LockMart & EEStor (ultracapacitor tech) sign deal

[docm]

This was posted on GM-Volt.com. <br /><br />Normally they just deal with electric car stuff, but they managed to get a VERY interesting interview with Lockheed Martins manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. <br /><br />The interview is regarding todays deal between Lockheed Martin and EEStor, the exceedingly secretive ultracapacitor company that claims 10x the charge of current batteries in 1/10th the space of a lead acid.<br /><br />Here's the beef;<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Mostly, we talk about the Volt here, but relevant and related topics are often worth discussing.<br /><br />We have previously discussed a secretive Texas company called EEStor, who are reported to be working on a new type of ultracapacitor that can hold 10x the energy in 1/10th the weight of typical batteries, at a fraction of the cost.<br /><br />They have an agreement to produce caps for Zenn electric cars but to date have not shown any prototypes. This has led some to suspect EEStor as not having the technology they report.<br /><br />Today, however, Lockheed Martin, the major U.S. military equipment manufacturer has announced a partnership agreement with EEStor to develop energy applications.<br /><br />If these ultracaps can really deliver what they are projected to, they could offer a dramatic advantage for electric vehicles.<br /><br />To that end, I interviewed Lionel Liebman, manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.<br /><br />The entire interview can be seen by clicking below.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Can you tell me what your announcement was today?</b><br /><br />Lockheed Martin and EEStor are working together to find areas for integrating their technology to a variety of power management platforms we’re working on.<br /><br /><b>Is it a financial contract?</b><br /><br />We’re not taking any sort of</p></blockquote></p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[MannyPim]

Thank you for posting this docm !<br /><br />I first heard about EEstore last year and have been telling EVERYONE I know about them.<br />Of course, the typical reaction is skepticism. <br />First, it is just too good to be true. Then it's teh matter of the secrecy and paucity of information available so far.<br /><br />But I am EXTREMELY excited about this technology and I really really hope it will prove practical.<br /><br /><font color="yellow"><br /><b> Do their caps hold 10x the energy at 1/10th the weight of a lead acid battery? </b><br /><br />Yes. <br /></font><br /><br />This is my favorite statement of the interview. It looks like it will deliver as promised.<br /><br />Just imagine the applications:<br /><br />A car that can go 500 miles or more on a single charge and then fully recharge in about 10 minutes.<br /><br />A computer that will run for weeks on a charge.<br /><br />50 pound power packs that you can charge from solar panels on your roof and then put them in your car, or electric motorcycle, or home appliance...<br /><br />Electric trains that don't require overhead wires. <br /><br />This level of energy storage and flexibility comes close to rivaling the energy storage density of gasoline without the dangers and infrastructure requirements of a flammable fuel.<br /><br />It's very exciting ! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#0000ff"><em>The only way to know what is possible is to attempt the impossible.</em></font> </div>

 

[eniac]

It sounds great at first, but when I hear then that this person has not seen the prototypes either, it makes me more suspicious rather than less.<br /><br />Outlandish claims + excessive secrecy = low probability of delivery.<br /><br />Wait and see, I say, wait and see. But do NOT give them money. If you want money, you have to show the value first.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[billslugg]

This is complete BS. There is NO WAY that Lockheed Martin stockholders are being served, if this guy is to say that he knows that the battery works, but he also says that he has not tested it. Any prelude to any agreement of any sort involves a bit of give and take. You let me see the battery, I sign an agreement. It seems that EEStore somehow did all the taking in this one. If I was an LM stockholder I would be outraged that my money was being spent on snake oil. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[eniac]

I didn't see anything that said LM is paying. It just said they are collaborating. The main purpose of this agreement is clearly to give much needed credibility to EEStor. LM is just trying to cover its bases, for the cost of a press release and a few hours of PR. They may even have gotten a juicy bit of IP on barium titanate out of it in return.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[aphh]

* Just imagine the applications:<br /><br />* A car that can go 500 miles or more on a single charge and<br />* then fully recharge in about 10 minutes.<br /><br />That sounds great, but previously a electric car that is capable of running 100 - 200 miles on a charge has required several hours of charging from the wall outlet.<br /><br />Unless the vehicle is significantly more efficient, the wattage required will be the same. The standard wall outlet will not be able to provide the needed juice for a 10 minute charge for 500 miles.<br /><br />Basically that would mean building a electric infrastructure for charging the vehicles.

