Supercapacitor batteries, what's the catch?

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neb

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#295744 19-Apr-2022 21:03

A few years ago I read an article on supercap batteries which seem to solve all of the problems with existing battery technology, but were still fairly new at the time. I recently did a quick Google search for them and found that nothing seems to have changed since then except perhaps the price. So they're still the technology of the future, as they were several years ago. If they're that amazing, why haven't they taken off? Alternatively, why haven't they failed?

gzt

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#2904127 19-Apr-2022 21:23

They have taken off already. There are many commerical products available. They are not cheap. Horses for courses. It's good if you need rapid charge and discharge.

Does not work for long term storage, yet.

neb

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#2904130 19-Apr-2022 21:28

gzt: Does not work for long term storage, yet.

Would that matter for most users though? You'd only want it to ride through low-sun days or outages, the self-discharge was given as around 1-2% a week which seems insignificant.

gzt

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#2904132 19-Apr-2022 21:40

I was not referring to the particular device you mentioned. That does seem insignificant. I'm aware that particular module has electronics attached so those may not be the characteristics of the underlying capacitor.

Agree, looks very good

insane

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#2904144 19-Apr-2022 22:51

There was talk a while back of using them in EVs to help with burst acceleration, which seems like a fitting usecase.

neb

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#2904155 20-Apr-2022 01:07

I've found the catch: The one most widely advertised and sold one, from Kilowatt Labs, is a scam. Looking beyond the high-quality corflute and duct tape, hot glue, and MDF construction, it's controlled by Arduinos with Ethernet shields (on a device with a supposed lifetime of decades) and is probably LTO cells rather than supercaps.

Edited to add: Link fixed, it was to the next video along in the autoplay, not the actual one. It's both a teardown of the battery pack and an electrical analysis showing it as having the characteristics of an LTO battery pack, not a supercap pack.

danielparker

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#2904186 20-Apr-2022 09:16

neb: I've found the catch: The one most widely advertised and sold one, from Kilowatt Labs, is a scam. Looking beyond the high-quality corflute and duct tape, hot glue, and MDF construction, it's controlled by Arduinos with Ethernet shields (on a device with a supposed lifetime of decades) and is probably LTO cells rather than supercaps.

Linked video did not make sense to me.. Is the URL correct?

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MikeAqua

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#2904191 20-Apr-2022 09:35

insane: There was talk a while back of using them in EVs to help with burst acceleration, which seems like a fitting usecase.

I would have thought acceleration wasn't the main issue with EVs.

Mike

neb

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#2904299 20-Apr-2022 13:11

danielparker:
Linked video did not make sense to me.. Is the URL correct?

Argh, sorry, it'd autoplayed to the next video (default autoplay is one for the things that annoy you thread), I'll post the correct link tonight.

Edited to add: Previous post updated to have the correct link and descriptive text of what the video is about.

1101

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#2904444 20-Apr-2022 16:09

supercaps arnt batts
Thats the catch .

They dont have the same energy capacity / gogo juice .

Like all new batt tech , Allways 5-10 years away then never really happen .

raytaylor

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#2905759 23-Apr-2022 16:24

neb:
gzt: Does not work for long term storage, yet.
Would that matter for most users though? You'd only want it to ride through low-sun days or outages, the self-discharge was given as around 1-2% a week which seems insignificant.

We may have different understandings of long term storage.

Super caps on the market currently only have minutes worth of storage, or are a high-current lithium configuration marketed as "super cap" and not really super caps.

I have even seen lead carbon advertised as super cap.

For solar systems, I think there is potential for flow batteries, my favorite to watch is currently the zinc bromine from Redflow out of australia.

The battery / plates part that produces the electricity is effectively a separate component from the liquid storage. If you want more storage but the same current discharge/charge rate then you add more tank storage and liquid. If you want more charge/discharge current then you add more plate modules.

This works well for home storage because you dont necessarily need to worry about weight and storage space.

For microsolar systems, lead carbon is the way to go - lots of discharge cycles, not quite as many as lithium - But lithium only lasts twice as many cycles but costs more than twice as much $$$.

Ray Taylor

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