ultracapacitor battery to replace gasoline?

Anyone know anything about EESTOR Inc. and their new battery that is supposedly way better than lithium ion, recharges in 4 minutes, can power a vehicle up to 125km/hr and lasts up to 250 miles before it needs to be recharged?

http://media.cleantech.com/2644/zenn-gearing-up-for-eestor-powered-car

Originally posted by uzless
Anyone know anything about EESTOR Inc. and their new battery that is supposedly way better than lithium ion, recharges in 4 minutes, can power a vehicle up to 125km/hr and lasts up to 250 miles before it needs to be recharged?

http://media.cleantech.com/2644/zenn-gearing-up-for-eestor-powered-car

I don't believe in it.
Something I want to know is how much power does it leak during standstill?

Originally posted by uzless
Anyone know anything about EESTOR Inc. and their new battery that is supposedly way better than lithium ion, recharges in 4 minutes, can power a vehicle up to 125km/hr and lasts up to 250 miles before it needs to be recharged?

http://media.cleantech.com/2644/zenn-gearing-up-for-eestor-powered-car

No matter how much energy it stores, it is not a replacement for gasoline, it does not generate energy, just stores it. The energy to charge the battery still has to come from some place, and that still might be fossil fuel. If it comes from solar, then it may be green but if it comes from coal, it may be worse envronmentally speaking.

In answer to Fabian's question, I saw a press release saying it loses 0.02% per month as compared to 1.0% per month self discharge rate of lithium ion batteries. Some 200 times less energy loss per month.
Whether all that is true or not, 250 mile range, 5 minute recharge, etc., only time will tell. It would be great if true. It would be the ultimate commuter car if so. One thing I know about ultra capacitors is they are inherently low voltage cells, 1.5 volts or so. In order to get that up, you can say, put two in series to get 3 volts but that cuts the capacitance in half, so if you put ten in series, it is 15 volts but one tenth the capacitance, which may be ok if you have millions of farads available. Most of the electric cars I know about uses a lot higher voltage than that however, 60 volts maybe. It may not matter, you can also raise the voltage electronically but that requires electronic packages capable of operating with extremely low voltages and extremely high currents, not sure if that is done yet. For instance, the bandgap voltage of silicon is 0.7 volt so you cannot go much below that in silicon transistors and get it to operate but 1.5 volts is possible, barely. If you need say, 30 Kw to run, then if you only have 1 volt available, you need 30,000 amperes. 2 volts, you need 15,000 amps. 1.5 volts, 20,000 amps. Them is a lot of amps!
Consider batteries for car starters pump out maybe 1000 amps max, look at the size of the battery cable, then make it 20 or 30 times thicker and you have an idea of how much that would cost in copper.
So it seems they would have to be able to pump up the voltage someway, maybe a combination of cells in series followed by another stage of electronic voltage boosters. So the voltage regulator section will add to the cost of the system no matter what. I doubt seriously if anyone on earth has a 30 kw electric motor that runs on 1.5 volts, it would have to be about the size of the car if so🙂

Originally posted by uzless
can power a vehicle up to 125km/hr and lasts up to 250 miles before it needs to be recharged?

http://media.cleantech.com/2644/zenn-gearing-up-for-eestor-powered-car

This info is for what vehicle?

Originally posted by sonhouse
In answer to Fabian's question, I saw a press release saying it loses 0.02% per month as compared to 1.0% per month self discharge rate of lithium ion batteries. Some 200 times less energy loss per month.

Well, I don't shut any doors here, I'm open for the technology if turns out to be good.

So we charge the capacitors with the household electrical plug, say, over night. Now we buy our energy to run cars with at the gas complany. In the future the driving cost is put on the electrical bill, right? So the infrastructure of electrical production and delivery should be strengtened conciderably. Now I consume x kWh a year, what will it be if I have a capacitor vehicle? 2x kWh? or 4 or tenfold what I have today?