 

[nuaetius]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Unless the vehicle is significantly more efficient, the wattage required will be the same. The standard wall outlet will not be able to provide the needed juice for a 10 minute charge for 500 miles. <br /><br />Basically that would mean building a electric infrastructure for charging the vehicles.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Not really. If the recharge rate is as high has the article is claiming you could plug in 2 220 circuits to a car and in 10 minutes have enough juice for a solar derby scale efficiency car to go 5000 miles. The thing is there is NO need for a car (or transfer truck for that matter) to go more than 1200 miles in one charge. 1200 miles is how far you can go in 16 hours at 70 miles per hour. As long as it can recharge in less than 6 hours the ICE will be practically killed by this battery technology.<br /><br />One thing I am curious about is will the ultra capacitors have a normal capacitor’s nasty habit of instant discharge. If Teddy Kennedy had been driving one at the time he would have been fried.

 

[billslugg]

<font color="yellow">I didn't see anything that said LM is paying. </font><br />I also see no evidence of direct monetary payments to EEStore. <br /><br /><font color="orange"> Looking at the article it says that LM has an "...exclusive rights agreement to allow us to market these technologies to a very limited number of potential customers...."<br /><br />In order to get this you have to put down some money.</font><br /><br />LM is paying the salary and expenses of those working with EEStore. They are also risking a lot in the area of credibility. IF, as EEStore claims, an object 1/10 the size of a car battery could give ten times the power of a car battery, then what POSSIBLE risk could it be to them to drag out a black box onto a conference table, hook it up to a bank of lights and power the room lights for the duration of the meeting? I mean - they say it works - right? <br /><br />My point is that something stinks here. Bad. Either LM is dumb stupid OR EEStore is lying. <br /><br /><font color="orange">EDIT: In orange</font><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[docm]

LockMart has been to their facility and examined their tech and methodologies. This before the announcement.<br /><br />I'd cut them some slack until more info is available. <br /><br />The big issues will be leakage and temperature.<br /><br />Canadian patent description (PDF): Link...<br /><br />Patent application page: http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/details?patent_number=2434470&language=EN <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[aphh]

* If the recharge rate is as high has the article is claiming<br />* you could plug in 2 220 circuits to a car and in 10<br />* minutes have enough juice for a solar derby scale<br />* efficiency car to go 5000 miles. The thing is there is NO<br />* need for a car (or transfer truck for that matter) to go<br />* more than 1200 miles in one charge. 1200 miles is how<br />* far you can go in 16 hours at 70 miles per hour.<br /><br />I think from the battery's point of view one could do a rapid re-charge of a electric vehicle even today. The problem is that the wall outlet does not provide the required ampers. The pipe is not fat enough.<br /><br />To move a vehicle with persons in it for 8 hrs at 70 mph is going to require lots of energy. The amount is something else than running a laptop for a day. You will need to get that energy coming through the electrical grid.<br /><br />This would be one of the easier calculation to see if it's doable, the variables would be amount of required energy, battery efficiency and the ampers provided by the wall outlet. <br /><br />Edit: forexample, running the starter motor of a car requires maximum of 60 ampers at 12 volts. That would be 6 ampers at 120 volts. The car would not go very fast on a starter motor alone (but it would still move).<br /><br />For rapid re-charge you would need many times the capacity of the motor. If you drove the 6 amper (at 120 volts) motor an hour and then wanted to re-charge in 10 minutes, you would need 36 ampers for the equivalent amount of energy. That's beyond the capacity of the wall outlet.

