The Energy Blog

More News on EEStor

The latest about EEStor, the promising developer of ultracapacitors can be found in a post by Tyler in Clean Break, EEStor Powered cityZenn targeted for fall 2009 the key item is taken from Zenn Motor Company's  press release following its annual general meeting of March 28:

The cityZENN is planned to be a fully certified, highway capable vehicle with a top speed of 125 KPH/ 80 MPH and a range or 400 kilometres/250 miles. Powered by EEStor, the cityZENN will be rechargeable in less than 5 minutes, feature operating costs 1/10th of a typical internal combustion engine vehicle and be 100% emission-free! The Zero-Emission, No-Noise cityZENN will be designed to meet the transportation requirements of a large percentage of drivers worldwide.

"EEStor's game-changing energy storage technology is in the advanced stages of commercialization", stated Ian Clifford, Chief Executive Officer. "EEStor has publicly committed to commercialization in 2008 and their first production line will be used to supply ZENN Motor Company."

EEStor is believed to have had trouble developing its product, an ultracapacitor claimed to have a specific energy of 280 watt-hours per kilogram, compared to a lithium ion battery with about 120 watt-hours and a lead-acid gel battery, with only 32 watt hours. (Although ElectroVaya claims 330Wh/kg, so they may not be alone) 

The problem is believed, by some, to be in producing the ultra-pure barium-titanate used in the capacitor, which is the key to having the high specific energy. A January 2007 announcement indicated that 1) An automated production line had been proven to meet the requirements for precise chemical delivery, purity control, parameter control and stability and 2) they had completed the initial milestone of certifying purification, concentration, and stability of all of its key production chemicals notably the attainment of 99.9994% purity of its barium nitrate powder. At that time they claimed that they would be shipping product to Zenn in 2007, a year earlier than indicated in the current announcement. 

EEStor's recently announced collaboration with Lockheed Martin, which gives the company credibility and is a further indication that the company is making progress. The current announcement seems to be in agreement with the timing indicated in the Lockheed Martin announcement, although, based on past performance, a wait and see position must be held. 

Sodium Sulfur Batteries to be Used for Energy Storage at MN Windfarm

Xcel Energy, (NYSE: XEL)in partnership with the University of Minnesota, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Great Plains Institute, will soon begin testing a one-megawatt sodium-sulfur battery storage system to demonstrate its ability to store wind energy and dispatch it to the electricity grid when needed.

Fully charged, the batteries could power 500 homes for six and one-half hours. Xcel Energy will purchase the batteries from NGK Insulators, Ltd. that will be an integral part of the project. The sodium-sulfur battery is commercially available and versions of this technology are already being used in Japan and in a few US applications, but this is the first U.S. application of the battery as a direct wind energy storage device.

The 50-kilowatt battery modules, 20 in total, will be roughly the size of two semi trailers and weigh approximately 60 tons. They will be able to store about 6.5 megawatt-hours of electricity, with a charge/discharge capacity of one megawatt. When the wind blows, the batteries are charged. When the wind calms down, the batteries can be used to supply energy to the grid as needed.

"Energy storage is key to expanding the use of renewable energy. This technology has the potential to reduce the impact caused by the variability and limited predictability of wind energy generation."

-- Dick Kelly, Xcel Energy chairman, president and CEO.

The project will take place in Luverne, Minn., with the battery installation beginning this spring adjacent to a nearby 11-megawatt wind farm owned by Minwind Energy, LLC. Testing will begin in October and is expected to last up to two years.

Commercial projects are now underway that use flow batteries, compressed air energy storage, thermal energy storage, pumped hydro, and sodium sulfur batteries for energy storage in connection with renewable energy projects.  American Electric Power (AEP) is also using NaS batteries in a couple of their systems, but not in connection with wind power. While not enough experience has been gained with any of these technologies to make any decision as to which technology is best under what conditions, pumped hydro and sodium sulfur batteries are the most well proven and thus seem to be the first choice of electric utilities. Thermal storage is gaining acceptance for use with thermal solar systems, the only energy technology that it is suitable for use with. As Mr. Kelly stated, energy storage is essential to widespread use of renewable energy technologies. 

