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Although we don't see it, all of these developments do actually eventually make their way into battery tech. The batteries of today are not the batteries of 2014.
If you remember what battery powertools were like in early 2010s, it's super obvious how far we've come. The higher end things like battery powered lawn mowers didn't exist, and if you wanted real power, you needed a cord.
I mentally nicknamed them the twins. Two guys who worked together with their two drills. Each had a double sized DeWalt battery and another spare double sized. Last time I saw them was 2016. So yeah you got an acedotal backing you up.
I just wish it was an either/or situation.
I don't always need my lawn mower/blower/weed trimmer on batteries. I wish I could easily plug them in when doing light dut work close to the house. But then they couldn't tie me into their battery ecosystem as easily.
I've seen a Makita eletric brush cutter with an adapter to plug straight into a standard outlet. The person who bought the machine told me it was more expensive than a battery pack but at least it made the machine usable for longer periods of time when energy is available.
Cord mowing has a long established tradition.
I mowed my grass with a corded mower for a decade until the motor bearing finally disintegrated. Cost me $100 and one blade replacement. No small gas engine was ever that reliable for me
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies. Very few actually turn out to work practically.
The most exciting things to happen in the last few years (from an average citizen's perspective) are the wider availability of sodium ion batteries (I believe some power tools ship with them now?), the continued testing of liquid flow batteries (endless trials starting with the claim that they might be more economic) and the reduction in costs of lithium-ion solid state batteries (probably due to the economics of electric car demand).
FWIW the distinction between capacitors and batteries gets blurred in the supercapacitor realm. Many of the items sold or researched are blends of chemical ("battery") and electrostatic ("capacitor") energy storage. The headline of this particular pushes the misconception that these concepts can't mix.
My university login no longer works so I can't get a copy of the paper itself :( But from the abstract it looks first stage, far from getting excited about:
This precise control over relaxation time holds promise for a wide array of applications and has the potential to accelerate the development of highly efficient energy storage systems.
"holds promise" and "has the potential" are not miscible with "May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries".
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies.
More like decades. Anyone remembers buckyballs and buckytubes? What happened to that?
I've been seeing a lot about Sodium-ion just in the past week.
While they seem to have a huge advantage in being able to charge and discharge at some fairly eye-watering rates, the miserable energy density would seem to limit them to stationary applications, at least for now.
Perfect for backup power, load shifting, and other power-grid-tied applications though.
I thought one of the main advantages of sodium-ion batteries was price? Great for the applications you listed
And environmentally way better than Li-Ion.
I mean, I wouldn't mind a car with "only" 200km range, but that can charge up to full in just 5 minutes. I use my car just for work 99% of the time anyway, the times I need to go somewhere further away I can easily stop midway to charge, get a coffee in the meantime and then be on my way.
There are already cars with this technology (one of the cheap Chinese ones)
|My university login no longer works so I can't get a copy of the paper itself :(
Scihub my brother 🙏
I wouldn't know, but it's totally not on there, or so I've been told.
Sadly Sci-Hub has not received updated articles in several years. Alexandra is waiting for the outcome of the trial in India. I don't think it depends on what the outcome is, just that the trial needs to be over.
I really hope it leads to something no energy loss for regen would be GOAT
Electrolytic capacitors are closer to batteries than to non-polarized capacitors. Lithium-ion cells in capacitor housings also exist, presumably to evade tariffs and restrictions involved in shipping batteries.
Upvoted because this is true. I knew that information so I can confirm it. I swear I did.
This somehow makes me less trusting of the previous comment.
Headline is dumb. If capacitors are better at being batteries than batteries are, they just become the next generation of batteries.
Capacitors can theoretically charge MUCH faster.
However the galvanic potential of lithium is as large as is practically possible. The galvanic potential is what really matters for a battery. Capacitors are nowhere near the joules per weight/volume.
Headline is not dumb. There are reasons to make a distinction between the two, the most salient one being that capacitors are several orders of magnitude faster to charge and discharge.
Material science has just been crushing it for a good long minute now.
I wonder why I even read these articles. If these do turn out to be useful it will eventually make its way into technologies I use or buy near me. I don't have to hunt them out.
I mean the application isn't exactly arduous but they use capacitors in solar powered watches instead of batteries. They claim you can still get 80% of max voltage after 20 years use.