Today’s megawatt class wind turbines are three-bladed, variable speed turbines. Each rotor blade is adjusted and controlled by an independent electro-mechanical pitch control mechanism located in the rotor or in the blade itself. The turbine has an electronic controller that constantly monitors its power output. If increasing wind velocity causes it to become too high, the controller signals the blade pitch mechanism to turn the rotor blades slightly out of the wind. When wind velocity decreases, the blades are pitched back into the wind. These adjustments optimize energy generation efficiency and avoid stress or damage to the drive train, reducing maintenance and extending turbine life.

The video clip above illustrates why all new wind turbine blade pitch mechanisms should be equipped with an ultracapacitor backup power solution. In addition, malfunctions caused by battery failure could lead to 3-6 months of down time and a loss of $375,000 for the owners. Designing in an ultracapacitor solution, rather than batteries, provides a long-term effective and efficient solution to the powering of variable pitch systems.

Electric pitch control systems use batteries or ultracapacitors for backup power to ensure fail-safe operation of the pitch control and braking functions in the event of a total power failure or for maintenance. Batteries must be oversized to satisfy peak power demands for blade adjustment and braking, may not operate reliably in extreme temperature conditions, must be inspected regularly to determine state of health and state of charge, and need to be replaced periodically throughout the life of the wind turbine – no small task in a turbine that may be several hundred feet tall and/or located offshore. By contrast, ultracapacitors’ high power density makes them ideal for delivering the repeated bursts needed for blade adjustment and braking, they perform reliably over a wide temperature range (-40 to +65º C), can be inspected much less frequently, and have an operational lifetime of one million or more charge/discharge cycles, eliminating the need for replacement over the typical life of a wind turbine.

Maxwell Technologies offers ultracapacitor products for wind energy applications in cell sizes ranging from 300F to 3000F and multi-cell modules from 16V to 125V. Leading pitch control system integrators and wind turbine manufacturers around the world already have designed Maxwell ultracapacitors into more than 15,000 pitch systems worldwide to take advantage of their all-temperature reliability and long operational life.

Although wind energy today contributes only about 2% of the total world electricity supply, it is estimated, that by 2020, wind’s contribution will grow to over 4%. That would suggest installation of another 230 GW of new capacity within the next decade, which represents a market potential of up to $250 billion. By providing a simple, solid state, cost effective, long-life solution that ensures reliable, low-maintenance functioning of pitch control and braking systems, ultracapacitors will play a major role in this expansion.

We read with interest General Motors’ recent announcement that it is introducing a fuel-saving technology it calls “eAssist” as standard equipment on some of its auto platforms, beginning with the 2012 model year. The system uses an electric motor powered by a lithium-ion battery pack to assist the gasoline engine with acceleration, and it incorporates regenerative braking to charge the battery. GM says eAssist will improve fuel economy by 20 to 25 percent, so it will be an important step toward meeting the federal government’s 35.5 miles-per-gallon Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) fuel economy standard, which will take effect in 2016.

In a regenerative braking system, the electric motor that assists acceleration also helps to stop the vehicle. When the driver applies the brakes, instead of activating a conventional friction-based braking process, it sends an electronic signal to the electric motor, directing it to run in reverse mode. Running backwards, the electric motor creates resistance to slow the vehicle through a process that is analogous to down-shifting a standard transmission vehicle. An electric motor running backwards also acts as an electric energy generator or dynamo, effectively converting the kinetic energy of motion that was created by burning expensive gasoline into free, clean electrical energy that can be stored to power the electric motor during acceleration, thereby reducing fuel consumption and emissions produced by combustion.

Regenerative braking systems have been in use for more than a decade in hybrid autos, such as Toyota’s Prius, and in trucks, hybrid transit buses and electric rail vehicles, so the eAssist concept makes sense. Automakers around the world are sure to adopt this kind of system in increasing numbers over the next few years. Maxwell ultracapacitors are a perfect fit for regenerative braking applications for several reasons, including:

• Charge/discharge rate. Anyone who uses a mobile phone or other device powered by a lithium battery knows that it can take up to several hours to recharge the battery, so how much energy can such a battery absorb during the few seconds that it takes to stop a car? By contrast, ultracaps fully charge or discharge in a second or less.
• Cold temperature performance. When temperatures approach freezing, batteries become sluggish, so they won’t be able to deliver much power to the battery or capture much regenerative braking energy in cold climates. Ultracaps operate normally down to -40ºC.
• Operational lifetime. Batteries typically last only a few thousand charge/discharge cycles before they need to be replaced, whereas ultracapacitors can be expected to last the life of the vehicle.

