The Fuel Tank of Tomorrow - A Super Capacitor?

energy storage you can never have enough of it batteries they have their limitations well maybe there's a better solution Omar once you tell us about the super cap thanks Ken well we have worked on using super caps as storage media super caps which are bigger capacitors capacitors were invented at the same time the batteries were invented a 150 years ago and we know been around since then and have developed into super caps which are much larger capacitors so capacitors or super capacitors are inherently better storage devices than chemical batteries they are more efficient they last longer they have resilience to temperature they can be they don't degrade they don't have a memory effect there's this it's just it's just much better to use capacitors for storage media but they do have certain challenges and those challenges include or have been traditionally restricted them to very specific uses a fast charging fastest charging so in order to use super caps as storage media for for in the battery world you need to be able to charge them but also discharge them slowly so the first challenge that we overcame and have overcome with our technologies is to be able to use super caps and charge them but charge them slowly as required by the load that's that's that's one of the major hurdles we overcame the second real big hurdle is that super caps are inherently low voltage devices so in order to use them operationally you have to put them in series and make them operationally commercially at commercial voltages when you do that they become they have a tendency become unstable and it's very difficult to scale in terms of megawatts so that's the second area we've overcome so we have a balancing algorithm or a balancing technology that keeps the super caps absolutely stable when they are charged or being discharged then we've also addressed the specific energy or the energy that is stored in a kilogram of weight which is also has been traditionally a problem so that the form factor is affected you know where you can put X weight of chemical batteries you can't you have to put much more in super gas but advances in super caps themselves and with our unique proprietary charging charging technology we've been able to increase the specific energy or energy density of super caps so that now the form factor is the same as that of a lithium-ion battery so having done all this and and and and with the attributes of super caps that they have a million cycle life for example they can be charged in 30 seconds we have now a product that is a true alternative to the chemical battery world without the difficulties and limitations of chemical batteries and we're here at the id Tech Expo and one of the things that impresses me is the fact that it goes over all kinds of different energy storage needs from wearables all the way to electric buses and to the super cap scale like that as well yes so one of the main objectives of our development was that wherever a battery should be used our products should be used okay so that means starting from wearables which are in in micro mini Watts up to grid storage which is in megawatt hours so this product covers the entire range of things yeah it does and so I'll go into a telecom application for a bit I mean it seems like that's one niche which could be very handy but you don't want to have to monitor remote batteries replace remote batteries it seems like this is an app where you could just put it out there and it stays out there for a long time absolutely so a super cap by itself has a million cycle life so what that means is that if you're psyched charging it and discharging it once a day you're gonna the battery is supposed to last 2700 years that's what a million cycles means so yes it has a significantly longer life than any other product a chemical product out there and specifically for applications like telecom towers which require uptime almost 100% uptime this is an ideal solution in fact we are doing two projects in South Africa as we speak with two of the largest telecom operators and we are replacing lead acid batteries they use traditionally led acid batteries with our super caps in fact they have tried expert on some proof of project performance projects with lithium ion flow and none of them is worked from both a because it's a tough environment there it's a high temperature they have issues like theft so in all aspects including price by the way I have mentioned that it's cheaper than most most batteries including lithium-ion this product is going to be much better and from a safety standpoint are there issues there yeah so from a safety perspective the one of the key aspects of super cabs is that it can be discharged to zero volts so it has no energy so in case of an emergency a super cab that's full of energy can be discharged to zero volts zero energy in less than a second okay without damaging the battery so you can use it again and the second area is its its because it doesn't have noxious flammable chemicals in it it's also non-toxic non-flammable so if there's a fire and you discharge the energy completely it actually becomes a fire retardant so from from a safety perspective it's significantly safer than any other any other chemical battery in the world and one talk to you moment about the kind of the system approach it seems like you have kind of a utility type of system server you called it right yes the server is a is a is different from the battery it's a hardware and software device and the key element or key outcome of this device is to enable independent power renewable energy traditionally has been fed into the grid either through utility grade installations or rooftop installations it's called grid tied investment and that's why there's this whole angst between utilities and and solar suppliers because it's using the grid yet taking revenue away from the grid owner which is not a sustainable modeling it's not going to last so the server enables the grid to to operate in the background or if not even so you can have your own house or factory or commercial establishment running 100% on solar and how that does it is that it you have to install the battery the solar panels and the server now the server the unique thing about the server is that it enables integration of many inputs or many generation sources so like solar and wind and also handles all the impact of the load now the the electricity and electric grid is a very complicated sophisticated system because the load which is the motors the fridges air conditioners compressors they have certain things called surge current which you know you go up to 1000 percent for a few seconds traditionally inverters can't handle these things so the server handles the load completely on its own all the peak load it handles on its own handles the integration of the solar and this and the battery together so that it gives you a solution that you can be completely off the grid in any environment and economically so for example in California if we were to take someone any household off the grid and a Californian rate is about 20 to 24 cents per kilowatt hour you could get your pay back in about 4 years only 24 hours does that include the tax credits though and that for you lose the tax credits and if by any chance the government repeats the tax credit you'll get your in you'll get your pay back in 8 9 years so it's still pretty good payback on that and with these also have applications and things like electric buses electric cars and so forth the super capacitors yes so that's a big application for us because we feel that the really the prime differentiator between a fuel car and an electric car is the time it takes to charge the electric car so in a fuel tank you know when you go and buy a car you ask about everything except for the range of the fuel tank and and when you put fuel in your car and the fuel finishes the car will stop but you never worry about it you don't ask the salesman hey how many miles my going to go in this tank of gas and the reason you don't do that is because you can refuel in one minute I mean if you had to refuel in eight hours there wouldn't be a billion cars on the road today so the with our battery you can recharge in 30 seconds so range becomes zero element if you can go 100 miles and you can charge in 30 seconds while you get your cappuccino at a charging station then that's the way that you're going to actually provide consumers a viable alternative to fuel engine cars so yes it has a very big market for us and so it sounds like you're already in production to some extent what's next as far as you know rolling us out so the first step is to get people to believe us and the way we're doing it is we're doing actual projects so we're doing these projects in South Africa for the telecom towers we are going to be installing we are working with some rather very large utilities in the u.s. to do some proof of performance projects and we are going to do electric vehicle project very soon you will invite you to driving the car around the track and once we actually demonstrate it and shows how it works show how the show heart works I'm sure the rollout will be interesting so Omar I appreciate your time and good luck with it thank you very much

Channel: Viodi

Views: 833,879

Rating: 4.8048353 out of 5

Keywords: Energy storage, Ultra Capacitor, Battery, Kilowatt Laboratories, Off-grid, solar, wind-power

Id: 3K8JIC-ov_Y

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/1ezric]

This looks really promising, if it works as good as stated.