500 Miles on a 5-Minute Recharge?

ctroutwi writes "In the wake of rising gasoline costs there have been plenty of alternatives seen on the horizon. Including Hybrids, Biofuels, fuel cells and battery powered all electric cars. CNN has recently posted a story about a company (EEStor) that plans on offering UltraCapacitor storage products. The claim being that you charge the ultracapacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately $9 of electricity and then drive 500 miles."

Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid?

[Catamaran]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor, but it doesn't matter because really we don't need to go such long distances on a single charge.

How about a system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways, like they use for electric busses and trollies, and use ultra-capacitors to get from the highway to your home? The capacitors could charge while you are on the highway, and then you would only need enough charge to go 5-10 miles.

I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

" The claim being that you charge the ultracapacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately $9 of electricity and then drive 500 miles.""

Current and voltage?

Hate to see this car in an accident

[Nom du Keyboard]

Hate to see the short that could occur if this car was in the wrong kind of accident.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[wcb4]

I am old enough to remember city streets in places with overhead power lines for this. Its ugly. Why? I get 500 miles on a tank of gas (13.5 gallons and 29 miles to the gallon) so why not just let me pull into a service station, which now takes almost 5 minutes for a full tank, and plug in... charge me $20 for the charge, make the 100% profit ($9 for the elec, $9 profit, 2$ to cover overhead)... I end up better off they end up better off (distribution now done by the existing power lines, no need for trucks) and eventually, when we figure out how to make electricity cleaner (or convert part of of grid to wind or water turbine or whatever) the environment would be better off. Sounds like a win/win/win situtation

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AKAImBatman]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor

The whole idea behind an ultracapacitor is that it stores significantly more energy than a regular capacitor.

Linky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultracapacitors [wikipedia.org]

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[aleksiel]

what kind of a home has a gasoline pump? i'd imagine there would be special places along the roads that you plug into, just like how it works now.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

Highway tolls are outrageous enough, but atleast I can reduce the cost of my trip by buying a more efficient car. If we had to run off highway lines like electric busses (or cars in the Super Mario Bros. movie, blech) We'd all be paying the same (likely extravegant) rate. Then you also have people who actually buy cars/trucks for work like farming, construction, or just a camping trip. I don't think they'd enjoy cars that rely on the Highway supply and ultra-capacitors that only get you from highway to home.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

Yes, but a lot less than a battery.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[coyote-san]

There are places in the west where a 500 mile range would be very useful. I've driven several 100+ sections of interstate, and it's probably an extra 50 miles to the next station beyond that.

How difficult will it be to deliver that much power (for an interstate!) to a remote location? What if that station is down for some reason?

P.S., in the worst cases you learn to fill up at every station. It's not that the distance to the next service station is so long, it's that the road may be blocked (rockslide, avalanche, etc.) just miles from that station and you'll be forced to backtrack.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[mark-t]

If this were real, which I currently highly doubt, the idea would be that you wouldn't charge it at home, you'd go to charging stations and charge there. If it only took 5 minutes to recharge, the time is not a problem as it's a similar amount of time to fill up with gasoline anyways.

Re:How much electricity?

[bobdapunk]

The majority of people reading this article will not bother to look up the current kWh price and then determine the overall cost of 'filling' the device. So I think it is completely reasonable to state an example of how much it costs for a full charge to demonstrate the price savings (although I too would like to know the overall capacity and discharge rate). One just hopes the company is not using the lowest kWh price possible to sensationalize the price savings.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Golias]

$9 of electricity is about 100 KWh at national average rates. Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

I would be terrified to even stand near such a fueling station, let alone use one or install it in my home.

Imagine the mortal dread of having your 1.2 megawatt car running low on power during a rainstorm.

For all it's potential energy, at least liquid gasoline is relatively stable and safe. Gasoline car crashes generally only cause explosions in the movies. Unless it's an old Ford Pinto, or a truck being tested on NBC's "Dateline."

Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

It's called a MetroCard. Plenty faster, more energy-efficient, and more convenient than a car, and it only costs $76 a month. And you can actually do stuff on your way to work, like read. Try that next time you're stuck in traffic on the so-called "freeway."

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[soft_guy]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor, but it doesn't matter because really we don't need to go such long distances on a single charge.
How about a system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways, like they use for electric busses and trollies, and use ultra-capacitors to get from the highway to your home? The capacitors could charge while you are on the highway, and then you would only need enough charge to go 5-10 miles.