Where do we get our electricity? Do we have to build more nuclear plants in order to get enough power do run all the capacitor cars with? Is this a problem?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Well, I don't shut any doors here, I'm open for the technology if turns out to be good.

So we charge the capacitors with the household electrical plug, say, over night. Now we buy our energy to run cars with at the gas complany. In the future the driving cost is put on the electrical bill, right? So the infrastructure of electrical production and deliv ...[text shortened]... ear plants in order to get enough power do run all the capacitor cars with? Is this a problem?

Of course that is an issue, but the issue of scale and efficiency shouldn't be overlooked. It's much easier to improve efficiency on a power plant level than on individual combustion engines. For example, considerations about weight and size of the engine are a limit on the options available for development of more efficient technologies.

Originally posted by Palynka
Of course that is an issue, but the issue of scale and efficiency shouldn't be overlooked. It's much easier to improve efficiency on a power plant level than on individual combustion engines. For example, considerations about weight and size of the engine are a limit on the options available for development of more efficient technologies.

And we need a lot of improvement of power lines from the producer to the comsumer. The electrical consumption of electrical power, compared of today, will be - twice? Thrice?

There is a lot of chemical energy in petrol, that now have to be converted to electrical energy...

Originally posted by FabianFnas
And we need a lot of improvement of power lines from the producer to the comsumer. The electrical consumption of electrical power, compared of today, will be - twice? Thrice?

There is a lot of chemical energy in petrol, that now have to be converted to electrical energy...

Indeed. More than the amount itself, the problem will be dealing with gigantic peaks as people come home from work and plug in their cars after rush hour. This is a major issue as one of the main problems electricity producers and distributors have is dealing with consumption peaks.

Originally posted by Palynka
Indeed. More than the amount itself, the problem will be dealing with gigantic peaks as people come home from work and plug in their cars after rush hour. This is a major issue as one of the main problems electricity producers and distributors have is dealing with consumption peaks.

Expensive electricity during rush-time, cheap electricity during night hours. Timers at the outlets.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Expensive electricity during rush-time, cheap electricity during night hours. Timers at the outlets.

You'll still get two large peaks, although obviously lower. When after rush-time for those who don't mind paying extra to have the car ready to go if they need to and another after the night-hours start when the timers kick in.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Well, I don't shut any doors here, I'm open for the technology if turns out to be good.

So we charge the capacitors with the household electrical plug, say, over night. Now we buy our energy to run cars with at the gas complany. In the future the driving cost is put on the electrical bill, right? So the infrastructure of electrical production and deliv ...[text shortened]... ear plants in order to get enough power do run all the capacitor cars with? Is this a problem?

I would like to know exactly how much energy and for how long it would take to charge up such a battery. There are already Lithium Ion battery powered cars one can buy that give 350 km range, but the cost right now for that car is 100,000 dollars US, and I haven't heard how much energy it takes to run, like how many Kwhrs actually is stored. At about 10 cents a Kwhr US, 30 Kwhr would be about 3 bucks but I don't hear anyone say exactly how much it takes. If you think about the average house, it consumes about 2kw or about 48-50 Kwhr/day but if the car charges 30 Kwhr and does so in 5 minutes, that would be at a rate of 600 Kwhr which is way more than a house can provide so special wiring would have to be installed to handle that short term high current load. I am just running vague #'s but you can see the problem for house wiring.
230 volts, 100 amps is the standard house wiring here but the current required would be a whole lot higher than that but for shorter periods of time.

Another development is the reducing cost of solar energy. It can come down in price and will maybe to less than US$ 1.00 per watt, hanging around 1.65 a watt right now and may end up in a few years at 50 cents a watt, so a 1000 watt solar system could come in at 500 bucks, now its 1700 bucks. When they get down to 50 cents a watt or so, there will be a boom in sales of these devices and that will go a long way to power up electric vehicles.

