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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

DOE Contact Says Eestor Underground

I spoke with a Dept. of Energy contact that works in the area of evaluating energy storage technology. He says he hasn't heard anything from Eestor for about a year.  He said he thinks, "they have gone underground."  He gave a exasperated sigh "Oh" when I asked if he had an update on the progress of Eestor. He said he didn't really want to say too much because he got into trouble for saying something before.  This is an odd statement because we never saw any mention of this person saying anything in any of the bloggers' articles about DOE. 


This is the person that was mentioned during the eestor demonstration discussion as being involved with the test scheduling.  Apparently eestor reneged on its own invitation to demonstrate its technology mid 2010 (as reported by John Boyes in  early 2011).  AFRL interpreted Dick Weir's description of the test as a demonstration of efficiency rather than energy density.


I asked the DOE contact today about energy storage for EVs and he said that he did not see any revolutionary technology emerging in the immediate future.   I asked him about whether supercaps could be the technology of the future.  He said you never know for sure, but that supercaps served a different function because of limitations on energy density.  Even though activated carbon supercaps on the market he didn't think supercap could replace batteries, standalone,  for EV applications.