EEStor Capacitors- "This could change everything"- by Lloyd Alter
Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star and website Clean Break has been digging around a very secretive company. Asking them for information they said: "EEStor is not making public statements at present time," company co-founder and chief executive Richard Weir replied when the Toronto Star requested an interview via email. "EEStor would also like to have you and your paper not publish any articles about our company and the Toronto Star is certainly not authorized to publish this response." which of course he published instantly in Canada's biggest newspaper, BoingBoing style. What they are doing in Austin with their Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers money is developing a "parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric" or hyper capacitor as John recently coined.
The batteries fully charge in minutes as opposed to hours. * Whereas with lead acid batteries you might get lucky to have 500 to 700 recharge cycles, the EEStor technology has been tested up to a million cycles with no material degradation. * EEStor's technology could be used in more than low-speed electric vehicles. The company envisions using it for full-speed pure electric vehicles, hybrid-electrics (including plug-ins), military applications, backup power and even large-scale utility storage for intermittent renewable power sources such as wind and solar. * Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle. * Finally, with volume manufacturing it's expected to be cost-competitive with lead-acid technology. "It's the holy grail of battery technology," said my source. "It means you could do a highway capable electric city car that would recharge in three or four minutes and drive you from Toronto to Montreal. Consumers wouldn't notice the difference from driving an electric car versus a gas-powered car."
No comments:
Post a Comment