Ultra Capacitors

In electronics, capacitors hold power for later use. In that sense they are like batteries. However they hold far less power than a battery. Thousands of times less, which makes them poor substitutes for current battery technologies. However, ultra capacitors, developed back in the 1960s improved on his disparity by orders of magnitude. These high-capacity capacitors hold only 25 times less power than standard batteries. Still too poor for battery-type applications, given their higher cost to manufacture, but moving in the right direction. And if Joel Schindall gets the funding he needs, a new version of this decades old technology will finally have a chance at reaching commercial viability.

Schindall, a researcher at MIT, has developed an ultra capacitor design that includes carbon nanotubes, microscopic threads of carbon grown off of a sheet of aluminum. These nanotubes increase the surface area available for holding power inside the capacitor, increasing its total capacity by 25 times, bringing the ultra capacitor right in line with standard battery capacity.



Why is that exciting? For one capacitors can be charged completely in a matter of minutes, as opposed to the hours standard batteries require. In the time it would take to fill a tank of gas you could completely recharge an ultra capacitor-powered car. Plus capacitors can release power in quicker bursts than batteries, allowing for improved performance in power hungry applications. And ultra capacitors can be recharged thousands of times, allowing them to last the life of your car, as opposed to the seven or eight years you'll get from a standard battery. And I believe, although I can't confirm this, that they weigh considerably less than batteries, and less weight means less power necessary to power the same car.

One last positive? Batteries generally require noxious and dangerous chemicals. Ultra-capacitors use aluminum and carbon. Environmentally speaking they're a far safer alternative.

At current funding levels, Schindall has said ten years was the cost-crossover for ultra-capacitors, when the price would likely drop in line with standard batteries. However, if companies began investing in the technology in earnest this arch could be significantly shortened. Given all the benefits, I sincerely hope one of the major automakers takes up the mantle.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power, apart from the mostly unfounded fear associated with it, is an enormously positive thing. In a "greenhouse" world, nuclear power's zero-carbon footprint is enticing. It doesn't produce a single ounce of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas. Nor does it produce any sulfur or nitrogen oxides which cause acid rain. Other than the extremely dangerous spent nuclear fuel (which I'll get to), nuclear power is the cleanest reliable power source as we have access to.

Reliable meaning predictable and dependable. Wind, solar, and water power are all cleaner, no doubt. But they are, at least presently, in order, unreliable, inefficient, and too localized to contribute meaningfully to the US power grid. A complete revamping of the grid to allow for easier sharing of power between regions and less wasteful transport would be necessary to make these options as viable as nuclear.

I'm not putting these option down. I'd love to see them replace as many coal-fired plants as possible. But that will take a lot of time and expense. Nuclear power is viable now. And its safety record is impeccable. The Chernobyl incident is the only nuclear plant accident to ever cause fatalities. Ever. Three Mile Island resulted in no deaths and minimal exposures. Compare that to the thousands of people killed slowly by particulate pollution produced by coal-fired power plants. And the newest generation of nuclear plants are even safer, relying on natural processes like gravity and evaporation instead of big valves and pumps manned by human beings.

Of course there's the issue of the spent nuclear fuel. I don't know the answer to this. Until recently plans were to store all US nuclear waste deep underground in the Nevada desert at the Yucca Mountain site. This is a much safer storage scheme then current norm of storing all spent fuel on site at the plant that produced it. But it involves transporting the spent waste hundreds of miles, during which any number of accidents could occur. President Obama put the kibosh on this plan. I don't know enough about the science here. But I do know human tenacity and ingenuity. We've managed to design nuclear reactors that take a very dangerous and wildly powerful process and make it safe. Very safe. I think we can work out methods to transport the waste just as safely. And if we begin to rely more heavily on nuclear power that is exactly what we'll have to do.

One contender to help with this issue is a new reactor design called the Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor. It pelts the nuclear fuel with much higher energy neutrons, creating a reaction that burns the fuel 100 times more efficiently, deriving much more power from a given amount of fuel. That's exciting alone, but the increased efficiency also allows spent uranium fuel to be burned again. It's estimated that burning our current backlog of spent uranium (nuclear waste) alone in an SCFR reactor would be enough to satisfy the U.S. demand for power for the next hundred years. And reburning spent fuel reduces its radioactive half-life from thousands of years down to hundreds, making it much more realistic to sequester it away from danger.

France, as of the beginning of 2008 already derived 76.8 of its total power supply from nuclear plants. Belgium and Sweden get roughly half their total supply this way. The US, which has twice as many plants as these countries only derives 20% of its total electric supply from them. France generates so much surplus power from its reactors it sells it to other countries for profit. France also has one of the most robust health care systems in the world. You make the connection.

Here's one last element that pushes nuclear power over the top for me. Electric cars. Back in the 50's through the 70's, nuclear's hey day, electric cars were an extremely expensive, unworkable proposition. But they are necessary to allow nuclear power to help put an end to our reliance on foreign oil. There are very few power plants in the US that run on petroleum. So barring electric vehicles, nuclear power would have little impact on oil dependence. That has finally changed. Imagine a world where we derive most of our power from clean, carbon-free nuclear, wind, water and solar sources and then use it to charge battery-powered, carbon-free electric vehicles.

To me that is a wonderful prospect.

Nothings completely safe. We have to weigh the costs and the benefits of all of our power generation options. I think nuclear power, with all things considered, is our best bet for a clean, renewable power world.

The Electric Car, From Cingular?

I've always been enamored with the idea of a fully electric vehicle.  Hybrids are cool, but most of them don't accomplish much in terms of real world fuel savings.  The technology had promise, but I think it got lost when the world went green.  Suddenly being environmentally-conscious was cool, and any technology displaying even the remotest savings was heralded as savior.  The gloss of green, requiring the least inconvenience, was more important than actual results.  So the hybrids that actually produced these, but were ugly (by necessity) to some people, like the Insight and the Prius, were eclipsed by hybrid versions of existing models.  The hybrid civic for instance.  Or hybrid SUVs.  Hybrid SUVs?  That's like a hot fudge ice cream sundae with Meuslix sprinkled on top.

This post is sounding a bit negative, but I don't mean it to be.  I started it like I did as a counterpoint to what I'm really excited about now.  A fully electric vehicle, and a truly functional network to support it.  This guy named Shai Agassi started a company in 2007 called Better Place, to build an electric car grid based on a concept most of us are familiar with.

A quick explanation.  The grid works like a cell phone network.  Better Place makes deals with electric power grid operators across the country to place charging stations as densely as possible.  It then negotiates with these operators for preferential rates on the power they dispense.  Having done that, they build all electric vehicles and sell them for an extremely low price point, creating demand.  Their goal, ultimately, isn't to make money on the sale of the cars.  In some cases they may, like cell phone providers, give the cars away for free.  They'll make their money selling the electricity used to charge the vehicles.  The consumer gets a free or very inexpensive vehicle in exchange for signing a contract promising to pay so much per month for electricity.

In the end, Agassi sees the per mile price of electricity being a good bit less than gasoline.  So it's a win, win, win.  The consumer wins, Agassi wins, and the planet wins.  I think it's the first truly workable solution to break the world's dependancy on gas.

And if it works other companies will likely start building their own charging station networks, competing with Better Place, driving costs to the consumer lower and lower, while driving battery and vehicle efficiency steadily higher.  Already two countries have signed on to roll out the plan and the cars are going into production.  This is not a pipe dream. It's happening, and I can't wait to buy my first Better Place vehicle.

Plus, the whole system makes "Roll Over" minutes (mileage) really funny.