[Jedi Master Pikachu]

This could be very big. Batteries are holding a lot of portable devices back.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

ping.

[reagan_fanatic]

Bump

[theFIRMbss]

>A secretive Texas startup developing what some are calling a "game changing" energy-storage technology

Work faster! Stevie needs to sell ten million phones that will not blow up . . .

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

What sort of car would be in -40 Celsius (-40 Fahrenheit) temperatures? Hot weather and friction would seem to be more probable to break the ultracapacitor (coming from a non-expert).

[from occupied ga]

ultracapacitor power system to replace the electrochemical batteries in everything from cars to laptops

Sniff sniff - I smell stockholder scam.

[A. Pole]

Interesting

[BuffaloJack]

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

[listenhillary]

If someone finds a way to release all of that energy at once, it will make quite a bang. (hint hint)

[Lee'sGhost]

Dilithium crystals?

[Lurking in Kansas]

... it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company.

And if you purchase today --prime vacation real estate in Florida at 1/2 price!!

/right

[CedarDave]

A secretive Texas startup developing what some are calling a "game changing" energy-storage technology broke its silence this week.

Cold fusion lives!!!

/sarcasm

[Centurion2000]

bump for later

[Deguello]

"Crazy? That's what they said about my Flux Capacitor"...Dr Emmett Brown.

[No Blue States]

sounds good. I hope it pans out.

[19th LA Inf]

Burke, meanwhile, says that there's a big difference between making powder in a controlled environment and making defect-free devices in a large quantity that can survive underneath the hood of a car.

"Under the hood" is the worst possible place for a battery of any kind. I just had the battery replaced in our 1998 Mercedes E320 wagon, which we bought with a new battery in 2002. The battery was still going strong after 5 years, the longest life I have ever experienced with any battery. It lives in a closed compartment under the middle seat, and after 9 years this area is as clean as anyone's kitchen. Even old VW Beetles of 40 years ago had the battery mounted well away from the hot engine compartment.

[Old Professer]

Where would you sit in a 100 pound car?

[TC Rider]

Sounds like the bead condenser (model #: AB-619), I used to build my Interocitor.

[Gritty]

This must be a scam.

I don't see where it was developed with lavish government energy subsidies or funding...

[The Enlightener]

Color me skeptical about this article. Capacitors as a replacement for batteries are not new. The problem has always been that no matter how high you get the voltage, capacitors discharge faster than chemical batteries, because once the charge is gone, it stops working. Chemical reactions in a battery tend to produce a steady current at a steady, low voltage for a long time. Capacitors charge up to a high voltage, and as the current is drawn off, the voltage goes down, in a V=IR fashion. Thus the comments in the article about how capacitors are usually used in application where a large initial draw of current is needed(such as fluorescent lighting), which then settles into a steady draw.

So capacitors are useful in circuits to prevent surges(they store the excess current or blow out), or to store up current/voltage for a heavier than usual load. They usually do not make a good battery because they will exhaust too quickly to make them practical. There are some pretty ominous statements in the article too:

On the other hand, EEStor's system--called an Electrical Energy Storage Unit, or EESU--is based on an ultracapacitor architecture that appears to escape the traditional limitations of such devices. The company has developed a ceramic ultracapacitor with a barium-titanate dielectric, or insulator, that can achieve an exceptionally high specific energy--that is, the amount of energy in a given unit of mass.

The trick is to modify the composition of the barium-titanate powders to allow for a thousandfold increase in ultracapacitor voltage--in the range of 1,200 to 3,500 volts, and possibly much higher. By some estimates, it would only require $9 worth of electricity for an EESU-powered vehicle to travel 500 miles, versus $60 worth of gasoline for a combustion-engine car.

And there it is. All of this is probably true, but the ultimate question is: how many times did that capacitor need to be recharged in that 500 miles? There seems to be some handwaving going on here.

In a traditional ultracap, that permittivity is given a rating of 20 to 30, while EEStor's claim is 18,500 or more--a phenomenal number by most accounts. "This is a very big step for us," says Weir. "This puts me well onto the road of meeting high-volume production." Jim Miller, vice president of advanced transportation technologies at Maxwell Technologies and an ultracap expert who spent 18 years doing engineering work at Ford Motor, isn't so convinced.

So that number is phenominal by all accounts, but has it been tested and confirmed to be true? It almost seems to be a claim from company literature. I'll bet I know why the engineer is not impressed.

"We're skeptical, number one, because of leakage," says Miller, explaining that high-voltage ultracaps have a tendency to self-discharge quickly. "Meaning, if you leave it parked overnight it will discharge, and you'll have to charge it back up in the morning."

He also doesn't believe that the ceramic structure--brittle by nature--will be able to handle thermal stresses that are bound to cause microfractures and, ultimately, failure. Finally, EEStor claims that its system works to specification in temperatures as low as -20 °C, revised from a previous claim of -40 °C.

Here's another reason capacitors don't make good batteries--they tend to self discharge at an astonishing rate. So even if all the above claims are true, and you get it into a car, it's possible that when you park your car while you are at work, your car loses a huge percentage of it's charge(if not all of it), so every time you park the car for more than a few hours, you have to charge the thing up again. I'm sensing a huge potential flaw with this technology right there.

Safety is another concern. What happens if a vehicle packed with a 3,500-volt energy system crashes? Weir says the voltage will be stepped down with a bi-directional converter, and the whole system will be secured in a grounded metal box. It won't have a problem getting an Underwriters Laboratories safety certification, he adds. "If you drive a stake through it, we have ways of fusing this thing where all the energy is sitting there but it won't arc … It will be the safest battery the world has ever seen."

Up to a point this is true, because capacitors store their charge in a dielectric manner on two plates with a nonconducting material in between them. I'm finding it a little hard to believe that you can't get an arc if you put a conductor between the plates though. I guess what he's saying is that the capacitor will explode(he's being nice by saying it will "fuse" or melt), but no current will escape under such conditions. I'm not sure about this though, because people used to get killed all the time by shorting out capacitors in TV sets that really were not at that high a voltage.

Regarding concerns about temperature, leakage, and ceramic brittleness, Weir did not reply to an e-mail asking him how EEStor overcomes such issues.

Nonetheless, the company has some solid backing. Its board has attracted Morton Topfer, former vice chairman of Dell and mentor to Michael Dell.

So no answers to the the important questions. And I'm not going to fall for the idea that investors are savvy enough to know if this idea will work or not--typically they only look at your business plan and see if it is reasonable. If your business depends on some miracle happening, I wouldn't expect investors to know if the science here is good enough, so an appeal to authority is not a good enough argument here.

Weir maintains that his company will meet all of its claims, and then some. "We're not trying to hype this. This is the first time we've ever talked about it. And we will continue to meet all of the production requirements."

If your not trying to hype it, why put out a press release? I'm still skeptical . . .