 

[billslugg]

Doc<br />The patent application is real interesting. Their car battery will weigh 336 pounds and displace 2000 cubic inches. It will lose .1% of its charge per month, will operate at 3500 V, and will contain 31 pounds of nickel. It will also allow day/night load leveling for US energy consumption of solar and wind.<br /><br />Can you imagine if everybody in the US had one of these? Thats a need for 3E9 pounds of nickel. World production is 2E9 pounds per year.<br /><br />They are processed at 850 C, nickel melts at 1450 C. The high pressure needed to get all the voids out probably necessitates such a large delta over the processing temp. Apparently there is no good alternate for nickel.<br /><br />Time to stock up on nickel futures!! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[eniac]

As I remember from previous discussions of this technology, there are two fundamental problems with it: 1) They assume that the extremely high permittivity of barium titanate at low fields will continue linearly at high fields (which cannot be true), and 2) They assume that they can operate an ultracapacitor at thousands of volts without breakdown, which sounds preposterous to me.<br /><br />I'll am willing to wait and see, no more.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[billslugg]

Eniac<br /><br />Your point about permittivity is a good one. <br /><br />Voltage wise, they are assuming that they can maintain field strengths of 5 million Volts per centimeter. The very highest dielectric strength I could find is Teflon at .6 million Volts per cm. <br /><br />When measured in bulk samples I think the number is far below theoretical. At sub micron scales, SiO has been found to have a dielectric strength of 9.5 MV/cm.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[MannyPim]

<font color="yellow"> For rapid re-charge you would need many times the capacity of the motor. If you drove the 6 amper (at 120 volts) motor an hour and then wanted to re-charge in 10 minutes, you would need 36 ampers for the equivalent amount of energy. That's beyond the capacity of the wall outlet. </font><br /><br />This is not a problem.<br />Today we have thousands of gas stations where people pull in to refill their tanks.<br />These same gas stations will become Energy stations and provide either fuel or electricity for your car.<br />They are not limited by your home wall outlet.<br /><br />Also, most people will probably just drive home and plug their car in and charge at a much lower rate overnight. <br /><br />Another approach would be swappable power modules. You could drive up and swap your discharged modules for fully charged ones and drive off.<br /><br />Or, the charging stations would most likely have very large capacity storage units from which they coould quickly charge up the cars. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#0000ff"><em>The only way to know what is possible is to attempt the impossible.</em></font> </div>

 

[no_way]

You folks dont keep up with electric vehicle news much, do you ?<br />Japanese companies like Subaru, Mitsubishi, Nissan etc are all in the process of bringing their EVs to market, including fast charging capability, see an example here:<br />http://www.nec.co.jp/eco/en/annual2007/02/2-1.html#pl-pagetop<br />Heres the overall strategy document<br /><br />link to PDF<br /><br />Mitsu MiEV and Subaru R1e are in the advanced prototype stage, currently in small fleet testing. Both are using lithium battery packs, both are planning for limited fast charge capability.<br />Both are planned to be on ( limited ) sale in 2009. You can see those prototypes driving around in Youtube.<br />MiEV had a price target of roughly $25K<br /><br />As for EEStor, with their claimed specs, they arent really any significant improvement in energy density over lithiums ( 250kg/wh vs lithiums 200kg/wh ) and the power density that they offer may be interesting for military, but is far beyond what an electric car needs.<br />So it all comes down to one interesting parameter : dollars per kilowatthour stored.<br />With lithiums, you can get lithium phosphates under $400/kwh and the price is bound to drop fast in coming years. If they can undercut the price significantly and ramp up production capacity fast, then its interesting. Otherwise nothing to get too excited about, especially taking into account that running anything off a capacitor is way harder, power electronics wise, than running something off a battery.

 

[MannyPim]

If EEstore's claims are proven, I think their advantages are much more than just price.<br /><br />From what we know so far, it is very possible that they have advantages in ease of manufacturing, materials, they should have an almost unlimited life time, they should proove more rugged, and the power density makes them appealing to performance buffs (like the market that the Tesla is aimed at). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#0000ff"><em>The only way to know what is possible is to attempt the impossible.</em></font> </div>

 