Maxwell’s ultracapacitors products have demonstrated that they are ideally suited to applications that require repetitive, rapid, charges and discharges in millions of miles of service in public transit vehicles, and more recently in stop-start idle elimination systems produced by Continental AG for Peugeot and Citroën cars in Europe. We’re convinced that Maxwell ultracaps would also make the eAssist system more efficient and reliable, thus enabling GM to deliver a superior product to its customers, so we hope they will take us up on our offer to prove it.

In my last post, I observed that in automotive design, as with so many things in life, the simplest answer is often the best answer. The question at hand was how best to make cars greener and more economical to operate. My answer is what the industry calls “stop-start idle elimination.”

In keeping with the K-I-S-S (keep it simple, stupid) principle, the premise behind stop-start cars is simple: why burn gas when a car is coasting or stopped? In Europe and Asia, where gas and diesel fuel are far more expensive than here in the USA, automakers have been producing stop-start cars for more than five years, and industry experts expect that tens of millions of these fuel-saving, reduced emission models will be rolling down assembly lines within the next few years.

Unlike more complex and expensive electric and hybrid autos, stop-start cars embody simple, inexpensive, modifications to existing auto platforms. Here is a schematic that illustrates how the Maxwell ultracapacitor-based stop-start system recently introduced by French automaker PSA Peugeot-Citroën on its diesel models in Europe works:

The car has a conventional internal combustion engine and a lead-acid battery for initial starting and to power other electrical loads, such as air conditioning, lighting, entertainment systems, etc. New components required to support the stop-start idle elimination function include a belt starter alternator for repetitive starting, an ultracapacitor booster module to provide power for repetitive starts, and power electronics to manage “brake/throttle logic” that turns off the engine as the car slows and “strategy start” electronics to signal the system to seamlessly restart the car when the drive touches the accelerator or clutch pedal.

For a few hundred Euros more than its standard models, PSA offers cars that consume up to 15% less fuel in city driving and reduce CO2 and other emissions by an equivalent amount. PSA also notes that incorporating ultracapacitors for starting allow it to reduce the size of the battery by 30%, making it small enough to be located under hood instead of in the trunk. That eliminates 20 feet of heavy, expensive, copper battery cable and reduces wiring complexity and assembly labor, partially offsetting the cost of the stop-start system components.

The bottom line: Simple! Stop-start cars that provide a quick payback on their modest incremental sticker price are a real and ready bridge technology that will save billions of barrels of imported oil and substantially reduce unwanted emissions while emerging technologies develop to move us closer to the ultimate goals energy self-sufficiency and zero emission transportation.

You’ve heard it over and over, from the lips of football coaches, management gurus and countless others – Keep it simple stupid, or K-I-S-S.  According to Wikipedia, “The KISS principle states that simplicity should be a key goal in design and that unnecessary complexity should be avoided.”

Why, then is the quest for greener, more efficient cars following such a complicated, expensive, uncertain path? Literally billions of dollars are being thrown at the noble pursuit of zero-emission electric vehicles and the exotic battery chemistries they require. Yet most impartial observers agree that EVs are no where near being practical, economically, and may not even be environmentally beneficial, depending on how the electrical energy to charge them is generated.

Policy makers and auto companies appear to be breaking another “rule” that has guided me throughout my career: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If batteries and EVs aren’t ready to compete with petroleum and internal combustion engines on a make-sense basis, shouldn’t we be devoting more policy initiatives and government resources to making today’s most efficient cars even more so?

European and Asian carmakers have been moving in that direction with smaller, lighter cars and smaller, high-performance, turbo-charged engines for years, and they have been rewarded with significant market share gains.  Now these innovative industry leaders are taking another simple, logical, step to improve energy efficiency with stop-start idle elimination systems that turn off the internal combustion engine whenever it isn’t being used for propulsion.

