Sep
19
Carbon In Nano Form Becomes Graphene For Ultracapacitors
September 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Carbon laid out in a one-atom thick layer making a structure called “graphene” is being lab tested as an ultracapacitor by mechanical engineering professor Rod Ruoff at the University of Texas at Austin. Ruoff says, “Through such a device, electrical charge can be rapidly stored on the graphene sheets, and released from them as well [...]
Aug
19
A Look A Lithium Accumulators
August 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Many of us are familiar with accumulators in gas and hydraulic systems as a vessel that stores a volume usually with an internal diaphragm that has a spring force by a compressed gas. The result is a cell that can buffer the system gases or fluids smoothing pressure spikes.
As a practical point though, a lithium [...]
Jul
22
The Battery Reality Check
July 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Almost everyone coming here has a firm idea that battery technology is a critical part of the changes we need to see for a healthy economy. There is a lot going on in the research and development field. We’re going to look into one in a moment, but first lets have a reality check on [...]
Jun
20
Storing The Power Of The Wind
June 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
The wind blows at its own time and not necessarily when people need the power from the turbine. That makes energy storage for wind power production an important field. Wind turbines are going up at incredible rates worldwide and offer another problem besides the storage issue – the intermittentcy in very widely disbursed wind farms [...]
May
29
Set Speed – Touch Here
May 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The batteries are good enough – at least A123 Systems has batteries that will make the cut and there are likely more to come. A123 Systems is shipping their lithium based technology to Black and Decker for their professional line of power tools. These tools are said to be even more powerful than [...]
Apr
29
BIG Miles Per Gallon Options for Toyota Prius Owners
April 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Hymotion, a division of A123Systems has announced the availability of a high capacity battery called the L5 Conversion Module for the Toyota Prius that will ship to customers in July of 2008. At $10,395 delivered and installed, it’s a lot of money, equal to 2772 gallons of $3.75 gasoline. With only three years [...]
Mar
20
Coming Soon to an Electrical Device Important to You
March 20, 2008 | 2 Comments
Nickel Zinc (NiZn) battery chemistry has met the European Union’s requirements for the Reductions of Hazardous Substances and 2006 Battery Directive as proposed by the U.S. company PowerGenix of San Diego, CA.
NiZn is a chemistry discovered by Thomas Edison and developed by an Irish chemist, Dr James J. Drumm that first saw use in 1932 [...]
Mar
6
Plug-in And Hybrid Cars Are Coming, Like It or Not
March 6, 2008 | 3 Comments
Opposite to the drives to get more energy and fuel to market and pull down prices the effort to make more efficient vehicles is well underway. This week saw the Volkswagen announcement of a parallel diesel design and the Chevy Volt is an exemplary PR effort to get anticipation built for the series hybrid [...]
Mar
5
Xcel Energy of Minnesota announced February 28th 2008 that they have signed to acquire the NGK sodium-sulfur batteries in the 50 kilowatt size. That’s right 50kw per module, and Xcel is getting 20 modules totaling 1 megawatt. As regular readers know, storage is the key to making the wind and other variable renewable [...]
Feb
6
The Next Big Improvement in Batteries Ships Soon
February 6, 2008 | 3 Comments
While all the world is watching the Lithium-Ion battery field with increasing interest the lead acid technology is closer than many would think to having similar power available at a much lower cost.
As weight equals both construction costs for materials and the mass for shipping and use in motive applications a quick review of the [...]
