Australias first Super Capacitor installation

[Homestar]

Listening to the radio this morning, a Melbourne company has just installed in a home a system that uses super caps instead of batteries to store power. Cost per KWh is almost the same as Lithium, but set to fall as the components are much cheaper - carbon the form of graphine and aluminium. Charging cycles are around 1,000,000 and design life is around 45 years, with no toxic chemicals or exposion risk due to mischarging etc. The can accept pretty much an unlimited charge current and can also discharge quickly if needed and can be taken to dead flat with no effect of the lifespan.

They are now bringing in 200 more units, that are all presold.

Quite impressed - Lithium may go the way of the dodo before it even gets into top gear - Elon Musk is reported to have said they are now looking at this tech for their cars.

Will be interesting to see where this goes in the next few years. 👍

[DiscoMick]

Do you have any more information? Sounds interesting.

[trout1105]

I wonder of you could use these to store lightning [thumbsupbig]

[donh54]

I often wondered about using caps as batteries when I was playing around with computers - you could get a pretty good zap off the big ones, even a day or so after powering down the system.
Wonder if you could claim carbon credits for the carbon you put in them? [bighmmm]

[Dorian]

Quite impressed - Lithium may go the way of the dodo before it even gets into top gear - Elon Musk is reported to have said they are now looking at this tech for their cars.


I'd reckon that they would end up with a mix of super caps and batteries. Supercaps for the regen braking and the batteries for longer haul. Capacitors by their very nature will self discharge faster than batteries and at a guess the supercaps would have to be heavier than Lithium per KwH.

Cheers Glen

[Homestar]

Do you have any more information? Sounds interesting.

Was trying to find the article earlier but with limited success. Will have another look when I get a moment.

[Homestar]

I'd reckon that they would end up with a mix of super caps and batteries. Supercaps for the regen braking and the batteries for longer haul. Capacitors by their very nature will self discharge faster than batteries and at a guess the supercaps would have to be heavier than Lithium per KwH.

Cheers Glen

Weight is about the same apparently - not sure on self discharge levels, but small super caps in electronics will hold their charge for months.

A combination of the 2 would make sense.

[vnx205]

A few years ago when electric bikes began racing at the FX Superbike series, I asked one of the riders about regenerative braking.

He said that while racing bikes brake hard, it is normally only for brief periods and that it is hard to feed power into batteries that quickly.

He suggested that capacitors might be the answer. So a combination of batteries and capacitors seems to make sense.

[Homestar]

The interview I heard it on was on ABC - the podcast of the whole morning is here - Mornings - Mornings - ABC Radio (http://www.abc.net.au/radio/melbourne/programs/mornings/mornings/9495666) - it’s about half way through.

[DiscoMick]

The interview I heard it on was on ABC - the podcast of the whole morning is here - Mornings - Mornings - ABC Radio (http://www.abc.net.au/radio/melbourne/programs/mornings/mornings/9495666) - it’s about half way through.Thanks for your trouble. I have also done some other reading. Interesting stuff.

[scarry]

I often wondered about using caps as batteries when I was playing around with computers - you could get a pretty good zap off the big ones, even a day or so after powering down the system.
Wonder if you could claim carbon credits for the carbon you put in them? [bighmmm]

Had a good few hits from start caps over the years.

You want to try working on inverter boards in these modern ****box AC units.

Turn off the power,wait 30 minutes,disconnect and carefully remove from unit,put it down on something metal,and it will short out and jump 10mm in the air....

[bee utey]

The biggest problem with capacitors is that their terminal voltage varies directly with the state of charge. The electronics needed to supply a stable voltage to the car's propulsion system would have to be able to handle a wide input voltage and would probably be somewhat inefficient. One would hope that these super caps would be really cheap to manufacture in bulk.

[JDNSW]

Supercapacitors have been "the coming thing" for a couple of decades. Their advantages are obvious - far higher efficiency than any battery, far longer life than any battery, almost zero self-discharge, use no strategic materials, and very high rates of charge/discharge are possible.

But there are a few disadvantages - As Bee Utey says, the terminal voltage varies directly as the state of charge, which, while it complicates the electronics, does make it easy to measure the state of charge.

More significantly, manufacture of them is relatively expensive compared to batteries, and they are physically fragile compared to batteries (supercapacitors, not capacitors) because to get the "supercapacity" means having both the dielectric and the plates very, very thin. And physical damage can mean very rapid self discharge, with serious safety issues. I don't think that currently they are able to match lithium for either energy/kg or energy/cubic metre, but except for vehicles, that may not be an issue.