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Comment by solstice | Hacker News Reader

The article talks a bit about this, and fast charging seems to bring some problems with it, though:

_Theoretically, these power capacitors could be wrapped up into a big battery pack and used to power a long-range, super fast charging EV. The high-power versions can charge to 75 percent in five minutes, for example. But Verhulst doesn't believe this tech will flood the automotive market. "You need a charger that can handle it," he tells us. "A 10 kWh pack charged in five minutes means you'd need a 100 kW charger. If you then go to the big ones, say a 100 kWh battery, you'd need a megawatt charger. That's a lot. That's a whole power station. So scalability is still an issue."_

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Electrify America / ionity / Tesla superchargers these days already output 250-350kWh. You could also use those super capacitors in the charging station itself to level out demand.

Using them in the grid itself is an even bigger aspect, either for simple storage that can act as a peak power plant or to act like a high frequency energy trader.

I'm assuming that should be kW and not kWh

Battery backed renewable power is competing primarily with natural gas in being able to absorb and release power. They have to last 10-20 years. Batteries heat up when you charge or discharge them, which causes lifetime decrease and efficiency losses.

If these capacitors have lower internal resistance (and it sounds like they do) and last reliably for 10 years... yeah, I can see these being a next generation alternative to battery based storage at the grid level.

If they can manufacture them in a rectangular plate kind of form factor like a cell phone battery, I imagine there could be a huge benefit there. I think people would pay a premium to be able to charge their phone to last for 10 hours in 12 minutes (50C charging rate).

This is exciting. That they're in production and being tested by outside partners is a huge validation point that this is real.

> Batteries heat up when you charge or discharge them, which causes lifetime decrease and efficiency losses.

Isn't that why the batteries have active cooling systems?

Yes, which in any fair analysis decreases their efficiency.

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