PSA Peugëot Citroen, the French automaker, was among the first to put stop-start cars on the road in 2004. This year, in collaboration with Tier 1 auto parts supplier Continental AG, PSA introduced an even more efficient model that uses Maxwell ultracapacitors to ensure fail-safe restarts, something battery-only stop-start systems can’t promise.  For “a few hundred Euros” of incremental sticker price vs. conventional cars, PSA calculates that its new e-HDI system will deliver fuel economy gains of up to 15% in urban driving.

That kind of simple, efficient innovation is being driven by government policy that sets emission reduction targets and lets automakers figure out how to meet them, rather than trying to reshape the industry by subsidizing battery companies and EVs with tax dollars. Here in the U.S., stop-start hasn’t gotten to first base yet because the EPA driving cycle used to measure gas mileage vs. CAFÉ fuel economy standards includes only one full stop, resulting in a fuel-savings calculation of less than 1%. Thus American automakers have little incentive to implement stop-start in domestic cars, and foreign automakers have little incentive to introduce them here.

As with most anything in life, we get what we reward.  Simple, isn’t it? In my next posting, I will discuss how stop-start works and how it saves more than just gas.

Responding to the European Union’s CO2 emission reduction legislation and US CAFE fuel economy targets, major automakers around the world are aggressively implementing “stop-start” idle elimination systems across their main product lines.  In fact, Industry sources forecast that within five years stop-start will be standard on 20 million internal combustion engine cars per year. However, all-battery energy storage solutions that current stop-start models are using have not quite measured up to automotive requirements for reliability and longevity.

Not everyone is going to get it right, but Continental AG, a leading international automotive parts supplier, decided to team with Maxwell Technologies to develop its ultracapacitor-based “E-booster” module to augment auto electrical systems and make stop-start systems more reliable, convenient and efficient.  PSA Peugeot Citroën, the first major automotive manufacturer to adopt Continental’s E-booster, has said that over the next three years it expects to sell around one million vehicles incorporating E-booster as part of its new e-HDi micro-hybrid system.

MAXWELL’s 1200 Series Module

While the rationale for stop-start is simple and straightforward (why burn fuel unnecessarily?), successful implementation requires an energy storage system that can support accessory loads during engine-off periods, reliably restart the engine on demand, and recharge rapidly to prepare for the next engine-off opportunity.  Early battery-only stop-start experience has been less than optimal because in cold weather, heavy stop-and-go traffic and with the wear and tear associated with repetitive cycling, batteries lose the ability to re-start the internal combustion engine after every stop.  When the system senses that the battery can’t deliver sufficient cranking  power to re-start, the system deactivates itself and the potential fuel-savings and emission reductions aren’t realized.

To deliver the strong burst of power it takes to restart an internal combustion every time the engine turns off when the vehicle slows or stops in traffic or at a red light, PSA and Continental turned to Maxwell’s BOOSTCAP® ultracapacitors.  Ultracapacitors’ strengths vs. batteries include its very high power capability (burst power to crank the engine), its cold weather capabilities (normal operation down to -40C), and its “life of the vehicle” longevity lifetime under heavy cycling conditions. 

PSA’s e-HDi models reduce fuel consumption by taking advantage of even the slightest opportunity to turn off the engine.  A vehicle equipped with a standard transmission will even shut off its engine when rolling at speeds below 20 miles per hour.  PSA advertises expected  fuel savings of up to 15 percent in urban driving, with an equivalent CO₂ emission reduction.

In addition to this initial series production program for Maxwell ultracapacitors, I expect 2011 to be an active year for testing and large-scale fleet demonstrations for competing energy storage products.  By this time next year, I expect automakers to announce launch plans and design specifications for additional stop-start systems for their 2012-2015 model year vehicles, and you can be sure that Maxwell and the automotive world will be closely following driver satisfaction with these innovative PSA cars.

 
I gave a talk at a conference recently on the topic of mild and micro hybrids and asked the audience: Why is it taking so long for U.S. automakers to convert more new vehicle sales to mild or micro hybrid vehicles? I maintain it is a focus and attention problem. It is definitely not a technical or economics problem at this point.