There is one amazing technology still in the labs but maybe for real in 5 years or so: Solar cell power generating PAINT. If that were to be used on electric cars, what a match, eh! Imagine the car parked in an outside lot, formerly just getting hot as hell inside but now some of that energy tapped to add to the battery, it maybe wouldn't fully charge the system but it could conceivably give you say, 50% more bang for the buck. It could maybe generate 500 watts or so, but sitting still all day long just helping to recharge the battery. If it did exactly that, 500 watts for 8 hours, that would be a total of 4 Kwhrs, not bad from a paint job, eh!

Originally posted by Palynka
You'll still get two large peaks, although obviously lower. When after rush-time for those who don't mind paying extra to have the car ready to go if they need to and another after the night-hours start when the timers kick in.

But the peaks in demand would be at predictable times and could be planned for. The power production/distribution system could be designed to cope with the peaks fairly easily.

An example of this is half-time during major football (soccer for you in the US hehe) matches there is a noticeable peak as everyone gets up from the sofa and puts the kettle on. As a result power companies can take measures to ensure there are no problems.

In short, having several highly predictable peaks is not very much of a problem, but it would need to be taken into account.

Originally posted by MattP
But the peaks in demand would be at predictable times and could be planned for. The power production/distribution system could be designed to cope with the peaks fairly easily.

An example of this is half-time during major football (soccer for you in the US hehe) matches there is a noticeable peak as everyone gets up from the sofa and puts the kettle on. ...[text shortened]... hly predictable peaks is not very much of a problem, but it would need to be taken into account.

Production is one problem. Delivery another.

1: Production. Some kinds of energy production cannot be changed over time. Solar, Wind and Wave energy cannot change momentarily. Hydro, nuclear and cole can.

2: Delivery. During hot weather conditions (Southern California) where AC is consuming a lot of energy, and cold weather conditions (Northern Finland) where heating of buildings the power lines must be dimensioned for the maximum usages. This is a weak point in the energy business.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Production is one problem. Delivery another.

1: Production. Some kinds of energy production cannot be changed over time. Solar, Wind and Wave energy cannot change momentarily. Hydro, nuclear and cole can.

2: Delivery. During hot weather conditions (Southern California) where AC is consuming a lot of energy, and cold weather conditions (Northern Finl ...[text shortened]... r lines must be dimensioned for the maximum usages. This is a weak point in the energy business.

That is true, but with correct planning the effects of unpredictable and unadjustable power supplies (eg. Wind, where you dont know if it will be windy or not, etc) can be reduced.

The energy can be stored somehow (in a chemical battery, or by pumping water uphill or some other method). This means that the actual production does not need to match the consumption all the time. If the energy is stored before being distributed then peaks in demand are less important, as long as the total energy produced over a longer timescale (say a week or so) is sufficient.

This is analogous to storing water. You dont need to to rain at the exact rate that you are using water all the time. You can store the water in reservoirs and then vary the rate at which you use water with no problems, as long as the total amount of rain over a longer timescale is sufficient to meet your needs.

A possible problem with energy storage though is the efficiency. I dont know very much about it, but storing and then retrieving energy can not be 100% efficient, meaning the total amount of energy generated would need to be larger then the total amount needed. But I have no idea about the actual efficiencies of energy storage methods.

Originally posted by MattP
But the peaks in demand would be at predictable times and could be planned for. The power production/distribution system could be designed to cope with the peaks fairly easily.

An example of this is half-time during major football (soccer for you in the US hehe) matches there is a noticeable peak as everyone gets up from the sofa and puts the kettle on. ...[text shortened]... hly predictable peaks is not very much of a problem, but it would need to be taken into account.

It is a problem because you need a large buffer in unused capacity to cover for these peaks, which remains idle for the rest of the time. The inability to store energy efficiently means that it must be mostly current production that covers this buffer. Long-distance (over time zones) power lines still have non-negligible losses.

So it is a problem even if it's predictable (as most peaks are).