Replacing Lead-Acid Batteries with Ultracapacitors
In a few more years ultracapacitors will become a mainstream technology, alongside with established electrochemical battery energy storage. This is one of conclusions of market study Ultracapacitor Market Forecast 2015-2020. Transport segment is forecast to benefit the most from rapidly advancing ultracapacitor technology. Replacing lead-acid batteries with ultrracapacitors may prove to become a burgeoning market opportunity in the very near future.
Lead–acid batteries, invented in the middle of the 19th century, are the oldest and still the most common type of rechargeable battery providing start/stop functionality in modern cars. Lead-acid batteries have a very low energy-to-weight ratio and a low energy-to-volume ratio, yet they are capable to supply high surge currents means that the cells maintain a relatively large power-to-weight ratio. Ultracapacitor technology, approaching performance of lead-acid batteries, has many advantages like longer lifecycle and fast charging/discharging. Ultracapacitors are unique in combining start/stop and regenerative braking functionalities in one device.
Maxwell Technologies, Inc. already supplies large cells to Continental AG, a global Tier 1 auto parts supplier, for a stop-start idle elimination system introduced by PSA Peugeot Citroen in Europe for the 2011 model year.
The Renewable Energy Paradox
Warren Buffet once said that investors into airline business “would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground”. Historically two industries, airlines and automobiles, have been in red for about a century, despite the huge amounts of equity capital that investors had ploughed in them. The more growth, the worse are investors.
The same goes for renewables industry: huge Capex, more money to finance growth and what even worse – the industry has to compete with cheaper fossils. Does it mean that the renewables industry is doomed? Not at all, for all the troubles of the airline and car industries they are still with us and not going anywhere. What are the forces that keep afloat losing industries for decades?
- Benefits for national economy and security;
- Creating mass employment;
- Social benefits at the consumer level;
- Accumulating technological knowledge beneficial for other industries and nation as a whole;
- Creating profitable niches and opportunities;
- Leveraging geopolitical disbalances;
- Improving or reversing wealth transfer;
- Creating infrastructure for new businesse and opportunities;
- The product is commodity with virtually unlimited demand if the price is right.
It’s true that renewables industry will experience many setbacks and downturns before integrating into mainstream energy industry. However, increasing rate of technological advance and energy insecurity of fossil resources ensure that it will not take another century for reneawables to become significant part of the global energy portfolio. Probably even investors may live to see vast riches beyond imagination in the elusive but promisisng alternative energy market.
What Energy Policy is Weird?
Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was quick to label Obama’s algae energy notion as “weird”. Well, that tells us a few things about potential President Newt Gingrich, politics aside:
- Grasp of technology is not his forte.
- His long term energy policy is based on premise of oil as an inexhaustible energy source.
- His long term vision, sorry there is no long term vision – “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”.
Let us stick to the point of discussion: what energy policy is weird? Pretending that oil resources are infinite? Or betting on technology advances in harnessing renewable energy? These are actually rhetorical questions because the choice is not ours to make – the era of cheap and abundant oil is over.
Now, why algae, also known as a “pond scum”, has become a hot topic for presidential debates? According to a recently published market study Global Biofuel Production Forecast 2015-2020 the nascent biofuel market will be based on the following significantly sufficient feedstocks:
- food competing feedstocks like corn and vegetable oil cultures;
- cellulose;
- algae.
Algae has made into this list on three major merits:
- Algae is aquaculture that does not require fresh water resources;
- Algae biomass doubles every 24 hours, some species can double every three hours during the peak growth phase. According to estimates algae will yield between 10 and 100 times more energy per unit area than other biofuel crops.
- Waste water is a possible nutrient source for algae.
These features make algae a rather unique feedstock in the very short list of other alternatives. If we are seriously into renewable energy, the most appropriate choice of words when discussing the algae option would be “common sense”, not “weird”.
Artificially Low U.S. Gas Prices Hurt U.S. Economy in the Long Run
In this week’s address, President Obama spoke about energy challenges. Recognizing that “there’s no silver bullet that will bring down gas prices or reduce our dependence on foreign oil overnight”, President Obama still stopped short of telling politically inconvenient truth that artificially low gas prices are unsustainable and that they hurt U.S. economy in the long run. U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu had been more outspoken than his boss. “Somehow,” Chu said, “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Europeans pay at least twice more than americans for gallon of gasoline. Never mind the current European debt crisis, the higher gasoline prices did not kill European economy. The downturns of higher gas prices are obvious, but why would the higher gas prices be beneficial for U.S. Economy in the long run?
- Artificially low gasoline prices hold back progress of biofuel industry. If given a chance, the fledgling biofuel market will jump-start, creating new business opportunities, new U.S. jobs and laying foundation for energy independence.
- Currently $4 billion of tax dollars subsidize the U.S. oil industry every year. With higher gas prices in place there is no justification for tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies.
- Higher gas price is the best incentive to replace gas-guzzling vehicles by fuel-efficient models, with increased global competitiveness of the U.S. automotive industry as a side effect.
It’s not all roses going the way of higher gas prices but the current status quo is unsustainable in the long run.
See also What Critical Components Should Be in Place for Biofuel Market to Happen?
Hypocrisy of Solar Proportions
China emerges as a scapegoat for stealing the U.S. photovoltaic industry. President Obama in his address to State of the Union pledged not to give up the photovoltaic industry to China. The Coalition of American Solar Manufacturers (CASM) filed antidumping and countervailing duty complaints against China with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and Commerce Department.
Paradoxically it was China, labelled as the developing world’s biggest polluter, that made a breakthrough towards realizing a full potential of the solar industry, one of the largest renewable energy sectors. Price of polysilicon, the main raw material in solar panels, has plunged from $450 per kilogram in 2008 to about $45 per kilogram in 2012 driven by fast growth of the Chinese solar panel-manufacturing industry. Today China accounts for 60% of the world’s solar-panel production and exports 95 percent of its production. What did the “Chinese solar revolution” bring us?
In 2011 the global annually installed solar capacity increased to about 30 gigawatts, fivefold from pathetic 6 gigawat in 2008. The price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) is dropping from $10 dollars in 90′s down to $1 today.
Are Chinese trading practices unfair? They are, but so what? Probably the right question would be: did the “Chinese solar revolution” make the world a better place?
If the Chinese government is set to promote the global utilization of solar energy at their own expense, let them. The Chinese economy is a huge Ponzi pyramid, blown up by currency manipulations and easy credits to manufacturers. The Chinese trade deficit is only one evidence that this elaborate government-sponsored pyramid is already cracking up, even without U.S. pressure.
We would be better off by exercising our competitiveness in the areas where U.S. has technological edge, like two U.S. startups, Astrowatt and Twin Creeks Technologies. These two companies are struggling to cut the cost of solar cells in half by making thinner wafers of crystalline silicon.