What is the weight of this system? Thanks.

Usable energy capacity 0.1 kWh
Burst power 47-94kW (750A at 62.5-125V) for 5s
=> ~0.1 kWh transferred

(Note that the link to the detailed datasheet is broken on Maxwell's own site, so neither weight nor pricing data are available right now.)

This underlines how ultracap technology is targeted at efficient recuperative braking and burst acceleration plus engine stop/start. In other words, you can aggressively downsize the ICE and boost aggregate efficiency by always operating it at high load. This is how HDV engines are sized anyhow, making city buses, delivery trucks, garbage trucks etc. a natural fit. Sports sedans and SUVs can also benefit to some extent.

A regular battery must be also be present to ensure the vehicle can be started after having been parked for a long time. To eliminate the starter motor, the engine controls will charge up the ultracaps a little so they can power the electric motor that cranks the engine.

Towing and hill climbing have to be shouldered by the ICE alone, since ultracaps run out of juice so quickly. Don't buy one of these if you live in hilly terrain. On the plus side, ultracaps perform quite well in cold weather and do not require forced cooling.

By contrast, battery hybrids improve efficiency primarily by load leveling a somewhat larger ICE that would otherwise spend much of its time in (low) part load, all-electric cruising at low speeds and engine stop/start.

Combining ultracaps and batteries enables additional fuel economy benefits, such as PHEV designs. Deep-discharge batteries with adequate life expectancy are designed differently and are limited to moderate rated power. All-electric forklifts for indoor use are another potential application.

Thanks, reality czech! More coffee required.......

Caps are great for wake up calls, for sure. I don't think you would be awake after a 1500v zap from these modules. BTW, I wonder if they would work in parallel, then there would be no limit in capacity......just a thought. For example, say you wanted to work at 250v. Series them in pairs, then parallel the pairs.

Bud -

yes, you can arrange banks of ultracaps in parallel. In fact, reconfiguring between series and parallel circuits on-the-fly is how you can keep system voltage in a narrower band, if your application requires that. Parallel configurations can also offer high availability through single component failures, a critical feature for safety-centric applications such as lifting equipment.

In vehicle applications, you'd normally want to choose series configurations and use power electronics to mask the variable voltage across the ultracap bank terminals from the electric motor. In addition, the engine control system must keep the current drawn from or fed into the ultracap store within rated values, which means that the rated power of the electric drivetrain path varies significantly with charge level.

Apparently Altairnano is ready to rock with their new batteries next year. I'd love to have a EV that can go 250 miles and recharge in 10 minutes.

I shudder to think how much this costs. On one hand ultracaps are cheap compared to other capacitors, but compared to nearly any other power source they are expensive, though light weight.

a 2.7 v 35F ultracap costs about 35 dollars. At full power it takes 8 seconds to go from full to empty. if you price them in that manner, they cost about 2 dollars per watt. As a comparison, lead acid is about .5 cents per watt.

On the up side, they will last over a million cycles, and require much simpler charging circuitry.

A car manufacturer can take the speed of their car multiply that by it's weight, and purchase a ultracap which can absorb a fully loaded car's energy at 35mph.

There doesn't need to be much in the way of high voltage high amperage charging circuitry. just feed 2 amps at 600 volts off the generator into a 125 volt capacitor. The capacitor will absorb it as if it was 10 amps at 120 volts.

The cap can then be used to charge the battery bank at C/3.

Does anyone have some news about EEstor's revolutionary capacitor?????!!!!

Wintermane,

1) Ban game sales

2) Subsidize diet pills

game over.

Rafael:
Diesel-electric buses currently do not shut their engines at stops when AC is running. For such applications ultracups seems to be suitable. Both Prius and last model of Civic hybrids are capable to support 10-20 minutes of AC running, so aside from prolonging battery life (due to handling high power bursts), addition of ultracups does not seems necessary. Altair NanoSafe battery does not require ultracup addition for sure, but it is still wild play. What technology will prevail and in what application – remains to be seen.

NessCap produce supercaps as 400Farads 2.7Volts at 20$ (1458 Joules).
It's about 1.3 cents/watt.
IT's really very competitive with batteries that need change after 500 cycles and supercaps has better conversion than batteries(90% front 80%).
Anyone can do an 'stop engine at idle' system with 5-10 of this supercaps without using battery energy, only energy from previous regenerative braking.
Why to use expensive Maxwell?
You can see one here:
http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/Nesscap/Web%20photos/ESHSR-0400C0-002R7.jpg

Someone at this thread said:
"2.7 v 35F ultracap costs about 35 dollars".
But if you know where to get a supercap at about 1458 Joules at lower price (5$?), please say me.
I'm agree that supercaps are for enery-storage at short term. For example: to start engine, or help to accelerate (from previous regenerative braking), not to store all energy of an electric car.