Supercapacitors

Some supercapacitors will become smart materials and be sold as feedstock by value added material companies such as Dow DuPont and Nitto Denko. Which companies and when is as yet uncertain. This is part of the emerging big picture for supercapacitors that will make even their materials a multi- billion dollar business.

As society and equipment become more mobile and remote from grids, diesel and gas gensets will be bought in larger numbers for a few years yet - possibly peaking at around $30 billion global market size when over 600GW will be deployed. The Zero Genset market will rise to at least $100 billion if it replaces significant grid power.

Supercapacitor materials are rapidly improving by new routes. The active materials are the dominant part of cost and the cause of limitations such as flammability, toxicity, cost, energy density and self- discharge. Currently the active electrodes almost always consist of bulk "hierarchical" carbon with a range of pore sizes, often made the old way from botanical materials.

Provides peak power support to 3V coin cell batteries and eliminates need for 2.7V LDO regulator for less expensive, smaller, more energy-efficient designs with extended battery life.

An electrochemical double layer capacitor is purely electrostatic in action, meeting the definition of a capacitor. There are other ways of getting high capacitance and energy density.

IDTechEx is attending the International Renewable Energy Conference (ICREN) in Barcelona this week. This article reports on their findings from the first day keynotes.

Single crystal silicon photovoltaics will now be very affordable, obsoleting polycrystalline Si PV by having efficiency much higher. Laminating it onto supercapacitor sheeting will form a load bearing material that both makes and stores electricity, delivering it exceptionally fast when needed.

Diesel vehicles land, water and air, are on the way out because they emit poisons. However, the new electronics and electrics in and on vehicles appearing over the next ten years will contain most those poisons and add more.

Li-ion Batteries are the talk of town in the tech industry, but clarity on the subject is scarce, and very often the word "Battery" is used interchangeably to indicate those relying on the reversible shuttling of lithium ion (Li-ion batteries, or LIB), and many other different energy storage technologies that have little in common with each other.

Winners of the IDTechEx Show! USA Awards - Energy Harvesting, Energy Storage and Electric Vehicles. The annual IDTechEx Show! USA awards were presented in Santa Clara last week during the drinks reception at the end of day one.