It's a consumer's dream and an engineer's fantasy: Safe, affordable and eco-friendly batteries that can store immense amounts of energy, allow for lightning-fast charging, and handle virtually unlimited discharging with little affect on quality.
Such a battery — a superbattery — doesn't exist today, but a tiny company out of Austin, Texas, is getting remarkably close, and the possibilities have caught the attention of the U.S. army, the former vice-chairman of Dell Computer, and one of the most respected venture capital firms in North America.
Not much is known about awkwardly named EEStor Inc., and the company prefers to keep it that way. It has no website. Hits on Google are remarkably low. And as far as requests from the media are concerned, the company makes its position crystal clear: Go away.
"EEStor is not making public statements at present time," company co-founder and chief executive Richard Weir replied when the Toronto Star requested an interview via email. "EEStor would also like to have you and your paper not publish any articles about our company and the Toronto Star is certainly not authorized to publish this response."
The Mission Impossible secrecy is understandable, given what's at stake. Despite advances in other fields, there have been no dramatic improvements in battery capacity in the two centuries since Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invented the technology.
Energy storage has long been the bottleneck for innovation, holding back new energy-sucking features in mobile devices and preventing everything from the electric car to renewable power systems from reaching their full potential. Build a radically better battery at lower cost, experts say, and the world we know will be forever transformed.
"There's been nothing big or disruptive, and we're due for it," says Nicholas Parker, chairman of the Cleantech Venture Network, which tracks investment in so-called clean technologies. He says energy storage is one of the hottest areas for venture capital funding right now. "Right across the board, better energy storage is essential."
Among EEStor's claims is that its "electrical energy storage unit" could pack nearly 10 times the energy punch of a lead-acid battery of similar weight and, under mass production, would cost half as much.
It also says its technology more than doubles the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in most portable computer and mobile gadgets today, but could be produced at one-eighth the cost.
If that's not impressive enough, EEStor says its energy storage technology is "not explosive, corrosive, or hazardous" like lead-acid and most lithium-ion systems, and will outlast the life of any commercial product it powers. It can also absorb energy quickly, meaning a small electric car containing a 17-kilowatt-hour system could be fully charged in four to six minutes versus hours for other battery technologies, the company claims.
According to patent documents obtained by the Star, EEStor's invention will do no less than "replace the electrochemical battery" where it's already used in hybrid and electric vehicles, power tools, electronic gadgets and renewable energy systems, from solar-powered homes to grid-connected wind farms.
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`The stuff at MIT is a lot of hype . . . I've been working on ultracaps since 1989, and I've seen an awful lot of water go under the bridge — a lot of technologies get hyped and then go away' Andrew Burke, researcher at the University of California
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EEStor's technology, to be accurate, isn't really a battery at all. In techie speak it's a ceramic ultracapacitor with a barium titanate dielectric. A mouthful to be sure, but what's important is that it's designed to combine the superior storage abilities of a battery with the higher power and discharge characteristics of an ultracapacitor.
Batteries, from the throwaway Energizer Bunny variety to the nickel-metal hydride units in a Toyota Prius, are great for storing large amounts of energy through chemical reactions, but they're notoriously slow when it comes to absorbing and releasing that energy.
They're also sensitive to temperatures, made up of toxic materials, and anyone who owns a digital camera, laptop, or handheld vacuum knows that after draining and recharging a few hundred times the battery degrades to the point of being useless.
On the other hand you've got ultracapacitors, based on an invention that dates back to 1745. These little devices hold energy as an electric charge and release it instantly as a power-packed jolt of electricity — not unlike the static shock you might get after walking on a rug and touching a metal doorknob. Ultracapacitors, unlike batteries, can also absorb a charge as fast as they release it.
And they're also "green," in the sense that they contain no nasty chemicals and aren't made of toxic substances. Reliable in the coldest winters and warmest summers, "ultracaps" can typically be cycled — that is, completely discharged and recharged — more than a million times, outlasting any iPod or that electric scooter in your garage.
"After nearly two centuries in which batteries have been the obvious choice for storing usable amounts of energy, high-end capacitors, known as ultracapacitors, are poised to challenge them in a growing range of applications," John Miller, an ultracap expert and former engineer with Ford Motor Co., wrote in a recent essay.
The quick power burst that ultracaps provide is why they're already showing up as a complement to batteries in hybrid-electric vehicles and fuel cells in hydrogen-powered cars and buses, which benefit from the extra kick that's needed to get from a stop-to-start position or to assist in acceleration.
But completely replacing batteries, rather than just complementing them, poses a much more difficult challenge. Ultracaps have traditionally not been able to store as much energy as a battery. For example, a lithium-ion battery — where many of the advances in the battery world are focused — can typically store 25 times more energy than the latest ultracapacitors of the same size made by market leaders such as Maxwell Technologies Inc., NessCap Co. Ltd., and Epcos AG.
Last month, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced they had achieved a breakthrough that could potentially overcome these energy-storage limitations. Using carbon nanotube structures, they claimed to have developed a way to improve by 100-fold the energy storage capacity of ultracapacitors.
Andrew Burke, an ultracap expert and researcher at the University of California at Davis, says there's no shortage of groundbreaking claims but no one has been able to back them up with hard data or outside a laboratory environment. And even if they get beyond the lab, the high cost of manufacturing presents another barrier to overcome.
