Ultracapacitors strategy answers market demands

Over the next few months more than 30 new Boostcap ultracapacitor products will meet specific requirements of automotive, transportation, industrial and consumer electronics markets.

Maxwell Technologies intends to introduce more than 30 new Boostcap ultracapacitor products over the next several months as part of a unique product family strategy featuring new "Power" and "Energy" product types to better meet the diverse requirements of the automotive, transportation, industrial and consumer electronics markets.

Dr Richard Balanson, Maxwell's President and Chief Executive Officer, said that the company is moving aggressively to extend its global leadership as a provider of innovative high-performance low-cost energy storage and power delivery solutions.

"The worldwide ultracapacitor market is real, and we continue to strengthen Maxwell's capabilities and global reach to serve that market", Balanson said.

"This means new and more technologically advanced products, stronger internal and external production and distribution capabilities and a wider network of partnerships and alliances".

"This product family strategy enables us to further reduce product development and manufacturing costs and give our customers a much wider range of product choices to meet their energy storage and power delivery requirements".

Michael Everett, Maxwell's Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, said that the company is leveraging its versatile cell architecture and electrode technology to expand its MC and BC ultracapacitor product families with multiple new cell sizes ranging in capacitance from 140 to 3000F, each available in both Power and Energy cell types and in corresponding fully integrated multicell modules.

He said that all the cells with a capacitance of 500F or greater operate at 2.7V, enabling them to store more energy and deliver more power per unit volume than any other commercially available ultracapacitor products.

Everett noted that the expanded MC and BC families will offer customers cells and modules specifically engineered to provide more economical Energy versions for light duty industrial, UPS, telecommunications and consumer electronics applications, and Power versions for hybrid vehicle drive trains, automotive subsystems and other applications that require the lowest equivalent series resistance (ESR) and highest efficiency available with current ultracapacitor technology.

"In addition to meeting or exceeding demanding transportation and industrial application requirements for both watt-hours of energy storage and watts of power delivery per kilogram, all of these products will perform reliably for more than one million discharge-recharge cycles", Everett said.

"The proprietary architecture and material science on which these product families are based also significantly reduce manufacturing cost, positioning Maxwell to achieve our stated goal of pricing large cell ultracapacitors at one cent per farad in multi-million-cell annual volumes".

Everett said that all Maxwell's multicell modules are specifically designed to meet end-user requirements for durability and maintenance-free operation.

They include internal cell balancing that give designers "plug and play" solutions, plus module-to-module balancing that makes them versatile building blocks for systems with higher voltage requirements.

Boostcap ultracapacitors deliver up to 10 times the power and longevity of batteries, require no maintenance and operate reliably in extreme temperatures.

In transportation applications, they efficiently recapture energy from braking for reuse in hybrid drive trains, reducing fuel consumption and emissions.

They also provide compact, lightweight: "life-of-the-vehicle" solutions to stabilise automotive power networks and power new, all-electric subsystems, such as drive-by-wire steering.

In mission critical industrial applications, where backup power is critical for continued operation or a soft shutdown in the event of power interruptions, they provide reliable, cost-effective, maintenance-free energy storage.

In wind turbine blade pitch and braking systems and other industrial applications, they provide a simple, solid state, highly reliable, solution to buffer short-term mismatches between the power available and the power required.

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