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EEStor Issued a Patent For Its Supercapacitor
An anonymous reader sends us to GM-volt.com, an electric vehicle enthusiast blog, for the news that last week EEStor was granted a US patent for their electric-energy storage unit, of which no one outside the company (no one who is talking, anyway) has seen so much as a working prototype. We've discussed the company on a number of occasions. The patent (PDF) is a highly information-rich document that offers remarkable insight into the device. EEStor notes "the present invention provides a unique lightweight electric-energy storage unit that has the capability to store ultrahigh amounts of energy." "The core ingredient is an aluminum coated barium titanate powder immersed in a polyethylene terephthalate plastic matrix. The EESU is composed of 31,353 of these components arranged in parallel. It is said to have a total capacitance of 30.693 F and can hold 52.220 kWh of energy. The device is said to have a weight of 281.56 pound including the box and all hardware. Unlike lithium-ion cells, the technology is said not to degrade with cycling and thus has a functionally unlimited lifetime. It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."
What's the benefit of a patent for something that doesn't exist yet? At most, they're issued for things that are obvious or have existed for decades. ;)
If it was a dupe, wouldn't they be talking about it a lot? Selling it in magazines? Making a fake model to scam people? Why go to the effort of hiding it? Why not try to make a profit on it while you can?
This sounds more like a "Holy shit, we can make millions! Got to watch our ass..."
I wonder what they will charge for this?
kw, not kwh.
Since when couldn't Gasoline be used in Cars? Isn't the whole principle of it to make it explode to drive the pistons? Now its good that this thing allegedly won't explode while being charged but with all technologies its about minimising risks through sensible practice rather than their complete elimination.
For instance I'd be willing to bet that applying 10MV at 10MA across this thing would cause some pretty funky changes that would look like an explosion.
Personally I'd like to see some sort of Darwin device in the next generation of cars, "cannot explode unless user should be removed from the human race".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Let's see. 50kwh. That would run my computer for...two days no problem with monitor and broadband modem included.
Gimme two of these and some high-efficiency photovoltaics and good-bye power grid. I don't care if my house is ugly, cover the entire thing with HEPV.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."
Anything that stores that much energy in that small a space can do something unfortunate if it is released quickly.
TFA:
52.220 kWh of energy
A single car battery is about 200 watt hours. The batteries in the Tesla Roadster holds 53 kWÂh according to Wikipedia.
Now thats an interesting coincidence. I wonder if they just worked out how much capacitor would be needed for the power plant of the Tesla.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Actually the watt-hour is a measure of (electrical, in this case) energy. It's an awkward convention, but it makes sense when you realize that Watts are equal to Joules over time and that multiplying time back in leaves you with Joules.
the present invention provides a unique lightweight electric-energy storage unit that has the capability to store ultrahigh amounts of energy
Can't you express these things in units we all all understand, like jigawatts per nanofornight?
... and then they built the supercollider.
The worst, most inefficient computer in my house uses roughly 250Wh in continuous draw (less if the monitor is off, which it usually is). Relatively modern machine too (Pentium 4, lots of disks, etc).
Unless you have some seriously fucked up computer with hairdryers instead of heatsinks or a g'damned Cray as your desktop I can't see how you'd use that cell up in a 'couple of days'.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Would two these across the inputs of my amplifier boost bass response?
A lot of cool data in the patent filing.
3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh. 286 lbs for that compared to 752 for a Li-Ion battery. And the Li-Ion takes 6h to charge.
It's things like this that convince me that while patents need some serious fixing, they shouldn't be abolished. While we haven't seen all the details, it looks like genuinely interesting and original to me and a step beyond the currently available state-of-the-art. Of course, only time will tell if this is really a good patent, and if the product is really any good in practice. It's easy to make things that look good in the lab but don't do so well in real usage.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
A capacitor has the ability for almost all braking energy to be fed back into it.
In stop-go traffic this could make a massive difference in mileage compared to a conventional battery.
No sig today...
Internal combustion engines: Orbital Engine Corporation. In the 70s was going to produce an orbital engine that was going to revolutionise the world.
Printers: Silverbrook Research. Is supposed to take over the world of printing.
Each of these companies were/are big on promises. Maybe they even do have work beating technology. The problem is that they are professed "IP" generators and are so fixated on exploiting their IP that it ends up being easier for potential customers to engineer around their patents and license the bare minimum. End result is they are always on the edge of the "big time", but never quite reach it.
From the numbers in the summary, a fully-charged one of these would supply enough energy to propel a 3300lbs (1500kg) car from 0 to 1100mph (500m/s).
Put another way, my laptop battery is 65Wh. This ultracapacitor holds 800 times as much energy as my battery. If the technology could be scaled down, an equivalent ultracapacitor would only need to weigh 281.5lbs/800 = .35lbs. (My battery clocks in at just under a pound.)
The capacitor described apparently stores ~180MJ.
Gasoline contains 39MJ/litre, so the capacitor contains the same energy density as 1 gallon of fuel (or 1.2 US gallons for leftpondians).
If we new the efficiency of converting energy in the capacitor into kinetic energy, we could compare the usefulness of this technology.
And, for amusement only, it would be entertaining to compare it with aircraft that travel >1000km on a cupful of natural gas. (Sailplanes/glider, of course :)
Ok, I have not read tfa (in this case tfp), but I do know a bit about capacitors. Follow along with me here: You can calculate the energy stored in a capacitor (in Joules) by E = .5*CV^2 where C = capacitance (in Farads) and V = voltage, or
--> V = sqrt((2E)/C)
--> 3500 = sqrt((2*187992000)/52.22)
3500v is a lot. Up until now most comercially available supercapacitors do 5.5v or less and tend to leak energy over time. It's possilbe these guys have really made a stunning break through (the fact they filed for a patent is sure something), but the numbers set off my bullshit detector.
Don't mess with the bunny, outsideworld.org
It's only in Hollywood gasoline make cars explode with impact (or rather just before).
Sure they don't.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
The capacity is impressive for the size but I didn't notice anything about the rate power can be discharged or storage life. The two big issues with capacitors for storage have always been they tend to want to discharge all at once and left for several days they tend to loose power. If they have addressed these issues with this design it'd be a staggering advance given it's size and weight. I didn't try to do the math but it's enough storage to have a respectable range. The weight is actually far less than a standard car when you add in the difference in engine weights where as most electrics it's more because of battery weight. I hope it's real and not another concept where "it'd be great accept....". I'm waiting for the punchline that it'll do 0-60 in under 4 seconds but the power discharges in 5 seconds.
