Skeleton Ultra Capacitors | Fully Charged

oh and welcome to another episode of fully charged this time coming from Tallinn in Estonia an amazing country if you get the chance to do come and see it we've been brought here by the European Investment Bank which is fantastic that we've had this opportunity and we're coming to see a company that are creating ultracapacitors but they're doing it in a country that really has the most remarkable history of tech startups of tech innovation and creativity starting from a really low starting point at the end of the soviet era in the early 1990s they've become one of the leading tech countries in the world where was skype invented it was invented in estonia [Music] I've come here to find out what ultracapacitors are and I'm really hoping I'm kind of roughly in the right place [Music] so tabby first of all thank you so much for inviting us to come and see what you're doing it was very impressive but while I really want to do is get back to the sort of super basics ultracapacitors 101 for the complete novice Lee if you look at altar capacitors when they are fast energy storage components whereas Panther is a slow energy storage components because if you take out a capacitor when it takes 2 to 3 seconds to fully recharge alte capacitor secondly all the capacitors have 1 million deep charge/discharge cycles we all know what if you look at Tesla batteries for example the cafe denim see what panasonic manufactures it has about 3,000 to 5,000 cycles so that's new charge it then you drain it and yes you do that about 3 to 5 thousand times yes and we have all the capacitors you can do it 1 million times million times and we have done it in real life even over 1 million cycles and and know that the key thing is where all the capacitors are not the Silver Bullet because the total energy content in all the capacitors is smaller than in batteries meaning that you can get the energy in really quickly like braking energy and this is a perfect application because you don't brake for one hour your braking cycle lasts usual about 5 seconds and the same goes for acceleration now if you look at all the capacitors meant may actually not usually competing against batteries but what is more widely used in the industry is the combination because now you have this peak power device all the capacitors your he cooperate the braking energy you use it for acceleration but you can downsize the battery back because you don't need to oversize that for the maximum power and we have seen that in terms of initial cost which leads to over 10 percent reduction in cost secondly the high efficiency because you take the peak loads without a capacitor and thirdly and perhaps more importantly you can increase the battery life by up to 2 times because what kills the battery lifetime is this type of high peak powers and overheating and all the capacitor stakes by the way but if you look at the technology roadmap of all the gas when we see VAT five to seven years from now almost all new vehicles will have a lithium-ion battery pack for long rich driving and all the capacitor pack for fast charging and advanced charging when you can get in few tens of seconds the initial 50 kilometers of range because if you take away that the last gate entry barrier of fast charging when we are not only addressing passenger vehicle market but for example if you look at buses drugs even industrial equipment two weeks ago I was in Paris and if you go to Shawn merely say when actually you have buses which have altered a passengers on board and also alter capacitors in the charging station and this is already happening in real life if we go to China to Shanghai you already have this type of systems on the road but in our case what was real important in terms of scaling was also the push the policy push for European Investment Bank because we handle here is tolerate a significant amount of private capital and the fact that we could leverage what with VIP support allowed us to start two factories in Estonia and Germany increased the headcount and more importantly increase or impact in terms of revenues in terms of customers signed because now one of the things that I'm fascinated by having heard a lot about it but not being sure what it is is graphene because that it because you say that you're using code is that right curved graphene materials is that the description for it exactly and and now if you look at our material it's a graphene composite material and that allows us actually to achieve the price advantage we are have developed a composite material which can be scaled and where we have already proved today and I think most importantly we have happy customers who see what this technology from performance perspective but also from the value perspective gives them takes the advantage oryx the boost what they need when I look at the energy consumption in my Tesla so you get that graph which shows you you know that you're accelerating your slang going and if you could chop the top of that peak off by the fact that it was an ultracapacitor that had taken the power from breaking and used it to accelerate you can then see that I would go further on one charge as it were because of that because that takes a huge chunk out of the battery's capacity as it is now yeah exactly and we can always make a good comparison if we talk about all the capacities but if you look at batteries likely if you Mayan when we are like famous marathon runner so it's a more fatter but they run for two hours we have really good stamina really good technology now all the capacitors they are like Usain Bolt we have the peak power for in ten seconds nobody in the world can beat us yes but when when you ask you say import to start running a marathon he will be not so happy about it and an eyetie all the capacities so so we are essentially complementary technologies [Music] well then what so what this is these these strips will then via cut and then rolled up yeah that's what's inside that yes so the magic is actually on top of this foil right so so that's what's the that's the curve