FYI: Zenn Still Planning on EEStor

ZENN (TSX: ZNN) the Canadian manufacturer of low speed electric car vehicles has a statement in its first quarter 2008 report that they anticipated EEStor technology being commercialized and is making plans to incorporate it into its products. In addition ZENN is invstigating longer-range highway capable vehicles both as a retrofit for certain existing automobiles and producing small to midsize cars that have a top speed of 65 to 75 MPH (105 to 120 KPH) and a single-charge range of 200 to 400 miles (325 to 650 Km).

This indicates that they must still believe that EEStor's potentially disruptive technology for unique capacitor based energy storage systems is progressing to the point that they are willing to expend time designing their vehicles to use EEStor's systems, although they did not indicate when such vehicles will be available. See this post and this one for more information on EEStor.

Thanks for the tip from Tyler of Clean Break

EEStor, Lockheed Martin to Collaborate on Military and Homeland Security Applications

After quite a period of silence, there is some news on EEStor today. Maybe the company is for real and we will finally get some more meaningful information. Working with Lockheed Martin certainly gives them some credability. It looks like the company is about a year behind on its initial production schedule. Several previous posts on EEStor can be found in the energy storage category. The bold emphasis in the press release is mine.

The entire lockheed Martin press release:

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has signed an exclusive international rights agreement to integrate and market Electrical Energy Storage Units (EESU) from EEStor, Inc., for military and homeland security applications.  Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

EEStor, based in Cedar Park, TX, is developing a ceramic battery chemistry that could provide 10 times the energy density of lead acid batteries at 1/10th the weight and volume.  As envisioned, EESUs will be a fully “green” technology that will be half the price per stored watt-hour than traditional battery technologies.

“Lockheed Martin has a wide range of innovative energy solutions for federal, state and regional energy applications,” said Glenn Miller, vice president of Technical Operations and Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.  “The EEStor energy storage technology provides potential solutions for the demanding requirements for energy in military and homeland defense applications.”

EESUs are planned as nontoxic, non-hazardous and non-explosive.  Since the EESU design is based on ultra-capacitor architecture, it will allow for flexible packaging and rapid charge/discharge capabilities.  EESUs will be ideally suited for a wide range of power management initiatives that could lead to energy independence for the Warfighter.

Deeya Energy, Would be Flow Battery Supplier, Raises $15 Million, Names President

Deeya Energy, which makes large flow batteries to provide backup power to industrial plants, raised $15 million in a second round of financing, to support the construction of its factory in India and its continued R&D activities. It also named Vic Mahadevan as president and CEO. The company earlier raised $7.5 million for product development and global market expansion.

The initial focus of the company is the Indian telecom infrastructure market. The company will initially ship to this market in the second quarter of 2008. In 2009, Deeya will expand to focus on the worldwide solar and wind markets also.

“Deeya’s current focus is to be the supplier of choice to telecom operators in India with our innovative flow battery solution for cell phone tower energy back-up applications. This will allow the telecom operators to expand their market rapidly by deep penetration into India’s villages with a cost effective and high performance energy storage platform.”

Vic Mahadevan, CEO of Deeya Energy.

Deeya’s also claims its products will for the first time ever commercialize peak-off-peak load shifting, a market estimated to be worth $10B for electricity consumers and worth $160B for electricity producers and distributors. In addition, its products will enable commercial energy storage in renewable energy and UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) industries, presently estimated at $5B, and inadequately served mostly by the Lead-Acid batteries and diesel generators.