No one has noted yet that these caps also have insane *individual* unit specs! They're rated for 3500 V, have about 1 milli Farad and weight about *5 grams* each. This is absolutely unheard of. Normally you have to choose two from: small size, high voltage and high capacitance.
The energy that a cap contains is written as E = U^2*C, so it's obvious that scaling up the voltage gives you high rewards very rapidly. The problem has been that the insulating layers inside caps cannot handle high voltages without being made very thick. This means less capacitance since ideally the plates should be as large as possible and as close as possible.
The bill of materials looks nice too: Aluminum, Barium, Titanium, simple plastic. If they can actually produce the goods, this could be very cheap to mass produce.
If they can commercialise this, it *will* revolutionarise portable power (3500 V inside your iPod?;). But until they show a working prototype I'd hold my horses and not bet on this to solve our energy storage problems.
I don't think that means what you think it means (here)...
At first I wasn't getting why this would have better capacitance than conventional materials. Then around page 6, I realized that they're laying down a lot of layers. Like, a micron of conductor and nine microns of dielectric in each pass.
This is what patents are really for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh.
Better use the heavy duty extention cord.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
In the patant it states 52.22 Kwh storage capacity, not 52.220 Kwh as in thousands (52 Mwh). Thousands are separated by comma in the text.
3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh.
Can a typical household handle such a load, or may be we may have to visit an electricity pumps to recharge. Either way does not seem bad at all.
Taken from http://www.theeestory.com/topics/934?page=2
"I have been following this blog for time. I, like most have been very hopeful that EESTOR will be successful. I was very encouraged when they were able to show some third party verification last summer. Then something recently happened that corrected my vision. That something was Gary Madoff. The experts have stated Gary Madoff could not do what he claimed for more than a decade. But peopled believed anyway. Some wanted to believe so much they threw away their entire fortunes. There were two clear signs Gary Madoff was conning people. One, secrecy is a must. Cons must always have a secret process because their process cannot stand independent review. "If I tell you how I do it others will steal my work " is the main stay of any con. Two, A goal everybody wants to believe badly. A con cannot succeed unless the people to be conned are desperate to achieve the goal the con man claims to be achieving. Gary Madoff had secrecy. Gary Madoff had returns everyone wanted to believe were possible. Sound familiar?"
In years past it got so bad the USPTO had to institute a policy that certain types of inventions had to submit a working model along with the application. My guess is that there was funny business invloved with this patent application. Follow the money, as they say.
Well of course it is. If you can't actually build a working device from the information disclosed in the patent, the patent isn't valid:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100_2164.htm
> 3500 V inside your iPod
When you popped that one, it became clear to me what the next step would be: a combination iPod / self-defense device....
Electric vehicle charge times seem to be limited by the capacity of household wiring at the moment.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I just had a look at the videos on that Silverbrook Research page you linked to. I haven't been so impressed with any printing technology since the first time I saw a laser printer. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish I had a couple hundred million bucks in venture money so I could back it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
http://michaelsmith.id.au
But when you're using Kelvin-wh's, what does it matter?
For more details on this, and people who have analyzed all the current data on in check out --> http://www.theeestory.com/
I've checked it out about once a week, for updates on it, but over the past year, it's heading towards vaporware.
"It is said to have a total capacitance of 30.693 F and can hold 52.220 kWh of energy."
Wait! How many Library of Congress could that battery power by hour?
@neonux
Page 4 line 10 says differently.
My house = 100 amps (max) * 110V = 11 kW.
So could this thing power my house for about five hours when a power line gets cut? If so, that might not be a bad investment for the house, depending on cost, of course.
The patent implies they had built at least 10 of these things (they have a table of test results), years ago when they submitted the patent. If it is real, there is no reason they can't demonstrate it publicly now. So where is it?
Though if you're parking at home it's likely to be for long periods of time, so a trickle charge would do just as well. Where you'd want a big hit fast is when you're out and about, and it'd be a lot easier to make commercial charge points available that can deliver when needed.
Ultimately this spells the end end for gas stations, when you could potentially plug in to charge up in a supermarket car park when shopping, or at the local cinema, or at work, or anywhere else you can think of where you park the car and leave it for a few hours to do something else.
Why not just have charging stations right next to the electrical substation in town?
Somehow I see this work with wireless electricy...
If it can really handle that sort of charge speed we're heading towards a way to store lightning.
Now THAT would be cool (figuratively speaking, of course :-)
Insert
Not necessarily. Electricity isn't free, and those petrol stations that are smart will retool pretty quickly as electrical distribution stations - after all, they're already distributed pretty well all over the country. A danger is having a whopping huge spark occur near those petrol vapour remnants. Also, just imagine plugging your car in at the mall, forgetting to set a max out, and coming back to find you've downloaded 32 gigajoules, and that'll be 1000$ please sir.
Yay me!
I finished my career in physics studying this material and this problem. This could be useful. Hate to see patents encumber material science. Let's get busy.
The stats are awesome for this if it's true. Here's a quick lowdown. Full stats are below (taken from PDF doc).
The weight is more than twice as light as Lithium Ion
The volume is 20% smaller than Lithium Ion
The charging time is 60x faster than Li-ion (15x faster than NiMH)
-----, EESU, NiMH, LA (Gel), Ni-Z, Li-Ion
Weight (pounds), 286.56, 1716, 3646, 1920, 752
Volume (inch^3), 4541, 17881, 43045, 34780, 5697
Discharge rate/30 days, 0.1%, 5%, 1%, 1%, 1%
Charging time, 3-6 min, 1.5h, 8h, 1.5h, 6h
Life reduced with deep cycle use, none, moderate, high, moderate, high
Hazardous materials, none, yes, yes, yes, yes
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Is the Volt coming with a free copy of DNF?
Lead acid batteries start to degrade quickly once taken below 60% of nominal capacity, and car batteries may only stand 30-40 cycles of discharge below 50%. My marine batteries weigh a total of about the same as the EEStor claimed device, and have a real-world capacity of 1.5kW/hour, if I don't want to replace them every 3 years. This is a ratio more like 30 to 1.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
usually you calculate the energy density in MJ (megajoule) per kg (Kilogramm). Why someone uses obsolete units like pounds escapes me, but if i calculate (the use of "." and "," is a little bit inconsistent, i'm using "," to designate fractional decimals) correctly:
281.56 pounds are 127 kg
52,2 kwh are about 188 MJ
The result are 1,5 MJ per kg. Though better than normal still a long way (by a factor of 30) from fuel gas.