"The stuff at MIT is a lot of hype," says Burke. "They haven't tested the material yet. Their claims are based on calculations and assumptions about what these things are going to do.
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`If everything they say is true, then that's pretty amazing. To do all of that is unheard of when you look at any other battery technology out there' MacMurray Whale, energy analyst at Sprott Securities, former professor of mechanical engineering
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EEStor, on the other hand, appears well beyond the lab stage. Weir and Carl Nelson, vice-president of engineering and technology, spent much of the 1990s testing and developing manufacturing techniques and processes to support their claims.
Weir, an electrical engineer who has worked at IBM Corp. and autoparts giant TRW Inc., and Nelson, educated in chemistry and materials sciences, have extensive experience in the fabrication of integrated circuits and in the development of the kind of ceramic powder at the core of EEStor's technology.
The details of their research are sketchy, but it involves a method of processing, mass-producing and using barium titanate powder as an insulator — the dielectric — helping EEStor's energy storage system achieve a radical increase in voltage and energy storage without compromising reliability.
Another key to this process is the ability to lower the cost of production enough to become price-competitive with conventional battery technology, itself a major feat.
By 2000, the co-founders were ready to build a prototype. It's difficult to say how far EEStor's ultracap technology has evolved since, but sources close to the firm say a working prototype has been built and a production line is now creating prototypes on a batch basis, in preparation for volume production.
The company, sources say, is weeks away from seeking independent verification of the product's performance, which will be conducted by the University of Texas at Austin or a U.S. army facility. If all goes well, EEStor could be in preproduction this year and full production in 2007. During this time, potential customers — from automakers and military contractors to tool and electronics makers — will get a closer look at the product.
Burke remains skeptical. "I think it's nonsense. If they say they've built something I want to see the test data. Until then, talk is cheap."
Burke isn't the only suspicious observer. Another engineer the Star consulted had similar doubts. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," says Neil McMurchie, a freelance engineer working in the Alberta oil patch. "I find it hard to accept because the impact would be so profound. It would really change everything in electronics and power engineering."
Then again, he adds. "It just might work."
That possibility, that earth-shattering potential, has turned just as many skeptics into believers — a number of them highly credible. Last fall, it was reported that venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led a $3 million (U.S.) investment in EEStor.
Kleiner Perkins has a track record for picking winners. It made early bets on Google, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, Netscape and a host of other high-tech success stories that went on to become leaders of the computing, Web and telecommunications sectors.
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`I've been working on ultracaps since 1989, and I've seen an awful lot of water go under the bridge — a lot of technologies get hyped and then go away' Andrew Burke, ultracapacitor expert at the University of California
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John Doerr, a partner with Kleiner Perkins, reportedly told an audience at an investors' conference in January that an energy storage company, which he would not name, represented the VC's "highest-risk, highest-reward" investment. It's widely assumed he was referring to EEStor.
Adding more intrigue to the story is the fact that Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state, joined Kleiner Perkins last summer as a strategic partner. Sources speculate Powell has been briefed on EEStor, which from a government and military perspective could bolster the Bush administration's energy security policy and efforts to break America's "addiction to oil."
"It's one thing to have the greatest new technology, but another to get it out into the field," says Richard Baxter, an energy-storage expert and researcher at New York-based Ardour Capital Investments LLC, who sees huge potential in ultracap technology. "Kleiner's great for opening up the door."
Besides Kleiner's involvement, EEStor has also attracted big names to its five-person board. The Star has learned that Morton Topfer, former vice-chairman of Dell Computer Corp. and widely known as Michael Dell's mentor, has joined the company as a director. Topfer founded and is managing director of Austin-based private equity firm Castletop Capital LP and has close and invaluable ties to big Texas money.
Michael Long, CEO of online real-estate giant Homestore Inc., is also on the board. His experience with Homestore and as CEO of several companies before that could prove useful as EEStor inches closer to commercialization.
There's a Canadian angle to all of this. Before Kleiner's involvement, EEStor struck a relationship with Toronto-based Feel Good Cars that has translated into a $2.5 million (U.S.) licensing agreement. Feel Good makes low-speed electric cars and wants to use EEStor's technology to power its next-generation vehicles, which could hit the market as early as 2007.
Ian Clifford, the company's co-founder and CEO, says he has secured exclusive worldwide rights to purchase EEStor's product for use in any vehicle up to 1,200 kilograms, about the size of a Honda Civic. It also has non-exclusive rights to use the technology in other vehicles excluding SUVs and pick-ups.
According to patent documents, EEStor describes the day when gas stations evolve into "electrical energy stations" that store energy overnight when electricity is cheap and sell it like gasoline during daytime. Drivers could pull in and recharge their EEStor-powered car in a few minutes the same way we now fill up with gasoline.
The company pegs the potential electric vehicle market at $40 billion (U.S.) a year, but figures its total opportunity — military, utility and electronics markets — approaches $150 billion.
Clifford is waiting anxiously for the results of independent testing, which are expected this spring and will trigger another licensing payment from Feel Good. "The implications of this technology go well beyond transportation," says Clifford. "EEStor, for us, would be a dream come true."
Clean Break reports on energy technologies. Reach Tyler Hamilton at thamilt@thestar.ca