FYI: Altairnano Ships $1 million Storage System

Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALTI), a leading manufacturer of lithium-titanate battery and energy storage products, announced today that it completed the manufacturing of battery packs to be used in a two (2) megawatt energy storage system ordered by the AES Corporation (NYSE: AES). The $1 million purchase initiated by AES was previously announced in August 2007. Altairnano expects the system to be connected to the grid and tested during the first quarter of 2008.  . . . more

Maxwell to Develop Capacitors for Mercedes

Ultracapacitors' Rapid Charge/Discharge Capabilities Boost Acceleration and Increase Braking Energy Recuperation Efficiency, Reducing Fuel Consumption and Emissions

Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXWL) announced today that it has been awarded a contract by Mercedes Car Group to design and produce ultracapacitors for an advanced engineering hybrid-electric drive train program incorporating a braking energy recuperation system that enables it to increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.

David Schramm, Maxwell's president and chief executive officer, said that the contract provides for funding from Mercedes to develop a new BOOSTCAP(R) ultracapacitor cell specifically designed to meet the energy storage and power delivery requirements of one of Mercedes' torque assist and recuperative braking systems. . . . more

EEStor Update #8

FOXNews.com has a Sept. 2 article on Austin-based EEStor, a reclusive ultracapacitor startup, that has generated lots of interest, but little substance.  If the company can deliver on its promises, the auto industry could see a paradigm shift in how vehicles are powered, making engines unnecessary.  The article contains little, if any, new information about the company, but does a good job of summarizing the known information which can be boiled down to these points:

• Investments of about $4 million by ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who have made extensive amounts of due diligence" on EEStor's innovation, indicate that there is likely to be a great deal of truth about EEStor's claims.
• Patent No. 7,033,406 reveals some information about their device.
• EEStor's founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the 1990s before forming EEStor in 2001.
• EEStor claims an improvement of more than 400-fold over conventional capacitors, while increasing a capacitor's retention ability.
• EEStor's is a parallel plate capacitor with thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other.
• EEStor has created breakthrough technology in a novel formulation of a nonconductive material (dielectric) for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.
• ZENN still expects to receive shipments later this year for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.

More posts on EEStor can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here,

Improved High-Energy Density Capacitors

Science Daily reports that North Carolina State University physicists have recently deduced a way to improve high-energy-density capacitors so that they can store up to seven times as much energy per unit volume than the common capacitor. Unlike a battery, capacitors are designed to release their energy very quickly.

High performance capacitors would enable hybrid and electric cars with much greater acceleration, better and faster steering of rockets and spacecraft, better regeneration of electricity when using brakes in electric cars, and improved lasers, among many other electrical applications.

In a capacitor electrical energy is stored by a difference in charge between two metal surfaces. The amount of energy that a capacitor can store depends on the insulating material in between the metal surfaces, called a dielectric.

A polymer called PVDF has interested physicists as a possible high-performance dielectric. Mixing a second polymer called CTFE with PVDF results in a material with regions that can change their structure, enabling it to store and release unprecedented amounts of energy.

The team, led by Vivek Ranjan, concluded that a more ordered arrangement of the material inside the capacitor could further increase the energy storage of new high-performance capacitors, which already store energy four times more densely than capacitors used in industry. Their predictions of higher energy density capacitors are encouraging, but have yet to be experimentally tested.

ZENN Invests in EEStor

Adapted From ZENN press release:

Feel Good Cars Corporation (TSX VENTURE:ZNN), operating as ZENN Motor Company ("ZENN"), announced on April 30 that it has made a US $2.5 million equity investment in Austin-based energy storage developer, EEStor, Inc. The negotiated investment terms also grant ZENN an additional investment option of up to US $5 million on the same terms, following EEStor's successful completion of its next major milestone: permittivity testing.

Permittivity is a measurement of how much energy can be stored in the EEStor production materials. The requirements of permittivity levels are specified in detail in the existing Technology Agreement between ZENN Motor Company and EEStor, Inc. The verification of permittivity levels will be conducted by an independent 3rd party laboratory. This testing is required to show consistent and replicable results of both the production line and materials produced.