Posted by Piia Ereth Kasatkin on - 20 June 2017

Renewable energy production has issues to be solved before we can power the world with wind, sun, waves, and other renewables. First and foremost – natural resources are not always available, and they are unpredictable. In addition, the amount of available energy is never perfectly in tune with consumption. An easy example would be solar radiation: most...

Posted by Piia Ereth Kasatkin on - 20 April 2017

In terms of possible applications, ultracapacitors are fairly versatile energy storage devices. Rapid improvement of ultracapacitor technology enables to increasingly use them in place of classic energy storage devices, such as batteries and electrolytic capacitors. Wise implementation of ultracapacitors alone or in combination with batteries may lead to...

Posted by Kaarel Kork on - 21 March 2017

Do you drink liquids from a plate, or eat solid food from a glass? No, neither do I. But we all start the engines of our cars, trucks, and boats with batteries, a technology that was never intented for that purpose. In fact, starting an engine is the single most demanding task that batteries face during their operational life, and are often faced with...

Posted by Ann Laheäär on - 22 February 2017

One of the major downsides of batteries is safety, and the dangers of batteries are well-publicized. After all, who hasn't heard of the Samsung Note 7 battery debacle? Many major airlines refused to seat passengers that wouldn't part with their Note 7 phones, but already before this particular case, the US Federal Aviation Administration, among others,...

Posted by Sebastian Pohlmann on - 04 January 2017

Ultracapacitors, supercapacitors, electric double-layer capacitors, pseudo capacitors, and hybrid capacitors - can you tell the difference? If you can't, don't worry. The amount of different types of capacitors is confusing even for people in the industry, because the terms are used interchangeably (and sometimes incorrectly), which just serves to...

Posted by Jussi Pikkarainen on - 28 November 2016

The temperature in which an ultracapacitor or a battery is used has a big influence on how long its charge lasts. Many of us living in cold climates are familiar with starting problems with our car engines when the temperature plummets below -15°C. Especially older batteries have problems operating at colder temperatures, and at times, that results in...

Posted by Jussi Pikkarainen on - 22 November 2016

Ultracapacitors have significantly longer lifetimes than batteries, but why is that? As we've established before, ultracapacitors store energy in an electric field, whereas batteries rely on a chemical reaction. Being free of chemical reactions means that ultracapacitors, or supercapacitors, can survive over a million charge-discharge cycles. For...

Posted by Jussi Pikkarainen on - 31 October 2016

The first truly successful hybrid car was the Toyota Prius. Launched first in 1997 for the Japanese market only and introduced globally in 2000, the Prius has gone on to sell 5.7 million units. Since then, a number of successful electric and hybrid cars have entered the market, with the Tesla Model S, the Nissan Leaf, and the BMW i3 leading the charge on...

Posted by Jussi Pikkarainen on - 29 September 2016

A battle as old as the technologies themselves: ultracapacitors and batteries rule the energy storage industry, fighting for a place at the top. Batteries, as the older and more established technology, wear the crown, but ultracapacitors have taken huge technological leaps forward in the past decade, and are now closing in and overtaking batteries in...

Posted by Oliver Ahlberg on - 12 September 2016

Flexible working hours are touted as a nicety or an additional benefit of working at startups, and most companies blindly follow the trend because you can't be worse than your competition. For the on-lookers this leaves the impression of another gratuitous perk, along with unlimited beer and Red Bull, of the new working style of faux companies operating...