Mish, here is another possible battery solution, the EEstor super capacitor. It is tempting to pass it off as more pie in the sky, but Lockheed Martin took a close look and then gave them a bunch of money, so there's hope. They are designing an 'Electrical Energy Storage Unit' (EESU).
From the wiki:
The claims of the EESU are:
* Nontoxic and non-hazardous
* Non-explosive
* For a 52 kWh unit, an initial production price of $3,200, falling to $2,100 with mass production is projected.[6] This is half the price per stored watt-hour as lead-acid batteries, and potentially cheap enough to use to store grid power at off-peak times for on-peak use, and to buffer the output from intermittent power sources such as wind farms.
* No degradation from charge/discharge cycles
* 4-6 minute charge time for a 336 pound (152 kg), 2005 cubic inch (33 L), 52 kilowatt hour (187 MJ), 31 farad, 3500 volt unit, assuming sufficient cooling of the cables.
* A self-discharge rate of 0.1% per month
. . .
In April 2008, ZENN Motors announced a highway speed vehicle for 2009 which will achieve 80 mph (130 km/h) speeds, 250 mile (400 km) range and charge in 5 minutes[11] |
