Jan
15
Checking the Facts In the EEStore Lockheed Agreement
January 15, 2008 | 20 Comments
Last week Lockheed Martin and EEStor announced an agreement to pursue production of EEStor’s design of electrical storage. This has opened a wide-ranging debate about what EEStor is up to and what the results could be. The EEStor technology is described across the board from battery to ultra capacitor, as having 10 times the capacity at one-tenth the weight than “traditional battery technology” and a big improvement in leak down over time. Those are three of the battery limiting issues of the day.
The Lockheed Martin press release is using the term “ceramic battery chemistry” to describe the technology. In EEStor’s press releases the description looks like “ultra capacitor architecture and entirely non-toxic materials to make high-density energy storage devices.” These two perspectives lead one to think the product would be a device between the battery and capacitor, or as Philip Farmer put it, “Batacitor” in his novels. The outstanding characteristic is the rate of charge from the capacitor, the total storage amount from the battery and combined advantages for the discharge and leak down issues.
For the past year or so, the EEStor technology has been riding high and low as claims are reported and targets are assumed to be missed. The latest news about Lockheed signing to co-develop products for the U.S. Defense Department and U.S. Homeland Security Department is welcome news for the enthusiasts. There seems to be a broad front of consumers lead by sophisticated and competent mechanical and engineering people behind the drive to hybrid transportation used in automobiles and light truck products. One website that attracts the group is the independent site “GM-Volt” where news and information about the promised Chevy hybrid, thought to be a series design, called the “Volt” is closely followed. GM-Volt has a posting about the Lockheed Martin/EEStor agreement with an interview by Lyle Dennis talking with Lionel Liebman, manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. The interview’s highlights are that the agreement is a collaborative effort to build prototypes, Lockheed is in the agreement not for a preference but for most appropriate technology applications, they see the EEStor products as something that may fill both the need for capacitors and batteries, and that the costs would be lower than batteries or capacitors.
Of particular interest is that the agreement is limited in scope to the defense and security industry and not for consumer products such as for automobile use or for industrial use as in mass storage for off grid or backup systems.
The two links above offer some clues, if not hard answers and conclusions about EEStor and its technology. Right off, lets be clear that EEStor has a top-flight group of founders, managers, inventors and financial backers to draw on to execute the business plan. While claims in the press over the past year and a half have rather trapped EEStor into performance that may or may not have been intended, the bulk of the support is soundly founded. There are detractors of note with discussions that offer the inevitable failure to meet expectations. With no working prototype in view or products on sale, the detractors are having the first laughs.
Opposite to that is the view that the physics for such a storage medium are real and that the problems are in material production, assembly and control. Its clear that the technology will concentrate a lot of electrons into a small and confined volume and that an accidental leak would be quite something if occurring at high voltages as capacitor discharges happen. The available amperage would make for quite a plasma arc should it suddenly get away.
The problems are primarily in the perspectives of what the technology offers. The quote of “10 times the energy in one tenth the weight” is a little misleading. I am not real certain just what the equation would be. If the comparison is with common lead acid that is quite a jump, but in comparison to Li-ion it would be more like a doubling, which is quite substantial. The quote has become something of a slogan without a firm sense of what it means. It’s significant even if a little bewildering.
The combining of battery and capacitor attributes is quite exciting. Capacitors are very fast acting allowing very quick charge and discharge abilities that will dramatically improve the usefulness of devices that are self-storage powered. Whether a cell phone, laptop or automobile these attributes will have a strong positive impact in usefulness and consumer adoption.
Finally the patent is quoting a better than 90% improvement in leak down. This means the charge will last a long time cutting the loss from inactivity improving the efficiency of the EEStor design.
I’ve watched this news for a few days wondering how real it might be, what effect it could have and just how likely it is to get into use anytime soon. EEStor is distinctly closed up about giving information out and understandably reticent about making any claims leaving that to writers and enthused interested persons. But a thoughtful divining of the signals leaves a watcher thinking the EEStor technology is for real and that over time as the development steps up through prototypes and scaling up for production in quantity we can expect products in a year or so, and they will offer the devices they power an amazing advantage over the competition.