Sincerely yours, Martin
*During this time period, everything was competing. There were dozens of electric car companies; steam, ethanol, diesel, gasoline were all competing.
I'm waiting for one that is fueled by weapons-grade plutonium.
When that baby knocks, it's going to *KNOCK*, big-time.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Now, using 1 Joule == 1 Watt for 1 Second, that comes out to 566kWh, roughly 10 times what this (and other) electrically powered vehicles can manage.
Looks like they have a long way to go before they have enough juice for mainstream use.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
With a few of these, you could power a tuly Fabulous Riverboat.
Unlike lithium-ion cells, the technology is said not to degrade with cycling and thus has a functionally unlimited lifetime.
"Lisa! In this house, we respect the laws of thermodynamics!!!"
An inductor in series with the EEStor capacitor will prevent sparking. Inductors resist dI/dt - but also store energy, and as dI/dt -> 0 their R approaches that simply of the wire the current is running through (ie additional R due to L -> 0).
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Any patent on a fundamental technology that mentions:
"Yeah, and then we parallel 31,353 elements to yield 30,693 Farad of capacitance"
was filed by scam artist in order to fleece stupid investors.
Go invest your money into something solid, like a bridge!
52 kWh in 5 minutes is 624 kW, and in 3 minutes is around 1 MW. This is completely beyond the capacity of any household that I've ever seen; even most major power plants would only have the capacity to charge a few thousand of these simultaneously.
3-6 minutes to charge that thing, that would mean a power use of about 520-1040 kW. Not too much for a gasoline engine, but huge for the power net. No home has that much electricity available. At 380V, 3 phase power supply it would take like 450-900 Amps to charge it that fast. This is a huge draw, and of course a serious peak for the power company.
Now to the real world. In my home we have an instant-on water heater, this is rated 21 kW. My father who used to work for an electricity company could barely believe me, so much power. This thing is rated 31 Amp at three-phase power (380V). Our home has a hefty 64 Amp, 380Vx3 available. That is because of this water heater, and all the aircos we have.
Compare this to a more moderate climate, like where my parents live: The Netherlands. They have like 32 Amp, single phase available. That's it. Fine for washing machine, dryer, lights, computers, etc, not for charging an electrical car.
Electrical cars are nice and all but the recharging is an issue. We have as yet no way to produce peaks of electricity like that. It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it. Charging a car like this at home may work, but it will have to slow down to a couple of hours to prevent melting the supply cables.
They claim that they can charge 50-odd KWH in 3-6 minutes - at 100% efficiency this corresponds to 1 to 0.5 megawatts of charge power, which would be pretty much impractical in any real-world application. I'd sure like to see that charging connector......
1/3rd the weight does not automatically mean you can stick 3 of them in there-- what if it happens to be VERY VERY LARGE???
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
just imagine plugging your car in at the mall, forgetting to set a max out, and coming back to find you've downloaded 32 gigajoules, and that'll be 1000$ please sir.
A full capacitor, like a full gas tank, won't accept additional charge. Plus, you can't spill electricity, so no, you're scenario is dumb.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
52 kWh in 5 minutes is 624 kW, and in 3 minutes is around 1 MW.
To put it another way, a 240V at 20A supply outputs 4.8kW and would take ~10 hours to charge it. Halving that to five hours (40A) would be beyond ratings for almost all household wiring.
Handily enough my local plant is a PWR with ~1.1GW net output. 2 additional nuclear plants are planned for the same location as well, so I should be fine by the time these supercaps make it to the main-stream.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
Most house circuits have a 20Amp breaker or fuse, but your house is not limited to that. It's not that hard to install a bigger breaker and run a thicker cable from your breaker box to your carport/garage (like the cable running to your central AC unit). Although if you have an open carport, I wouldn't recommend having an accessible outlet outside, or people will charge their cars at your house while you're at work, and you probably won't know until you get the $1000+ electric bill.
It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles.
It may not explode when you hit it, and I'm not genius with electricity, but can't capacitors discharge their energy pretty quickly? Wouldn't 52kWh discharged through a pile of metal with people trapped inside be somewhat less than safe?
Presumably, a charging station would have a bunch of their own EEStor units on premises, and wouldn't need to charge cars directly from the grid.
Basically you wanted to conclude with an adressing to the parent poster as "dumb" ("you're dumb") but nuanced and limited it to his scenario only but forgot to change the verb?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh.
Can a typical household handle such a load, or may be we may have to visit an electricity pumps to recharge. Either way does not seem bad at all.
Why not have a charging station in the garage with one of these units inside? It can be charging at a rate the house wiring can handle all the time, with the capability to quickly dump that juice into the car. Hell, integrate it into the house electrical system as a whole-house UPS while you're at it.
If the capacitor is cheap enough, you could have a second one at home, either on trickle ready to quickly charge the first, or remove the dead one and put in the other.
OK -- 52.220 kWh and you can charge it in 5 minutes or so. How?
Even if you have a dedicated 220 vac connection, how many amps do you need to draw to feed this beast in only 5 minutes?? Or are we going to need 460 vac connections at home?
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it.
Could you not build the electric equivalent of a gas station, which used a bank of ultracapacitors as a buffer between the power grid and the ultracapacitors in the end-users' cars?
Or for remote locations, use the same permanently-installed bank of ultracapacitors, but charging from one of those multi-decade no-maintenance fission power modules the Japanese are developing.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
6. touch ends to tongue to make sure it is charged
Let me preface this by saying I have never gotten a successful post to /. in scores of tries....if this ends up posted I may just fall out of my chair
A fundamental limitation of using capacitive energy storage is self-discharge rate / overall charge efficiency. If you park it for a week or two will all the charge be gone? Over -40C to +70C.
It's a tough problem.....
Not along the interstate for people who are on trips longer than the range though...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
52 kWh charging in 3-6 minutes?
Do the math - assuming a 220v domestic AC supply, that is 2-5 thousand amps. Typical domestic cabling is 50 or 100 amps in the USA.
Those kinds of recharge time will only be available with a dedicated power network.
The home recharge rate difficulties you outline don't really exist.
If mobile supercaps become affordable, then fixed home supercaps will be even cheaper, probably by a large factor because they can be much larger and heavier and less energy-dense. (You could even use lead acid batteries in the home charging station if that turns out cheaper.)
This means that your home AC supply can charge your home supercap station at whatever rate the mains wiring can stand (in particular, overnight when the electricity rates are cheaper), and then when the car comes home the home station just slams its stored power into the car's supercap at a huge rate and in a short time.
