Results tagged “mobile-devices”

Apple's big iPad announcement last week has been sinking in for the past few days, and I've concluded that the iPad sucks. I could live without multitasking if push notifications work (with only one exception). The lack of a camera and the silly USB and SD card adapters were dumb design choices, but the iTunes syncing bothers me the most. iTunes is slow, bloated, and horrible.

And the iTunes syncing proves to me that Apple really doesn't understand what makes Amazon's Kindle so great. Yes, the eInk screen is awesome for reading in direct sunlight (except in temperatures below 41° F), and yes, the free wireless 3G service is a nice perk. But there's one reason why the Kindle is a perfect gift for anyone in the family:

Kindle owners never need to connect their device to a computer.

Until this is true of the iPad too, I don't see it mimicking the success of the Kindle.

Behold! United States Patent 7,466,536 was granted to EEStore Incorporated last month. Yes, that's 3500 volts. And yes, that's 31 farads. This is a capacitor.

Installed in an electric vehicle, an array of these capacitors could store 52 kilowatt-hours in a 282 pound box. That's 2.6 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, which would require a 752 pound box to store the same charge. Unlike a lithium-ion battery, this capacitor contains no toxic chemicals, will never explode, can be charged 60 times faster (with the right equipment), will not wear out after three years, and will keep a charge ten times longer.

Two advances in technology made this capacitor possible. The first was the application of integrated circuit screen-printing to create capacitors. The second and most important was the material used as the dielectric. Alumina-coated calcined composition-modified barium titanate has an amazingly high breakdown voltage of 610 V/µm at 85° C.

This capacitor has the potential to revolutionize the way we store energy in the very near future.

• It eliminates almost every disadvantage of the electric car and paves the way for electric buses, motorcycles, and tractors.
• Imagine laptop or cell phone batteries that outlive the device.
• You could buy all your household electricity at night when the rates are cheapest. Similarly, electric companies could make more efficient use of power grids by storing electricity near the consumer and discharging during peak hours.
  
• The biggest problem with solar and wind power has been the ability to store enough power for hours when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

The largest disadvantage to this capacitor is the voltage required. Additional circuitry is necessary to convert to and from 3500 volts. In a car with regenerative breaking, for example, a converter is necessary to store that energy back into the capacitor.

This capacitor or similar inventions will change everything, and this is just the beginning. Giant leaps forward in solar panel technology are just around the corner too. I'm very excited about our energy future.