I would find a car that does not have a 300+ mile range to be totally unacceptable. Your idea of having the car be attached to a power line is not very practical because there are not many roads that have these kind of power lines. Also, if you have ever watched the bus driver connect and disconnect a bus from these lines, you would realize that this is not a solution that would work for private cars due to the larger number of cars on the road. It would block traffic in an unacceptable way. The reason why busses run on these kinds of lines is typically because of air pollution - often the buses have to go through tunnels where the exhaust would cause huge problems. Also, busses run in major cities which have a legal requirement to reduce pollution to meet EPA requirements.

Busses go on a few known routes over and over. Private cars have a different requirement - they must go on any road for 300+ miles at a time. They must not block traffic.

If someone has developed a storage system for electricity that allows $9 of electricity to be transferred into the storage unit in 5 minutes - that is a huge advancement over the current technology. It would do a lot to make electric cars practical.

Bullshit!

[CPIMatt]

My bullshit detector is going off. We have a company with no track record, making extravagent claims, about a device that they cannot demonstrate...

Plus the math on this thing is staggering. They are going to deliver $9 worth of electricty in 5 minutes? Or will deliver enough power in five minutes to power an SUV over 500 miles? It has been a while since EE201, can anyone help me out here?

-Matt

Re:How much electricity?

[misleb]

Most likely the journalist was just repeating the claim from the manufacturer who found the cheapest electricity available and based hte claim on that. It would indeed be nice to know how much electricity this capacitor holds.

-matthew

One Reason itll never work

[carlosponti]

Big Oil companies will never allow the market to go to this product. Over the years there have been great products that went no where to help us reduce our dependence on oil. now why didnt they go anywhere? because three reasons. people not wanting to change and big companies knowing that its cheaper to stay with the status quo and lastly Big Oil companies will go broke trying to change to anything that they are not already doing.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[OwnedByTwoCats]

200 amp service * 220 volts (hot-to-hot) = 44,000 watts.

Recharging 100,000 watt-hours in 5 minutes = 1,200,000 watts.

So the answer is, collectively, the mains feeding 27 households.

I'll let someone more familiar with the NEC spec how thick the conductors have to be.

I doubt that the company will be able to fulfill their claims.

Lawn products

[WindBourne]

I wish that lawn products such as trimmers and mowers would be based on a capacitor. You figure that they would last a life time. In addition, the ability to charge these in a just a minute (on a 110) would be so easy that many ppl would jump at it. Rather than cars, this is a good entry point market for these.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

So would the infrastructure for switching to a hydrogen economy, but we're going to need something in the future. I doubt there are many if any choices that can utilize the current infrastructure.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[schnikies79]

try that the next time your in my town. no public transportation.

sorry, but some of us just don't like living in a metro area.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[mark-t]

The advantage of electricity remains, even if you are still polluting with your power generation facilities.

It is easier to institute stricter pollution control measures at centralized power generation facilities than it is to implement equivalent levels of pollution control in vehicles all over the country. Even very "dirty" methods of producing such power can always be upgraded over time to be less polluting anyways, or possibly even migrate towards emission free power generation. Also, this migration does not have to be instantaneous either, as an incremental change is often much more economical and practical than a single large change anyways. This sort of upgrading would be completely impractical for individual automobile.

Also, it reduces dependancy on foreign oil.

47 Bullshit-o-watts

[2short]

They have marketing savy to know X kilowatts doesn't mean as much to people as $9, but exactly what kWh to dollar ratio they are using doesn't strike me as the biggest problem with their claims.

They propose to increase the performance of electric cars by several orders of magnitude. They reference technologies that have barely reached the lab demonstration phase, to which they propose to make vaugely described radical improvements, and deliver as a product next year. There is no prototype to be seen. I mean, that really sums it up: They say they'll be selling a car next year, but have no prototype today.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Gabrill]

Just because they CAN be charged in 5 minutes doesn't mean they HAVE to be charged in 5 minutes. An overnite maintenence charge would probably eliminate the need for service stations for 95% of driving.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[CrudPuppy]

has anyone done the math here??

