THE LONG AWAITED BREAK THROUGH IN BATTERY TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN FOUND

There is a small company based outside Marseilles, who will by mid 2019 be mass producing a new type of battery, the advantages of which will blow your mind apart. The French company believe their products offers massive advantages to Electric Vehicles – i.e. self-launching motorgliders.

By combining the unique strengths of lithium batteries with an all new crazy-fast charging and carbon ultra-capacitors, the combination results in massive weight savings of more than a third of current power supplies. Recharge times can be measured in seconds. (Like half the time it takes to fill your tank with fuel). To this add the life span of this new power storage - it will accept up to a million charge cycles.

This is a story that “will blow your mind� and it appears in complete detail in the July issue of Gliding International.

You can buy of renew your subscription at our web site -

www.glidinginternational.com

Mind not blown. The concept of combining carbon ultra capacitors and lithium ion batteries for hybrid cars has been worked on for several years by various companies. The French Nawatechnologies company claims to have better capacitors rather than a new concept. In a hybrid car the advantage of combining the ultracapacitor with a lithium battery seems to be using the capacitor's extremely rapid charging for regenerative energy storage but that's not much use for self-launching motorgliders. Also motorglider main battery charging time is not nearly as critical as it is for electric cars - we can do it overnight whereas they need very rapid charging to counter the reduced range compared to ICE engined vehicles.

To me the big story about electrical energy storage advancement is that despite numerous claims of a revolution just round the corner it has been stubbornly incremental in reality.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 01:31:47 -0700, jpg797 wrote:

To me the big story about electrical energy storage advancement is that
despite numerous claims of a revolution just round the corner it has
been stubbornly incremental in reality.

You're spot on about promises of new battery technology, usually made
about results from an initial small scale laboratory demonstration, that,
after a glowing announcement in New Scientist, mysteriously vanishes,
never to be heard from again. It would be really wonderful if at least
one of these efforts resulted in something more substantial than a PhD
thesis and, at least sometimes, a newly fledged PhD graduate. But, I'm
not holding my breath for this wondrous event because known electro-
chemical properties put limitations on future capacity increases.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Something like this would be ok for a acceleration booster, even if only 20 seconds of high power to accelerate for self launch.
Given the FES motor has more power than the Fisher Top motor, with an acceleration boost, self launching at 400kg would be possible.

On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 9:42:35 AM UTC-6, Charlie Quebec wrote:
...even if only 20 seconds of high power to accelerate for self launch.

Nope, supercaps absolutely not helpful.
You need enough power for a safe climb rate for several minutes.
And that much power already provides more than adequate acceleration.

Forget the supercaps for this application!
BTW, some electronics I designed flying in produced gliders uses supercaps ;-)

A FES motor would provide sufficient climb rate, and an initial boost would be helpful.
As I pointed out, it is already more powerful than a TOP motor.

On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 4:34:04 AM UTC-7, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 01:31:47 -0700, jpg797 wrote:

To me the big story about electrical energy storage advancement is that
despite numerous claims of a revolution just round the corner it has
been stubbornly incremental in reality.

You're spot on about promises of new battery technology, usually made
about results from an initial small scale laboratory demonstration, that,
after a glowing announcement in New Scientist, mysteriously vanishes,
never to be heard from again. It would be really wonderful if at least
one of these efforts resulted in something more substantial than a PhD
thesis and, at least sometimes, a newly fledged PhD graduate. But, I'm
not holding my breath for this wondrous event because known electro-
chemical properties put limitations on future capacity increases.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

For aircraft power, energy density is king. Even the company's own press release does not claim to be competitive with LiPo batteries (as used in the FES and Antares), they say the may eventually "approach" that.

The dirty secret of all electric vehicle power is that you've got to get the power somewhere. At our glider port, if more than 1 or 2 electrics plugged in overnight it would bring the electric service to it's knees. We barely have power to recharge the golf carts. As an energy source, gasoline is still hard to beat.

Hear Hear. Just because it's in all capital letters doesn't make it so. And they forgot the operative word "may", as in "by mid 2019 MAY be mass producing a new type of battery". Like many such predictions, it doesn't actually happen.

One issue often glossed over in discussions of fast-charging batteries is the power needed to do that. E.g., suppose you have a battery that holds 20 KWH and you want to charge it in 30 seconds (1/120 of an hour). You'd need 20 * 120 = 2400 KW of power, i.e., 2.4 megawatts. Go ask your electrical utility for a price quote on that sort of connection...

But yeah, for launching gliders you don't need fast charging.

Go ask your electrical utility for a price quote on that sort of connection...

Well Moshe, when the supercapacitors become workable in cars, why wouldn't they also become workable for buffering at the filling station? Megawatt connections won't be the issue.

On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 12:18:30 PM UTC-4, Steve Koerner wrote:
Go ask your electrical utility for a price quote on that sort of connection...

Well Moshe, when the supercapacitors become workable in cars, why wouldn't they also become workable for buffering at the filling station? Megawatt connections won't be the issue.

You'd need a heck of a lot of those supercapacitors. The reason they are being talked about in cars is to provide acceleration or regeneration for a few seconds, a small amount of energy relative to what's stored in the main battery. Sort of like a now-old-hat "hybrid" car uses the battery for short-term acceleration and regeneration while the gasoline tank stores most of the energy. The supercaps have a much lower energy storage density, and much higher price per energy unit, relative to batteries. Also, at a "filling station" you'd want to allow one car to fill-er-up after the other, not much time for buffering. So you'd still need megawatts of supply. That's actually perhaps economically feasible at a dedicated filling station, but not at home.