I was approached after the talk by one of the industry icons who has been involved in hybrid vehicles and the best energy storage technology for them for a long time. The flavor of his comments to me were that he was tired of waiting for Detroit to do the right thing in this regard and it is time for industry and government to take the steps necessary to aggressively introduce mild and micro hybrid vehicles onto the roadways of America. It is clear now that Detroit won’t do it by itself — it needs some motivation to make the move.

I thought about his comments and came up with this simple proposal. What if it was a requirement that on any TV program that whenever an automobile is shown during a show or advertisement (other than car maker adverts themselves), that it must be a hybrid vehicle and conspicuously marked as such? The same with movies — any vehicle must be shown in such a way that the fact that it is a hybrid vehicle is obvious. There is a real opportunity to create a hybrid “brand” throughout mainstream America. That car going through the drive-thru restaurant could be a hybrid just as well as a conventional ICE vehicle and it can sit at the window waiting for food with the engine OFF saving fuel all the while. Let’s take advantage of this and change American thinking into accepting hybrid vehicles because they are necessary.

As for justifying the push for micro and mild hybrids, if the fuel economy argument doesn’t win you over, then certainly the emissions reduction will if you have any shred of concern and pay attention on the most critical energy and environmental challenges of our time.

Some requirements like these are necessary if the government is serious about solving the transportation fuel and pollution challenges. Right now, the federal government is throwing money by the truckload into the electric vehicle hype and relatively ignoring the micro and mild hybrid opportunity which is here NOW. That same government has an opportunity to influence Americans and change their perceptions in ways that result in positive influences on the types of cars Americans want to drive.

Electric vehicles are currently not affordable for most and not safe enough for any. Not so with micro and mild hybrids. They are ready to go now. So why are we putting all the attention and focus on all-electric vehicles? Do an Internet search on the electric car and you are overwhelmed with propaganda. Pick up any newspaper and it is almost guaranteed that it will have a reference or article on electric vehicles as the savior of us all, and that might be the case — someday — but it is not here and it is not now. It makes no sense to push them so hard now and ignore the low hanging but significant fruit harvest of micro and mild hybrids. I am proposing we level the playing field and give equal time to mild and micro hybrids.

Perhaps the requirement is specific for a certain percentage of the time vehicles are shown during the show or movie that they are of a specific mild or micro type, or when vehicles are shown under certain conditions that they bear the hybrid symbol conspicuously. There are many ways to configure the requirement to account for these considerations. If we did this, there is a high likelihood of converting non-believers to believers and of promoting mild and micro hybrid vehicles in the vehicle purchasing public. Better living through advertising!

So let’s get off the dime, out of the clouds of electric vehicle dreamland and get real. Make the marketing of micro and mild hybrid technology a national priority and it won’t be long before sales will follow.

As Maxwell’s involvement with China has grown, both to source low-cost commodities and assembly labor for our ultracapacitor products and as an increasingly significant consumer of our products, I have become a regular visitor to this amazing country and a fascinated observer of its dynamic economy.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a Western journalist’s account of his visit to the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. He describes it as “the world’s largest-ever event . . . with the exception of wars . . . 20 times the size of the last world expo.” (link to article). The Chinese government reportedly spent the equivalent of some $60 billion to stage the Expo as a showcase not only for its arrival as a world power, but also to exhibit and demonstrate its commitment to sustainable technologies.

To ferry a half million people a day around the vast Expo site, the government ordered hundreds of zero emission electric buses from its state-owned Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), which has become one of the world’s 10 largest automakers. The journalist wrote:

“SAIC used the opportunity to trial all the logical new technologies, such as supercapacitor buses – more than 300 of them. If you haven’t heard of a supercapacitor, it’s a device that can rapidly accumulate an electric charge, such as from regenerative braking, but its biggest advantage is that it can also quickly release that charge, and provide the peak power levels which existing batteries cannot deliver. This rapid recharge and discharge makes it ideal for a bus, which needs heavy initial power to get underway, and has short and frequent cycles. Supercapacitors are expensive but, like everything else, they’ll get cheaper with mass production, and have a life of millions of charge-discharge cycles so they will definitely play a role in the future of high performance electric vehicles. Running such a massive fleet of clean energy vehicles and solving real world problems on the fly will logically give SAIC a competitive edge.”

