel dielectrics failed! 52kWh through a short circuit could melt the thing to slag. It better be self-healing.

[Rob Wills]

Some amount of cap self discharge could be covered by on-board photovoltaics. An incentive to park in the sun..