caffeine and and the Kiva's is in electrode packaging turkeys but you have to have the best density but you can't press it together too hard because otherwise you lose the surface area so it's it's always a balancing act that you have to apply force but you also have to be gentle about it right right so at this stage then the material that we saw been cut there is now being rolled I'm getting it now it's really it's lovely to watch this machine of googles so that's combining the two layers together rolling them up in yellow the sake of them mister mistakes per could graphene electrode and plus and minuses separated with our boy at the separator right and and basically this forms that like the chemical package which later on it when packaged into a cell and goes through the vacuum environment right we we take the electrochemical package then we press it together we make the necessary picture and actually very precise laser welding process is going on why because what was happening inside there and what is critical here is but laser welding has to be as strong as possible but at the same time you need to make sure that you don't well through the electrochemical package so from from quality perspective we here we invested in let's say pasting clients equipment right and and I think that the investment has paid off and after this we go into a vacuum environment so teeth vacuum high temperatures because the natural enemy of ultra capacitors is water and you have to get all the humidity out don't we come all immersed in this room yes ability in them yes so basically here here we have a 16 vacuum environment and why do you see this pops is is it's the the pumping in order to get that tip back here right so that's inside this yes cabinet yes and basically when the cabinet with me to the filling station where we add the electrolyte and after we have added the electrolyte it goes to final welding so we as you see we have actually three different welding steps but this is to be on the safe side but everything is as reliable as it can get right but then these are these standard sized modules that's really the only size you may actually make five different sizes so you see there are different sizes this is the bestseller right for some customers like for space products we make even very specific products same goes to motorsports industry but but this this goes into example passes drugs but also clean and renewables right windmills industrial equipment port grains and the base point it's a universal component and now the difference comes in on the module level value when you put on on a pad level 10 kilometers from here we have one of the largest container terminals in the Baltic Sea and in the container terminal we have achieved 30 percent fuel savings because while lowering containers the gravity is doing the work for you and you can take the energy and he use it for lifting so that's one way all the capacitors help so what are we seeing it so this is this is some of those those which go along sensor in a pack and this is what goes in a bus yes right this is a bus ultracapacitor yeah oh my god because I had no idea what was going to happen so that is an enormous amount of electricity going through those wires yeah causing an electromagnetic repulsion effect early wow that's amazing can you give give me an idea of how much power was coming out of there at that point you can take up to 100 kilowatts from this fact with a weight 100 kilowatts yeah we've a way to offer ten kilograms all right Wow and so yeah so to give that put that in perspective for like a battery batteries you'd have an elect our car to get 100 kilowatts from lithium-ion batteries you need something a lot bigger than that but you would need something which is at the minimum even with the highest power but that is 10 times larger than this right [Music] so tabby this this has got this is a big black box with skeleton technologies written on it what's inside inside we we have all taiga positives but we start with that type of welded packs so it's the same as those the ones we saw being constructed yeah that's the same building block right and now here what we have done we have built a full lightest system and full system solution and out of this cabinet we can take out the peak power of one point five megawatts if you would it one point five megawatts from that size because I'm still trapped in a lithium ion battery land where 1.5 megawatts would be huge yeah we're with with one boy impediments will leave you mind but as we would be talking about the full container yeah so so we we always say that we are not in the kilowatt hour business no but that's for batteries but we are in the megawatt second business so you're gonna have the smallest footprint and the lowest cost per megawatt second and and I think the innovation what we have brought to the market here is not the only the component performance but the fact it's it's the first in kind fully plug-and-play solution and if you look at this specific product here when this actually goes to I love egg we're all Scotland Scotland yeah and and I love a gas as we know was one of the first islands to go fully renewable energy what's the issue where is that we did not think so much about the peak power requirements because that the power loads are not static and now all the capacitors will be used to smooth out these Peaks because at the moment the oil and is are experiencing at least thrown out situations so do you have better power quality all the capacitors are best to do the job and and I think that I I love egg actually gives us good indication what's to come in UK but wider in Europe because they are now on renewable energy and basically as the testing ground we see that okay it's not only about long-term energy storage but it's really this type of transient power when you move from one power source to the other one and where all the capacitors basically fill that the gap yeah and and what we see is that similar type of solutions whether it's Island kids or even in mainland UK will be quite widespread in the next five