Transferring high power a very short distance is not a problem: just think very fat copper busbars and motorized conical high-area connections.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Just imagine if you short it... ouch ...
Thankyou, sometimes I forget how dumb I am.
A full petrol tank will leak petrol down the side of your car if you attempt to keep filling it. The meter will keep ticking over and you will be charged for all that petrol you spilt.
I don't know enough about capacitors to comment on that. I'm sure they'll find a way to charge you extra if they can tho.
Yay me!
Putting capacitors in parallel is not a novel idea. Been done for over 200 years now. So at first glance this patent looks challengeable.
Now of course they could patent the exact combination of plates and dielectric and packaging , if it is any way novel and non-obvious.
Couldn't the fueling stations have there own banks of these supercaps to buffer the power? Most stations aren't used continuously, so they could be supplied with more conventional power feeds.
Iâ(TM)m intrigued that the article's illustration (presumably from the patent application) states that there are 31,351 capacitors, while the text of the article states that there are 31,353. Which is it? The first number is prime, which means that there isnâ(TM)t a simple rectangular grid containing all of the capacitors (although a staggered arrangement, such as the stars in the current US flag might be possible). 31,353, on the other hand, is 3*7*1493, however it also doesnâ(TM)t easily form a rectangular array. I have to wonder how either of these numbers came to be involved in the design of this a device.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Most power lines are three-phase (no neutral)
How small can they make these? something like this could pretty much take over the Remote control vehicle market if they were comparably priced. Also, making one to fit the general size of the engine bay on a bike would yield some niche marketing.
It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it.
Ummm... yes it is... that's exactly what it is... You simply have one or two of these in your garage at home, "trickling" their charge from the grid at whatever speed is reasonable for your supply/wiring, and when you want to recharge your car, you connect your car to these, not to the grid. It charges at "full speed" at then you drive off. That's assuming you actually cared about fast charge of course - at home, I'd just charge slow since once I park my car in the evening, it doesn't come out again until the next morning. I'd want "public charging stations" to give me a fast charge of course for those VERY occasional trips I take in the car that'll go beyond my "there and back" range, but they'd just have the same concept on a bigger/more distributed scale.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Better yet:
1. Part Ev Under power cables
2. Wind a big coil and connect it to the charging port
3. ???
4. Profit
Yay for powersteal!
The taste left in your mouth from unplugging Joe's car and plugging yours in to his meter is a lot better than sucking on the siphon to get the gas out of Joe's tank.
There are locking outlet covers that require a key. They make them even for 110V outlets.
So buy 2 of them, leave one in your house to trickle charge all day. When you get home, plug your car into the home one.
Or swap them, if you've got a crane handy.
You may want to use precision words in the discussion. I think there is a little confusion with the use of explosion and combustion between you and the GP. I think the GP is referring to detonation, which is characterized by supersonic combustion. I think you are referring to deflagration, which occurs subsonically.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonation
What should be happening in your engine is deflagration. I am not positive, but I think knocking is detonation not deflagration.
As the eminent scientist Geoffery Ballard (inventor of the hydrogen fuel cell) once said to an audience I was in attendance at, if I may paraphrase: batteries are different from bombs only in the amount of time it takes to release their energy.
Storing lots of energy is only as useful as it is safe.
Wikipedia says a lithium-ion battery is about 540 to 720 kJ/kg. Based on the article summary, this device has 52 kilowatt hours in 281 lbs which is 1,469 kJ/kg. So this has twice the energy density of a modern battery.
You could run a 100 horsepower equivalent car at full power for about 45 minutes. Counting you won't be using full power most of the time you could get a lot of mileage out of one of these.
I really hate the use and misuse of hype words like ultrahigh. What comes after ultrahigh? Is the next level double dumb-ass amounts of energy?
The one I've always liked least was some artist who used left over metal parts from Los Alamos atomic work for sculptures he said had transformed death into super good energy.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Back to basics. A capacitor is an insulator between two conductors. The key concept here is that their insulator has an insanely high breakdown voltage, which is why they can supposedly make an ultracapacitor that operates around 500V instead of the usual 5V or so.
The patent says "The alumina-coated calcined CMBT powder and the poly(ethylene terephthalate) plastic have exceptional high-voltage breakdown and when used as a composite with the plastic as the matrix the average voltage breakdown was 5.57 * 10^6 V/cm or higher. The voltage breakdown of the poly(ethylene terephthalate) plastic is 580 V/micrometer at 23 degrees C. and the voltage breakdown of the alumina-coated CMBT powders is 610 V/micrometer at 85 degrees C."
Note how many different units they use. Conventionally, dielectric strength is quoted as KV/mm. So we have
First, why did they make a composite that's worse than either of its components? This would be obvious if they used the same units for all their breakdown voltages in the patent.
Second, those are unreasonably good numbers. The usual breakdown voltage for PET as used in Mylar capacitors is only 17 KV/mm. Why is their PET 35 times as good as everybody else's?
(Check this, please. Look at the actual patent image. The searchable text version at the USPTO doesn't show math symbols very well.)
The energy storage numbers that they claim are quite impressive. 55kWh for 285 lbs is absolutely remarkable. As someone else pointed out in another comment, a lead-acid battery with a comparable weight would only provide 4-5kWh. Lithium batteries generally have an energy density of about four times that of a lead-acid battery, so this technology still gives a 200-300 percent improvement over Lithium batteries in terms of power to weight ratios. What's really impressive is the stated charge times and self-discharge rates. To be able to pump 55kWh of power into something and store it within 3-6 minutes without creating huge heating issues is an amazing feat. Their leakage current of 4.28 micro-Amps means that it will stay virtually fully charged for years. One thing which I thought was kind of strange though was that many of their measurements were done at an ambient temperature of 85C (185F). Do you think this is to simulate operation near a hot car engine?
4. Call undertaker (which will be difficult to do since you'll be dead)
Of 'production' vehicles, the Tesla is currently the best of the pack for regenerative braking. But then, like you note, it's pack is designed more around capacity than amperage. The LiIon chemistry is also more efficient at taking a charge than NiMH.
For most hybrids, they're actually designed more for amperage - they want to keep the battery pack small and light, after all they still need to shove an engine in there. Also, because of said engine they can afford to be a bit lax on the regenerative braking. So they generally can't pull all the energy from an 'emergency brake', but can do a moderately hard stop from something like 40mph.
At the size needed to get those amperages, you get at least a few miles of capacity, so until we start shifting to plug in hybrids, they're good enough.
I don't read AC A human right
So "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT, wrong!" would have been appropriate? And you totally messed up that chance...