[billslugg]

no_way<br /><br /><font color="yellow">250kg/wh </font><br /> That is not very much energy. A Watt-hour is about as much energy as there is in a hearing aid battery.<br />Do you <font color="orange">mean KWh</font>or MWhr? (Mega Watt-hour) <br /><br />EDIT: in orange <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[no_way]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>they have advantages in ease of manufacturing, materials, they should have an almost unlimited life time, they should proove more rugged, and the power density makes them appealing to performance buffs (like the market that the Tesla is aimed at).<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Ease of manufacturing an materials matters only to price, and thats the crucial bit.<br />Unlimited life: rugged lithium manganese and lithium phosphates last for /> 3000 cycles. For any reasonable usage pattern of an electric vehicle, thats a life of the vehicle and more.<br />Also, like i said, 10C discharge rate for some lithium chemistries is far beyond any reasonable demand of performance. Witness the KillaCycle and Current Eliminator. Both of their performance, although already insane, are not limited by batteries, but by drivetrain ( inverter and motor primarily )<br />As for the wh figures, sorry, my goofup. The metrics of course are given by wh/Kg usually, not kg/wh <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />Lithiums range from 100wh/kg to over 200wh/kg on market, and there are some chemistries in the labs that top 500wh/kg. If EEStor can do 250wh/kg, thats good but not phenomenal, certainly not a make it or break it.

 

[billslugg]

So you don't keep up much with electric unit news do you? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[nexium]

My guess is Lockmart will loan EEstore the money to complete the testing and start production. If the product has few applications, Lockmart loses, only if EEstore files bankruptsy.<br />Lithium-ion is also about 10 times the watt-hours per kilogram, but lithium ion will likely remain expensive because the risk of explosion must be miminized. Charging a 160 kilowatt-hour energy pack of either kind in 10 minutes requires a megawatt from the electric utility, which typically is available only in industral neighborhoods, and power distribution centers, which recently lost a high demand customer.<br />The Tesla battery pack is 56 kilowatt-hours. Neil

 

[billslugg]

You nailed it. Demand charges can be huge. During the California debacle, Enron caused them to buy some peak power at $2.00 a kWhr. You must remember that electricity, unlike gasoline, has a demand component to it. The cost is a function of how many other people want it at the same time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[eniac]

Yes, but the good thing is that most of the time cars will be charged overnight at home, at times that currently are low-demand (after midnight, early morning). In fact, if overnight home charging is controlled intelligently, cars can make a huge contribution to smooth out demand fluctuations in the grid.<br /><br />A typical home feed has 200 Amps, at 110 V. Some is used for other things, but in principle that's 22 kWh per hour. Great for overnight charging, not so great for fast-charging. The Tesla could be charged in three hours. <br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[no_way]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>So you don't keep up much with electric unit news do you? <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />I try to, as long as it doesnt involve pounds or inches, i couldnt do my day job otherwise. As for my post, i said i goofed, a simple typing mistake.<br /><br />On fast charging, i recommend that PDF i linked to above. The idea by TEPCO, Fuji, Mitsubishi etc is that you normally charge overnight at home, but for fast charging you have specialized stations, that can supply enough mileage to get you out of a tight situation on demand. <br />And they have it working now.

 

[nexium]

Yes I think Eniac correct. If a Tesla owner does not want to pay extra for a wiring up grade, he can possibly unplug his electric stove, his electric clothes dryer and run two extension cords to his Tesla. Those two total about ten kilowatts, so he can fully charge in 5.6 hours. Most days he won't discharge his battery completely, so one extension cord will be enough. If he really needs to charge in ten minutes, he likely needs to pay extra at a location that can supply several hundred kilowatts. Hot water heaters and centeral air conditioners typically are not installed so that they can be unplugged, but they could be illegally modified. There are some safety concerns using multiple extension cords, but there may be easy solutions. Leaving the applience connected will typically trip the circuit breaker, if you operate the applience and charge from the same circuit breaker. I wonder if the Tesla charging circuit will come with a selector switch to select the number of kilowatts charging desired? If so, proper use will require some owner know how. Neil

 

[billslugg]

You missed the point. <br />My comment "So you don't keep up much with electric unit news do you?"<br />Was in response to your comment: "You folks dont keep up with electric vehicle news much, do you ?" <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p> </div>