years so then this is another application and I'm getting for a vehicle is this bisko's which goes into a vehicle and actually this is the building clock for the kinetic energy recuperation system but in city delivery trucks we have achieved 30% reduction in the fuel bill right by he Cooper hitting ten and she did all the capacitor pack and reusing that while accelerating right and now this module as you can see it's really rugged you can run a tank all right right I don't have to do it but but you can assess that solid it does look as it's not wobbly it's very solid at the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991 Estonia gained its independence less than half of the residents of this amazing country had something you could call a telephone line they could only talk to each other couldn't talk outside the country the only person who had a link by telephone to the outside world was the Estonian foreign minister who'd kept out a Finnish mobile phone hidden in his garden there was one phone and what happened next was Finland said that we're going to update our hard phone network to a digital phone network do you want our old analog phone system you know they were going to give it donate it to the people of Estonia people understand he said no thanks we don't want some rubbish old tech we'll go the whole hog so they just literally jumped they now have the fastest broadband connection the cheapest the most ubiquitous broadband in the whole of Europe they have an amazing tech startup scene there are more startups per head of the population in Estonia than anywhere else in Europe it really is a remarkable country that has done amazing things I had vaguely heard that Skype wasn't invented in in California or Seattle or somewhere it was invented in Estonia this is where Skype was first founded where they first started they were sort of way ahead of everybody else in their technological capabilities and that's a lot of it must be down to the Estonian education system they're very heavily science-based and even though we're in this old part of the city of Tallinn which is very beautiful lots of tourists come here in the summer you know it is the whole of the rest of the country is very very up to date in terms of how they pay tax they have a flat tax rate and you can fill in your tax form online on your tablet or your phone in about two minutes I've been told this by so many people there you have a digital identity you don't have a passport you have a special series of numbers that are digital digital code that you're given when you're born and that is your official state identity so they've just kind of jumped they've jumped ahead to such a remarkable degree they're way ahead of the rest of us is amazing it's embarrassing really for everyone else I've still got a paper passport so 20th century then in the year 2000 the Estonian government declared that internet acces was a basic human right just the same as food and shelter and protection under the law I mean the first country in the world to do that and they now vote online you pay a taxes online you have a digital signature that is legally acceptable you have your own unique identifying code you know it's amazing and they have done a deal with Finland that though I say only country they do with you can go to Finland if you're an Estonian and all your medical records are available there you have a digital identity in Estonia as long as you're looking whether traffic is coming but there we go they're very nice drivers actually in Estonia they don't try and run you home if you're walking down the middle of the street they're very tolerant I mean the thing that when we were coming into land at the airport I saw a big wind farm on the coast but that is the only one so far so they're very very aware that - their infrastructure is still as you can see all or only still fairly ancient their physical infrastructure they haven't really modernized that it's not an ideal country for so Lacaze they're very far north you know it's mid-april now and it's about five degrees I just heard that one day in June a couple of years ago in the middle of summer it was four degrees so it's not it's not what we call a hot and sunny country very hard long winters it's a Scandinavian country effectively so you know it is the most remarkable place so if you get the chance to come I would really say do it because it's an amazing place to visit really lovely people they all speak English of course because they're all incredibly well educated and you know an amazing place to come but it is it has been a real joy to come here and see we've just seen one startup company there are thousands and what they're doing is is amazing and there's you know potentially world-changing so you know really exciting pay anyway that's just a little little less Stonier a bit of Estonian history for you there's loads more you know if you're interested you can find out a lot more cuz those loads more things I haven't told you about incredible history they have anyway that's enough so thank you very much you know please do subscribe to fully-charged have a look at the patreon link and of course as always if you have been thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 855,263

Rating: 4.9199195 out of 5

Keywords: Ultra Capacitors, graphene, curved graphene, Tallinn, Estonia, energy storage, megawatt second, kilowatt hour, Fully Charged show, electric car, electric vehicles, electric bikes, electric trucks, hydrogen fuel cell, bio gas, smart grid, micro grid, renewable energy, sustainable development, wind turbines, battery, Robert Llewellyn, Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, electric bus

Id: KQ2Eo6wl5r0

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 04 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/adaminc]

LTO batteries already let you charge at something insane like 5C. Meaning a full recharge is capable in around 10min.

The issue with capacitors, even "ultra" ones, is that their energy density is really low. These guys seem to be targetting them towards regen storage only.