I will admit my personal bias, but there’s a man who knows what he’s talking about! As a matter of fact, Maxwell provided ultracapacitor modules assembled by our contract manufacturer in Shenzhen for one of those buses, and similar ultracapacitor-only designs are being tested and evaluated elsewhere in China. I recently had the opportunity to ride in one and was surprised by how smooth and quiet it was.

Expensive batteries and carbon-emitting internal combustion engines aren’t needed for these vehicles because the ultracapacitor system holds enough energy to propel a large transit bus up to three kilometers, and the average distance between urban bus stops is about 500 meters. Regenerative braking partially recharges the ultracapacitor pack each time the bus brakes, and a contact or inductive charging system at each stop tops off the pack for the next leg of the route.

Other transit operators in China and elsewhere around the world are combining ultracapacitors with batteries or internal combustion engines to provide additional range for routes where the distance between stops is greater. In these hybrid configurations, ultracapacitors’ efficiency in absorbing virtually all of the available regenerative braking energy during the few seconds that it takes to stop a vehicle and their ability to discharge just as quickly to assist acceleration relieves stress that shortens battery life, or saves fuel and reduces emissions associated with internal combustion engines.

So, either as stand-alone energy storage and propulsion system or as a complement to batteries, fuel cells or internal combustion engines, ultracapacitors are establishing themselves as a key enabling technology for greener public transportation in China and beyond.

Putting smart people together to tackle a problem like we have with the grid today doesn’t necessarily mean we will end up with a smart grid.  We’ve all heard that “you have to walk before you can run” and “the only way to eat an elephant is a bite at a time.” Both statements are true and particularly relevant in tackling a massive project such as the grid.

In its annual 2010 Energy Outlook Report, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the federal government has allocated $4.5 billion from ARRA funds to grid technology and infrastructure development. This investment is intended to assist the advancement of the grid for every man, woman and child in the country who uses the energy supplied by it every single day.

This is a good start but this amount of money will only push the effort a bit of the way it needs to go. The Green Tech Newsletter estimates that by 2015, more than $45 billion will be spent on “smartening” and expanding the US grid.

As politicians and bureaucrats decide how to separate you from your hard-earned dollars by creating grandiose and broad-reaching grid projects that taxpayers will be hard-pressed to pay for, they appear to be missing the “low-hanging fruit” that promises to have a large impact in a timeframe that you and I can  relate to. We are facing a crisis that cries out for solutions now. We cannot wait decades for the benefit of the investments we are being asked to make today.

Most current and proposed grid programs focus on the energy storage requirements of the grid aimed at so-called middle time frames — minutes to hours of storage. That’s a perfect place for none other than…..you guessed it, batteries.  There are numerous programs and demonstrations both funded and unfunded aiming at middle time frame energy storage requirements. These are the time frames required for storage of energy generated by renewable energy resources, primarily wind and solar.

The story for short-term energy storage is different. I am aware of only one demonstration program for short-term frequency regulation of power. The technology involved is a flywheel supplied by Beacon Power and funded by NYSERDA. The DOE, through its ARPA-E organization, has just provided additional funding to Beacon to advance the design of that flywheel to reduce cost and improve performance.

From where I sit, it appears that the smart people are being short-sighted in virtually overlooking short-term energy storage opportunities for the grid. The following excerpt from a recent article in AZoM, a science and engineering newsletter on the advancement of materials and technologies of materials, describes potential grid applications for ultracapacitors:  

The near-term opportunities for load-leveling storage are clear. Approximately 90 percent of power outages last for no longer than two seconds, and 98 percent of outages last, at most, 30 seconds, but their economic effects are large. Estimates range from $75 to $200 billion per year impact from power interruptions due to lost time, lost commerce, and damage to equipment.

This is right in the ultracapacitor’s wheelhouse. With that kind of annual cost and infrastructure impact, more focus and attention should be paid to demonstrating the benefits of tried-and-true existing technology for short-term grid storage requirements. A single project centered around a single technology is not going to provide an optimum solution.  Today’s ultracapacitor technologies present themselves as a ready solution to tackle up to 98 percent of all grid outages with ease and the longest lifetime available. That is a significant capability that can virtually instantly take on and address the impacts of short-term outages.