$9 is a huge amount of electricity in term of charge. passing that through a line in 5 minutes is gonna take one HUGE ass line, and is gonna pose huge dangers.

just my $0.02

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ahodgson]

Solar panels at the station could help its electric usage immensely (and its dependance on the grid).

Solar panels at the station might offset it's own electricity usage and keep the coffee warm, but it would need a nuclear reactor in the back yard (or at least a small hydro dam) to noticeably impact it's ability to recharge cars. Solar panels aren't some magic power generation system. Not that much sunlight falls on any particular building.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rei]

Assume 10 cents per kWh. $9=90kWh. 90 kWh in 5 minutes means 1.08MW. As for how wide of a wire you'd need to carry that, it depends on the voltage and how it's cooled. If this is a high-voltage application, it's not unrealistic.

As for how to get that kind of energy to your house, which doesn't have suitable wiring, you don't have to. You could fuel at fuelling stations. You could have it fuel slower at your house. You could have your house have a capacitor buried underground, and have power from that drained quickly into the car, but be charged slowly by the house for the rest of the time. Etc.

Re:How much electricity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do moderators pass out insightful karma on pure specuation these days? Does no one have to actually look anything up or can we pretty much just say whatever the fuck we want without checking?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[naoursla]

The station could have a bank of super-capacitors that are trickle charged throughout the day and then quickly discharge to power a vehicle.

Although this does put a limit on how many cars such a station could power in a day.

You could have such a system at home too.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[naoursla]

Put a capacitor in your home and charge it up at night. Transfer the power to your car in five minutes from your trickle charge capacitor.

Although this still doesn't address the safety issues.

Re:Not a particularly new idea, but a good one

[spirit of reason]

In case you're curious, the better ultracapacitors store 5-6 Wh/kg, as opposed to 180-190 Wh/kg for standard Lithium ion cells on the market today.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

> homo static (?) generators.

Homeostatic. And most people just call it "flywheel power". Lots of datacenters use flywheels for a clean power signal. They don't hold nearly enough charge to use it as a real battery, unless you had an awesomely huge heavy wheel, at which point you're talking about something pretty dangerous and expensive to maintain.

You worry too much

[WindBourne]

Gasoline must have more energy than the capacitor do to the inefficiency of the ICE (in fact, more than 4x based on earlier posts). That means for the same auto, that gas has 4x more energy to release than this capacitor. 25 years ago, I was an EMT and DID see an auto that did explode. Surprisingly, the passenger survived it (I am not convinced that it was, necessarily, a good thing; I only hope that he had at lease somewhat of life or better if he survived what was to follow). These days, I do not hear of cars exploding except in Iraq. Basically, cars were designed to withstand crashes and leaks. There will most likely be some issues in these early cars, but the problem will be solved. A good example is that if the airbag blows, cut all power from the capacitor. If they are sealed in a metal/plastic tank, then no conduction. There all sorts of ways to make it safe.

Re:I*V=P

[pclminion]

Current and voltage?

You can figure it out if you're willing to make educated guesses.

Assuming 6.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (price in my state), $9 of power is about 145 kilowatt-hours. This energy is delivered in 5 minutes according to the article. 145 KWh / 5 minutes = 1.74 megawatts AVERAGE charging power.

But that's AVERAGE. Because this is a capacitor (albeit an "ultra" one), it charges in an exponential fashion. The peak charging power during the first few seconds of charging is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY higher than 1.74 megawatts. How MUCH higher depends on the impedance of the charging system.

The real value missing here is capacitance. If we knew that, we could work out peak charging currents for given fixed charging voltages, or vice versa. According to Wiki, the "largest capacitance" of an ultra capacitor is 2.6 kilofarads. Using this as a reasonable but arbitrary number, we can set the total energy equal to CV^2 / 2 and figure out the charge voltage: 633 volts.

Okay, so we have a capacitance of 2.6 kilofarads, a charging voltage of 633 volts, and a charging time of 5 minutes. Further, we have to assume some percentage charge on the capacitor -- it never reaches 100% charge because it charges exponentially, so let's say it charges to 99%. We can use that to figure out the impedance of the charging system using the equation for a charging capacitor: 1-exp(-t/RC)=0.99. Let t = 5 minutes, C = 2.6 kilofarads, and we get a charging impedance (value of R) of 0.06 ohms.