That's why you run a new specialized line from the breaker panel to the garage and have it be 160A (leaving just enough while charging to run the basics of the house on). Most houses have 200A coming in.
That's about a 2.2 hour charge.
The better way to do it is just have another of these at home trickle charging and use a busbar style system to charge the car in minutes.
Given what I've seen of the Volt, there isn't any space to be taken away in the Cabin, really. There are women's purses that won't fit in what the Volt calls the 'trunk'. Then again, you don't expect to see women who carry those purses in a Volt either...
Shaving off nearly 500 pounds will still increase the range of the volt, though. It's not that heavy of a vehicle to begin with. Though it would need increased/more complex charging/discharge logic and equipment, so the savings might be closer to 400 pounds.
Eh... I'd like to see a PHEV light truck with two of them underneath the bed. No need for sandbags in the winter!
I don't read AC A human right
Iron takes about 450-500kWh/ton to melt to 2775F. A 1MW supply could easily melt 2 tons of iron an hour. Or charge 20 cars.
The weight is more than twice as light as Lithium Ion ...also known as "less than half the weight"
in this case I think step 4 is more like !!! than ???.
For these capacitors to be competitive, they have to retain their charge for some considerable time.
At what rate do these lose their charge?
The device is said to have a weight of 281.56 pound including the box and all hardware.
So, about the weight of an adult American.
(IAAA.)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
But, how long will it take to charge with the optional Mr. Fusion unit? How about with the optional lightning-rod emergengy-charging attachment?
Speaking as a Professional Engineer, there are capacitors that are not the simple dual plate (ceramic or electrolytic) you seem to think is the norm. Most utilities use capacitors with ratings up to several hundred thousand volts. they use (mostly) similar in concept designs to what you are used to, but spacings and insulators differ. Charge/discharge times differ too. the larger capacity units are physically quite large. Speed of light, internal reactance, etc. will limit how rapidly the charge can go in or out. Utilities use these units to adjust the power factor of a line to limit losses.
The unit under discussion seems to be a mix or matrix of small spheres coated in a conductor, suspended in an insulating matrix. similar designs have been proposed and made in laboratories since the time of Tesla (Nikolai, not the car). Most didn't work. This one is claimed to work in the lab. Each small sphere is a separate charge holder. As long as the insulator is thick enough, the unit should hold. The voltage is probably the highest they could get in the lab. That's to keep the KWH up. There will need to be a high voltage power supply, with a bleed off down to the voltage used by the motor. (Two way I hope). It'll take a lot of electronics to make this thing really work. There will be some power loss in the matrix. Some leakage, as well as some internal impedances to deal with. The car engineers should take care of that. If they can't, then it will just be another unfulfilled promise. The last hundred years is littered with those.
If that voltage could be raised an order of magnitude, I could use a couple of these on a substation I'm working on. If they are suitable for 60 Hz, that is.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Everything that can store energy has the option of exploding. If the density of the energy is about that of a normal car battery, it's slighly difficult to get it to explode. Once you get to the energy density of a li-ion battery, you start getting a serious option of explosion. So much that apparently doing something slightly wrong makes the devices explode in the field without much provocation.
If this is to be (much) better than LI-ion, then it certainly has the option of explosion.
If there is some natural barrier that will hold the reaction elements apart, that barrier will break down given enough temperature. Then the chemical reactions will happen without electrical current being produced. In that case more heat will be generated, and the process will "run away" (go faster quickly). Booooom!
In batteries, this happens if you short the terminals. Because the voltage at the terminals becomes zero if you properly short the battery, a large current will flow, and no electrical energy will be delivered to the load (there is none). Lot s of energy will be released as heat in the internal resistance of the battery, and it will heat up. To the point that whatever barriers were present melt and the reaction runs away.
... a metallic ball the size of the Earth would have a capacitance of 1 F. If the claim is true, we are truly in for a treat.
For TONS of discussion on this topic, check out www.TheEEStory.com :)
-Bretspot
The typical argument here is that you'd install a second one of these cells in your house, trickle charge it, and fast-charge the car from it when you get home.
Domestic use for a cell like this intrigues me just as much as automotive use. 52kWh is enough for at least a few days domestic use, more than enough to compensate for natural variations in the output of your windmill, solar, etc. As long as you have an average generation output high enough, the arguments against local micro-generation based on variability of insolation and wind go away.
As someone who's been watching this particular tech for a while, I still really hope that it works ; it could really help us all.
In fact, if it does really work, Mr Obama could do worse than making the inventors bona-fide American Heroes, giving them a cool billion dollars apiece for their trouble, and then ... freeing the technology.
Let's face it - if they work, the Chinese will be knocking them out by the tonne with no qualms within a year or two. Better to start everyone on a level playing field.
I read the patent. They are using high (super hi?) permittivity dielectrics. My experience with them is that they exhibit nonlinear charging since the permittivity is high for a narrow range of voltages and the capacitance is not constant with respect to voltage. After polarizing at 4000V (+/- 2000V)these devices could easily exhibit small signal capacitances they claim. However at lower voltages they may not accept charge so readily and therefore not hold the energy that calculate from E=CV^2/2.
Anyone else know more about these dielectrics?
For the 3-min charge of this thing here though I doubt just installing a new breaker would do. I'm not sure about the US, but I don't think you can actually get that much power delivered to your home with low voltage. To charge such a battery in 3 minutes would require _over 1 MW_ ! Would require something like 3x1600A at 230V, and twice that for 110V. Needless to say, that would require some serious cabling... Of course for industrial use you can get a 20kV connection which should easily do... If you'd be content with 1 hour charge of this battery though, you'd only require about 3x80A at 230V, which electric power companies indeed provide (though most one-family houses here are limited to less).
I don't know how shit works over in the US but here any overhead power distribution would be poly phase with no neutral. You could use the general mass of earth as your 0v potential but then you would have to play "guess the distribution voltage" which would be anywhere between 11kv - 400kv, you'd be much better off just nicking some electric from the street lamps like the gypsies do.
All depends on location good sir/mam. My recently built (only 1.5 years old) townhouse in a western suburb of Chicago had a 100amp entrance, which I immediately upgraded to 300amps. I already had an electrician come out and drag a 90amp circuit from my panel to the garage to support the 220V 70A charger my Tesla Roadster will require. The electrification of transportation will be a process that takes about a decade. This is more then enough time for us to work out power distribution to homes, as well as the internal home distribution to the vehicles.