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Let’s see…You have top capacitor researchers saying that the patent assumptions are just flat-out wrong in terms of dielectric saturation. There is a connected stock in Zenn Motors that has been played up and down by the timing of announcements. Nobody has spotted a working prototype.
Hey, I’m a believer!
I’ve been skeptical on EEStor all along, but have given them the benefit of the doubt as long as reputable people and organisations continue to work with them.
I like the idea of combining ultracapacitors and advanced storage batteries. The combination of energy density and power density can approach that of internal combustion engines (not quite). Combined with better fuel cells, though, a battery/ultracap combo with regenerative braking sounds very nice.
Interested ?????????
How would you like to see a working
prototype, go to go to YouTube posting, Search ‘batacitor’
great!! are the capasitors makeable at a home shop ,, ? at what cost?
The reason they get such high energy density is that they run at over 3 thousand volts. Stored energy in a capacitor is =1/2 C * V squared.
How in the world do you control 3KV direct current? Are there transistors which can switch such high voltages and control a motor???
The brilliance is more in how Zenn and EEstore are ripping off investors, if you consider stealing from the blind to be brilliant. It’s chewish culture.
Don’t forget the Lockheed Martin is in on the deal too! They take their investments pretty seriously and I’m sure they are privy to all sorts of information that we aren’t. They’re looking at this technology for replacing all batteries in the thousands of products they produce for the U.S. military from night vision goggles to electrical systems on missiles. If there wasn’t results to back up these claims, they wouldn’t have the support they do!
paul-diggy, do not assume a large company knows what it is doing if that company is spending someone else’s (i.e., the government’s) money. I have worked defense contractor gigs and have seen some very bad decisions precisely because IMHO they had the cash given to them by someone that only required a good storyline. Bad for us taxpayers.
If we see Toyota or Ford (or even Kia) partner with them, that would be interesting.
Fantastic Cheese.
I’ve got some fantastic cheese that I’m sure you’ll want. Of course I can’t actually show you any fantastic cheese, because we are still working on it. Recently, we had sort of third party verification of the milk we use for our fantastic cheese. This source reports that the milk is 100% very pure milk and is certainly capable of producing fantastic cheese. Makes my mouth water !
We have licensed our Fantastic cheese to a cheesy company, and they are really excited about it, although they haven’t actually seen a working prototype, they still have the license we gave them, and that makes them fantastically happy.
Some big defense contractor has even expressed interest in our fantastic cheese. Of course we couldn’t actually show them some real fantstic cheese. Never-the-less they still want to taste our fantastic cheese should we ever finally have any.
In the mean time we are having a real good time with our cheezy anouncements and promises, and you can be sure that we will continue to make more announcements that delivery of fantastic cheese is right around the corner.
Many so-called experts have said that Fantastic cheese just can’t be made. Those darn cheese haters. We’ll show them. Just as soon as we get enough 100% pure milk, and get all the bugs out of our cheese vats ! Fantastic Cheese will be the greatest cheese ever ! We just know we can make it ! And we’ll have some to show you maybe next year. And if not next year, then the following year, because we’re almost there.
The good thing about our Fantastic Cheese story is that nobody wants to invest in other types of cheese. They’re all afraid of Fantastic cheese ! This means we can keep trying to get the bugs out of our cheese vats indefinetely ! !
Coming soon, more announcements ! We may have to develop special fantastic cows to make a special fantastic milk, in order to finally provide you with a new and improved special fantastic cheese. Be patient while we start the breeding of these fantastic cows. Rumor has it that these cows will have fantstic jeans and we will have to be even more secretive !
My good friend Bernie Madoof has told me that my business plan is sure to work. So, that is another indication that Fantastic Cheese will some day soon be on your grocery shelves.
The CEO will either be in jail or listed on Forbes 100 wealthiest people on the planet list in five years.
Maybe I’m being to optimistic but if this was a complete scam I doubt that GM and Lockheed would be signing on. Whether the technology can match the hype is another question but if it just comes close that might still be enough.
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