Whoo! Now you can compute the peak charging power (at the very beginning of the charge cycle), which is V^2/R = about 6.5 megawatts. That's 10550 amps. And some of that power is lost as heat in the (very large) wires you'll need to do this -- what fraction of the total is lost as heat is left as an exercise for the reader ;-) But suffice it to say, that heat loss will be at a MAXIMUM when the wire resistance is equal to half the charging impedance, so it implies that the resistance of the wire has to be a lot less than 0.03 ohms.

Feel free to work through it using your own numbers pulled from your own butt, if you want.

Power vs. energy

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The problem is that the ultra capacitors haven't been quite ultra enough yet.

Up to now the advantage of ultracapacitors over batteries has been power density, not energy density. Power == energy / time. Getting energy in and out quickly in modest quantities is wonderful for cars: you can keep up with the spectacular pulse of energy from a panic stop (do the math, you'll be amazed) and power a quick acceleration to freeway speeds. But they've not stored as much energy as a battery so far. You can get a farad cheap, but they've been limited to low voltages (e.g. 3.6) and energy storage is linear in capacitance but quadratic in voltage.

If these people are storing as much total energy as a battery pack they've made a breakthrough.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rich0]

What ratio would you propose? 1000A at a mere 60KV (many industrial sites use 30KV distribution lines - strung out with 2' long insulators)? You'd need a monster cable and a 2' air gap around it. You probably can't go much over 1-2KV in practice (I'm no expert, but if 30KV towers have huge insulators to ensure an air gap you can't go anywhere near that), so now you're talking 10KA - that is a LOT of current. You'd need very low resistance to avoid melting the cable.

60 Megawatts is the kind of power that is transmitted over towers. There is no easy way to transmit that kind of power unless you have superconductors.

Agreed that you can trade-off volts for amps - but any way you slice it you have a big problem at those power levels.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[windsurfer619]

Why is there all this talk about "lines going to your car" and safety? "Pumps" probably won't actually be pumping anything, but rather probably swapping out these capacitors, to keep it safe for the consumer. Not only will that eliminate the problem of having a 2 foot wire needed for that "5 minute recharge" because they could spend longer charging a capasitor, but it would also allow "fuel pumps" to stockpile capacitors for peak fueling times, reducing the need for massive infrastucture changes, or at least reducing those changes.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[timeOday]

For a small car it takes about 170kwh to go 500 miles on average. That means If there were 12 electrical "gas pumps" to charge 12 such ultra capacitor cars in 5 minutes, it would take a power line that could carry 24 million watts of electricity to service ONE such station!

The gasoline equivalent to what you're proposing is that you pull up to the pump, the gas station calls for a tanker truck, it comes and fills up your car. Pretty impractical. Except that, of course, the gas station has its own tanks to even things out - just as electricity stations surely would. The average influx of energy to the "gas" station would be no different than today.

If that fully charged capacitor shorts and dumps all its energy suddenly, a blast like that made by about 350 pounds of dynamite would occur.

The only relevant comparison is to thousands of gallons of gasoline hauling down the highway at 70 mph in the back of a tanker truck. After that everything else looks much safer.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Your car isn't producing 200kW CONITINUOSLY! Also, one of the fundamental targets for EV is to use the motors to generate electricity under braking situations, which your conventional 200kW fuel vehicle cannot do.

Great!!

[djcondor]

So now, with the increased load on our power stations, they'll either divert the oil refining toward oil fired power plants and/or we'll start dumping a whole lot more coal into our coal fired plants, spewing out all kinds of wonderful things. Until we develop cleaner methods of power generation, all we do is shift the pollution to being generated somewhere else.

It's all about nuclear, kids. It's the cleanest, most efficient, least environmentally damaging power source we have. If people would get over 3-mile island (which was a SUCCESS story of our failsafe systems, btw) and chernobyl (which was a shitty russian reactor) they might just figure out that nuclear power is actually safer overall, than oil or coal fired plants.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part I agree with you, but you did forget one thing: the peak loads are extremely high, which means there's tons of extra capacity at night and other times when loads are not at their peaks.

This capacitor technology can be used to collect energy at night and other times to dump out at peak times when it's needed most. You could then do the same thing in your car on a smaller scale. Have a bank of caps that sits there charging all night (or whenever the power company says it's cheapest), ready to dump the power into your car when you need it. Or maybe just swap out the empty caps from your car for the freshly charged ones in your garage.

dom