That's about 400Wh/kg; compare to 160 for lithium ion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion
-Carl
It's incorrect to say that capacitor storage will drastically increase the energy recovered from braking in an electric or hybrid vehicle compared to battery storage. The problem is that both the inverter (power transistor) electronics and motor have efficiency losses on the order of 5 to 7% each. Batteries do have additional losses when charging or discharging of about 15% in each direction, which a capacitor largely avoids, but there are still significant losses from the motor and power transistors. Remember those losses get applied twice, both then regenerating (decelerating the vehicle) and when using the energy to accelerate the vehicle again. There are also significant losses in the gears, tires, etc.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If regenerative braking and acceleration in an EV or hybrid were 100% efficient, they would be perpetual motion machines.
That said, capacitors would allow and EV to make use of significantly more regenerative braking energy than a battery electric vehicle. But the overall improvement is going from about 50% efficiency to 70% or about a 20% range improvement. That is very significant, but it's not perpetual motion and can't be due to the other losses.
That also said, practical capacitors would be a major shift in how we use energy for transporation and in general.
There's a much safer way of charging your EV from overhead power cables for free. People have been doing it to heat their homes (illegally, of course) in outlying areas of Canada for years: place an inductor under a 350kV powerline & run wires to your house. The powerline operators hate it because the inductance messes up their power factor, and the poachers eventually get caught because the powerline operators sporadically use a small plane to patrol their rights of way for inductors. But, a 10 minute recharge-and-flee time would make detection near-impossible!
I did the math. At 746 watts per horsepower, 52220 watt-hours of energy turns into 70 horsepower-hours of energy (70 horsepower for 1 hour, 35 horsepower for 2 hours, 7 horsepower for 10 hours, etc.). Two of these could provide 70 horsepower for 2 hours. A small car needing 50 horsepower to get to speed (say 60 miles per hour) and 45 horsepower to keep at speed could run for 2.8 hours, traveling a distance of 168 miles (on this alone). Not bad.
Anyone who's ever hooked up a capacitor, that has a polarity, backwards knows you can make a capacitor explode. Just reverse the polarity. I'd hate to see this this go up. Wow, 30F! To say it can't explode in a collision assumes much, including that nothing shorts the path or a live wire doesn't come loose and touch the wrong terminal.
I have to agree, 20A@220V is a bit on the low side. Electric Dryer sockets are 30A, and stoves are typically 50A. Though I'd suggest that you'd likely be able to run all four computers and the entertainment system from a single 20A@110V circuit. Assuming the computers are at all normal, and the entertainment is 'home' type.
While 200A is the modern standard, a LOT of homes have 100A or less. So I'd figure 50A being the max practical, for now.
Still, looking at the plug on my stove is a bit on the scary side.
As for the higher power levels - would require extensive rewiring and either transformers in all the houses to provide the lower voltage, or more high voltage lines running in neighborhoods.
Though I have thought on using a transformer to increase the voltage to around 600V, you'd be able to use a dryer sized cord to provide three times the power you'd be able to over the 220V version. That'd still pull 120A at the breaker, but charge quickly enough to give an 80% charge in around a couple of hours max.
As for fast charges outside - I don't want to hang around a station for an hour, better to put them in next to restraunts. Let me 'fuel up' at the same time. ;)
I don't read AC A human right
This technology definitely has the potential to revolutionize the energy storage industry, between the high energy density, the quick charge time, the ultra-low self discharge rate, and the potentially unlimited cycle life. I'm curious though...The patent mentions that a some of the electrical measurements were done at an ambient temperature of 85C (185F). Was this maybe done to simulate operation near a hot car engine? Is this the standard operating temperature of the device? Or were the results just much better when recorded in a warm environment?
"It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."
I'm skeptical. I recall reading ultra-ultra-capacitors have so far proven increasingly unstable as you find ways to store more and more charge. Researchers have found that out the hard way too. Once you reach high energy densities of charge you have what effectively is a bomb.
55kwh is a lot of stored energy, that can be unleashed by a simple short. Even if the capacitor material itself is super stable and won't internally short if punctured, you can still have that energy being dumped into an arc or whatever has shorted circuit. That's a hell of a big bang in the worst case scenario.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
It's sad how pitiful everything-but-hydrocarbons is as energy-storage.
I mean, these are pie-in-the-sky ultracaps, who knows if they'll ever live up to the promised given in the description.
But even if they do. 280 pounds for 50Kwh of energy ? 50Kwh of energy from petrol weighs on the order of 10 pounds, from diesel on the order of 8-9 pounds.
So, even if this turns out to work as well as expected, it's still a factor of 30 or so worse as energy-storage than plain-old-hydrocarbons. It's really amazing the oomph that that liquid holds.
Okay, so in the real world it's somewhat better. An electrical motor is more efficient than a modern combustion-engine, let's be generous and say by a factor of 2. But you're still talking a factor of 15.
Which means you either need to drag around 15 times as many pounds for energy-storage, or you're going to have to accept a lower range, lower performance, or some combination thereof. (in reality, probably the latter)
Oh, get me right, I'd be deligthed to have something like this work out. It's just depresing to look at how far behind electrical storage really is, relative to chemical.
The EESTOR stuff has been analyzed---yes buy some random guy on a blog, but somebody who really seems to know what he's talking about.
Only in freshman physics can you say that the energy in a capacitor is simply E=1/2 C*V^2---or more correctly---measure the capacitance at V=approx 0 and then extrapolate.
Barium titanate is definitely a known ferroelectric (this is not misspelled) material with a very high dielectric "constant" k.
But it it is not really constant! At sufficiently high voltages (i.e. interesting for power storage) you get dielectric saturation, meaning that k = k(V) in reality and it declines heavily. You just can't make atoms and electrons do what EEstor wants. There isn't enough place to stably put that much energy in electrons unless you change their energy states--which is otherwise known as chemistry---and gasoline.
And if you have 50 kW-hr or so in a little place, and you get a short thanks to a collision which breaks the circuits, there's no way to NOT have a freaking BIG ASS meltdown and explosion. That potential energy IS going to go somewhere and if it was all in E-fields and capacitance, it will discharge really fast if there is a hint of a dielectric breakdown and this will vaporize.
Only if the 50 kW-hr is experimentally measured, not imputed from a low power separate measurement of capacitance or dielectric constant, will I believe it.
I have the feeling that this patent document may really be used for continuing the funding cycle, not actually protecting a (nearly physically unbelievable) technology.
They probably did create a very good ultracapacitor with good materials processing, but I bet the energy storage is still in the ballpark range of known ultracaps.
