I learned of a Toronto-area battery company called Axion Power through a recent conversation with the CEO of a local renewable energy systems provider. Axion, which became an OTC publicly traded company through a reverse takeover earlier this year, is developing what it calls a “hybrid energy storage device” with the characteristics of both batteries and supercapacitors.

“Our e3 Supercells replace the lead-based negative electrodes in conventional lead-acid batteries with nanoporous carbon electrodes similar to those found in advanced supercapacitors,” according to the company’s Web site, which is quite amateurish but is apparently going through a redesign.

So what makes this battery so special? The company claims it can charge three to five times faster than a conventional lead-acid battery. It also says the battery can handle three to four times as many charge/discharge cycles in deep discharge applications, such as in connection with wind and solar PV systems. On top of that, the technology is designed to handle repetitive 90 per cent depth of discharge without any major loss of performance. Applications being targeted by Axion include the standard fare: telecom tower backup power; short-term energy storage and “buffering” for grid-connected renewable energy systems and conventional utilities; and finally, as a source of power for hybrid-electric cars, electric golf carts and vehicles such as forklifts.

Thomas Cleland, the CEO of Newmarket, Ont.-based Hybridyne Power Systems Canada Inc. — he’s the guy who told me about Axion — says he’s agreed to test out a 5-kilowatt beta version of the battery with one of his renewable energy installations, most likely one that’s wind-based. It would be to test out the battery’s peak-shaving potential.

“Their vision of the product is that it would be possible, with a very large inverter system, to do large-scale, multi-megawatt peak shaving that relieves the grid during peak stress times,” said Cleland, adding that he’s been tracking the Axion technology for more than three years and is quite confident it’s the real deal.

I guess, like anything out there, it comes down to cost and competition. Nobody argues the fact that battery technology has been the weakest link in the clean-energy race, but there are many contenders to the mighty lead-acid battery emerging from every corner, whether it be advances in lithium-ion technology and fuel cells to Redox flow and ceramic batteries. Axion’s technology may solve issues dealing with charging time, lifespan and deep-discharging, but what I don’t see is any claim of improved power density or reduced weight.

Nonetheless, yet another new cleantech venture to follow in an industry hungry for a better, lighter, more powerful alternative to the trusty lead-acid beast.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 16th, 2005 at 12:26 am and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.