Having it be otherwise would be like saying you've refined petroleum into a new chemical fuel which has the energy density of fissile uranium, and no radiation!
There isn't any Moore's law in thermodynamics.
"It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles" It's easy to compute that fully charged EEStor contains 1.5 MJ/kg of energy. Assuming that polyethylene terephthalate is the bulk of material by mass (specific heat 1.0 kJ/(kgÂK)), accidental discharge of any single unit (in a car crash, for example) would release enough energy to heat it to 1500 C. Melting point of PETE is only 260 C. At that point, battery components will start burning, bringing temperature even higher, and likely setting a chain reaction. And EEStor is extremely fragile, with enormous potential differences across tiny gaps (3500 V across the 10 micron gap). The likelihood of such catastrophic outcome in even a moderate car collision is high.
As far as I remember, the piston would do a (nuclear explosion) stoke about every second, but that could take you all over Solar System and beyond!
Paul B.
A full capacitor, like a full gas tank, won't accept additional charge. Plus, you can't spill electricity, so no, you're scenario is dumb.
Yes, but hilarious.
I think I worked out that a 2Wh AA battery can charge a 3,000F capacitor, so how does a 30,000F produce 50kW for an hour?
Actually not. I can imagine about 30 years from now out on the Interstate we'll have big service stations/restaurants/mini-shopping centers right next to a major Interstate highway intersection where drivers can park their cars into a parking space, plug in a commercial-quality charging cable to charge the battery, and after eating a meal or do a little shopping come back to a full-charged ultracapacitor battery pack in around 30 minutes.
For home applications, you'll plug into the same 220V connection used for electric dryers and electric ranges, and the charge takes only a few hours to complete.
Can somebody confirm my calculations, because I'm having trouble believing my numbers:
Ok, so Wikipedia says that lithium-ion batteries have an energy density of around 160 Wh/kg or 72 Wh/pound (google says 1 pound = 0.45359237 kilograms, or 0.45 kg/pound).
So, a lithium-ion that is the same weight as the EESU, by the numbers on the slashdot article, would store 72 Wh/pound * 281 pounds = 20232 Wh, or 20.23 kWh, less than half the 52.2 kWh of the EESU.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the full article yet, so this might be right, but as of now I'm having trouble believing they store more than twice the energy of a lithium-ion battery.
But that was the 1970s, people were tougher back then.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
1. Attach Enormous Coil to Car Roof.
2. Park under high voltage AC lines.
3. Profit.
(No ???. It's stupid for non-nonsensical plans anyway. Save it for things like: 1. Get "First Posts" on Slashdot. 2. ??? 3. Profit.)
(Yes, I know. Three phases. Near Zero magnetic flux, etc..)
Sigh. You're == you are.
The basic concept "store ennergy in parallel caps" is not new. The process and construction is new. The level of performance claimed is astonishing. I've read a fair number of patents and this one reads "Funny" The Claims are supposed to be very broad to capture as much area as possible. The claims in this patent are very very narrow.... it almost seems like it was not written by a patent professional, it reads more like a research paper. An example: Claim 2: The electrical energy storage unit of claim 1 wherein the PET plastic powder has an average particle size of 0.64um. Why put any specific number in a patent? So if you use a powder with an average size of 0.63um it will probably still work. Properly written claims should be very broad. My version of Claim 2 would be: The electrical energy storage unit of claim 1 wherein the PET plastic powder has an average particle size of less than 1 um. A lot of things just seem funny with eestor: They publish things like : "an independent company certified EEStor's production line's process as producing 99.9994% purity barium titanate powder " but don't publish things like: "an independent company verified that a prototype unit met the claimed energy density of xxx" Makes me leery of hype, the proof is in the product not the view graph, I don't care how pure your barium titanate is, I only care if your capacitor works.
It is unlikely that you would survive to complete step 2, since the high voltage will likely be able to travel through the rope.
Commonly used in Civil Engineering. (1 AcreFoot = the volume one acre in area and one foot deep.)
In reality it's industry specific.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Maybe bigger.
Of course if this is real they will build a smaller one for cars.
A half hour quick charger for homes could work out with the 10 minute reserved for 'charging stations' along highways.
Once they are cheep I plan on dropping a big hunk of copper across the terminals of a fully charged one. By remote from a safe distance of course. I might have to defeat an internal fuse of some sort, that's a given. Bet they'll 'pop' nicely.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not that you're white necessarily, but I think this is a good parody of why people think it is silly to get so up in arms about grammar and spelling in casual conversation.
It is unlikely that you would survive to complete step 2, since the high voltage will likely be able to travel through the rope.
Well I wouldn't try it in the rain. Better to wear rubber boots too.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
200 amp 240 volt mid-point neutral service is ubiquitous in the US although higher is possible. I anticipate that the next step up would be to bring the third phase down.
Actually a capacitor will accept unlimited charge (until it breaks, anyway) if a constant current (as opposed to a constant voltage) is used to charge it
You know, the application that patents were created for? The only (serious) problem with the patent system is that they've foolishly extended it to cover software, business processes, genes, and prime numbers, none of which are anything like the physical inventions that patents are designed to protect. While it may be true that these other types of "inventions" need some kind of government-guaranteed monopoly, patents are definitely the wrong mechanism.
I concluded a year ago that this was a lot of smoke and mirrors, mostly depending on the obvious square function of the formula for energy storage vs. voltage. However, several people who actually have worked with pure barium titanate note it's highly non-linear characteristics, i.e. its dielectric constant drops dramatically as the field gradient increases, an effect also known as dielectric saturation. It gets right down to atomic level physics. The reduction in capacitance at stated voltages is so great that the claims appear to be overstated by a factor of 100 or so! To make this work they are claiming they have overcome the fundamental limitations of this material. The patent spells out part of it but does not prove it actually works. Anatoly Moskalev gave some great analysis in this link: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=46 (search for "About EEStore supercapacitor hype") If correct, these guys are still using non-proven hype to attract capital. If any single investor has not had the device actually proven for both energy density and voltage, they are taking a huge, huge risk. Personally, I hope we are all wrong and this thing actually works. It would be a HUGE advance. However, I'm not investing nor holding my breath...
I can buy a 55 Farad supercapacitor that fits in my hand from Jaycar for about $20. They are very cool.
This looks like an altogether different supercapacitor.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And therein lies the problem. An extremely large part of the world's transportation relies on fossil fuels. Even if we could find an efficient way of running all that transportation with electricity, we'll need an efficient way of providing that electricity.
That goes for distributing it, but more importantly, for generating it. It's possible, but for now it's a lot more cost-effective to burn dead dinosaurs sucked out of the ground. A ready-made energy soup there for the taking. Sad, but simple.
Still, I'm excited about any invention/discovery that leads us down the path of not burning those dead animals. We need it.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Just leave the car slowly charging at night, while you're sleeping. The electric companies will love you for that.
True. Another point to mention is that the current grid wouldn't be able to handle the increased load if too many people bought cars with these in them at once. Of course, it would be easier for the grid to handle people charging them over the course of a few hours at night than to handle people charging them in 3-minute bursts during peak usage times.
In a way non-automobile applications are even more exciting. Imagine replacing all the AA, AAA, C, D, 9V, and Li-Ion batteries you come in contact with these. Higher power storage density combined with quicker recharge and nearly infinite number of recharges would be incredible. The fact that the "battery" will last longer than almost any device it powers is another interesting benefit (one I'm sure marketing departments of several very large companies will fight tooth and nail).
The biggest problem with off-grid wind/water/sun power is the lack of a good way to store surplus energy for later. Put a big one of these under your house, and it would be a lot easier to go without the grid (unless you also need to power your car ;-). I imagine a large array of these could be used on the grid in the same fashion, storing excess energy that is generated "just in case" a bunch of people flip a switch and need that energy to be there. When the capacitors are full, they can shut down additional turbines and save energy while knowing the energy will be available if a bunch of people flip that switch. I'm sure they already have capacitors for this purpose, but not with enough storage capacity.
Imagine what a few copper jacketed bullets could do if they were shot into a capacitor bank. I imagine that they would create shorts that would quickly turn into plasma, making a nice satisfying explosion with blue electric arcing throughout.
Man, if this tech really worked, action movies would have a new cliche to replace the "exploding gas tanks" they love. And the best part is : it would be realistic! (well, ok, Hollywood would probably still go overboard, and have a tiny subcompact blow up as if it had the capacitor pack of a Mac truck)
At that weight and charge time, add two to a car and call it good (if it all works as advertised) !!!
Actually, if you play your cards right, I bet you could park under the high voltage power cables, orient the capacitor just right, and let the electric field do it's magic. Free (as in beer) power!
This just came up.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Am I the only one who has thought of alternate uses for this capacitor? To name a few:
1. Electric fence upgrade - Why simply stun when you can turn them into a smoldering heap?
2. Coilgun - That is, if you can keep the coil from exploding, maybe superconducting electromagnets are in order.
3. Camera flashes - Just be careful not to turn it up too high - mainly to avoid destroying retinas, igniting clothing, or woodburning an entire wall.
That a battery maintains a fairly constant voltage as it discharges while a capacitor's terminal voltage decreases at a linear rate as it discharges. There will have to be some pretty fancy switched mode power conversion designs to make efficient use of a super capacitor that is charged to what, 3kv (really?), and then discharging down to say 150v (5% charge remaining). And then on top of that to take advantage of power recovery from breaking forces the darn thing to work in reverse and to whatever terminal voltage the capacitor has at that moment in time. I'm sure it's something that can be designed in time as it's mostly power semiconductors, inductors and lots of smart chips. I suspect that the motors utilizing capacitor power will best to be redesigned to work at higher voltages then most are in use today.
I heard Tony Stark was able to build one in a cave. With a box of scraps.
s/way/weigh/
Hate it when that happens. I need more sleep.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You can charge at night, and then use it to either charge your car during the day (you know that you will be running around), use it yourself, or sell it back to the power company. The advantage is that you buy it at a lower price than what you sell it back at (nighttime vs. daytime). The power company would then contract with ppl to guarentee a certain rate in return for GUARENTEED amount of power during the daytime. IOW, the power company can put in bigger base load power generators or there is Alternative Energy, and contract with a number of homes/businesses to handle peak loads. The big advantage for home owners is that they have a way to smooth the power (no spikes), and they have an emergency generator. Useful for when a transformer or a power line is taken out.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I never see this mentioned, but I wonder, what's the shelf life of the charge on these things? Once topped off, how long can you leave it until it drains itself? It can't be indefinite, from my memory of physics.
I know NiMH cells drain fairly fast (compared to non-reusable batts) - I think the half life is in the range of a few months. If ultracaps are comparable, that's probably good enough, but if it's hours or days, there may be some adjustment issues...
Perfectly Normal Industries
DAMNED EXPENSIVE for this to NOT work. At this time, batteries are the hold back. The majority of the costs of the roadster is batteries (something like 70K). Since the EESTOR is to be around 5K in costs, lets assume 10. Do you think that the electronics will costs more than 60K for doing that? Somehow I doubt that it costs more than 10K.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The reason is that the owners have indicated that they will NOT be selling to any hybrids. EV onlys. Take out the generator/engine/tank and you have PLENTY of room.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gas is going UP in price. Yes, it is down TODAY. But we all KNOW that it will go up. In addition, an ICE is a complex beast. LOTS of maintenance. An electric car has minimal costs on that. But best of all, in the west, electricity will costs much less than gas does and will improve with time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Uhh no... you've have to raise the input voltage to maintain a constant current. As soon as you exceed the max working voltage rating of the cap dielectric breakdown will occur, and the cap will short out, go open, or something similarly bad.
You have got to be kidding me, these guys together have already lost about 20 million in investors money throughout the years. They are really good at filling out patents though. Anybody reading this better realize that this is a load of horse apples.
-Xymox
Vague memories from my physics degree suggest that as much energy is wasted while charging the capacitor as is actually stored in it. See eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor#Power_dissipation. Does this mean that this system could only ever be 50% efficient? Does anyone know whether similar physics applies to battery systems?
You should go outside more.
> you're dumb
Hit the parent with a rolled-up newspaper please.
At least he knows the difference between a contraction and possessive forms.
4. BOOM!
... long-term vibration?
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
The point i was trying to make is that it'll take a bit longer to recharge than it will to just tank up with gas. So given the choice, are you going to sit around twiddling your thumbs at a local recharge station while waiting 10 minutes. Or are you more likely to head to your local Starbucks for a recharge in their car park, where you can have a coffee 'n bun + browse the net and check your email until your car is ready.
Plus, given that leccy is a lot cheaper than gas, where's the profit for dedicated recharge stations? Add to that an increased turn around time getting customers in and out: 10 mins to fill up 'vs' 2, and their profits are going to go down the pan.
I just don't think it's going to add up when more attractive recharge points can be purposed just about anywhere where the vendor can offer added value (and inducement for you to spend extra) while your car is charging.