Smart people don’t always make smart decisions about where to put time, money and resources. Often, the simplest and most obvious solution is the one that makes the most sense. It is time to press on the topic of short-term energy storage on the grid for the far more immediate benefit it can provide.

Consumer demand for greener, more fuel-efficient vehicles continues to drive automotive research and development to reduce weight and fuel consumption, manage internal power loads and capture and reuse energy that is wasted in conventional braking systems.  While early efforts have proved valuable, they are just the beginning of more energy-efficient and environmentally-compatible automotive design.  Regardless of engine size, a car’s performance is important and automakers are giving us some intriguing glimpses of the future direction in more efficient power sources.

Automotive OEMs are developing cars with smaller engines that provide adequate power in bigger platforms and boost performance with electrical energy by using Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS), some utilizing ultracapacitors to capture and store regenerative braking energy.  With the ability to recapture and reuse braking energy, ultracapacitors can supplement the internal combustion engine during acceleration, reducing fuel consumption by up to 50 percent and particulate emissions by 90 percent when compared with conventional diesel engines.

In the automotive industry, as well as others, ultracapacitors are considered an environmentally-friendly solution because, unlike batteries, they can perform reliably through a million or more charge-discharge cycles without having to be disposed of and replaced.  With their low internal resistance (ESR), ultracapacitors have high power density to meet instantaneous power needs, such as acceleration. Because their energy storage mechanism does not involve a chemical reaction, they perform normally over a very wide temperature range, giving them a significant all-weather advantage over batteries.

Volatile oil prices and steadily increasing energy demand are creating greater urgency in the world’s search for greener, more sustainable energy sources.  It is interesting to see the auto industry’s bold introduction of cleaner, greener hybrid and electric cars, even though they currently cost more and sacrifice some performance vs. their internal combustion counterparts.  Despite the relatively unattractive return on investment for today’s hybrid and electric car owners, an increasing number of early adopters are willing to pay the hybrid premium to be green. That is likely to spur other automotive manufacturers to develop eco-friendly, energy-efficient models.

Maxwell Technologies develops, manufacturers and markets ultracapacitor-based energy storage and power delivery solutions that enhance the performance, efficiency and reliability of hybrid and electric vehicles.  Efficient, cost-effective, energy storage is a key enabling technology, for the electrification of transportation, and we believe that ultracapacitors will play and important and increasing role in that transformation.

With oil continuing to wash ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, 11 senators and 35 representatives are demanding a ban or moratorium on offshore oil drilling.  Hearings are underway to investigate the Massey Mine disaster, which killed 29 miners and reminded America of the risks and cost of coal extraction.  The Department of the Interior’s approval of Cape Wind’s application to harness wind off the coast of Massachusetts has detractors pledging to tie the process up for years in the courts.

Without a doubt, we will need new sources of supply.  But with promising new supplies requiring significant time and capital to design, build and install at any meaningful scale, the search for more energy needs to begin with a search for more efficiency.

Yet last year alone the venture capital industry invested more than $2.6 billion in supply-side technologies.  While these investments may pay dividends in the long run, they dwarf the $400 million of the VC investment in energy efficiency that can yield dividends today.

According to the Energy Information Administration, America’s demand for energy compared to our GDP makes us the 137^th most energy-efficient country in the world.  The good news is that it’s not hard to find energy waste, and many of the tools and technologies we need to become more efficient already exist, which gets me to my point.

Ultracapacitors is an existing technology that is a cleaner, cheaper way to meet our needs for energy efficiency.  The cost of a company investing in energy efficiency such as ultracapacitors is more efficient and is on average five times less than an investment in a new energy supply.  There are huge new market applications just waiting to be discovered. 

Ultracapacitors are an enabling technology for reliable, energy-efficient, cost-effective and environmentally-compatible solutions for automotive, heavy transportation, renewable energy and industrial OEMs seeking to respond to those market drivers.  For example, we are collaborating with Continental AG, one of the world’s leading automotive electronics and mechatronics suppliers, who is using the Maxwell ultracapacitor as the energy storage element of a voltage stabilization system (VSS) for automobiles.  Stop-start systems reduce fuel consumption and emissions by shutting off the car’s internal combustion engine as the vehicle slows and seamlessly restarts the engine when the driver engages the clutch or touches the accelerator.  Continental AG is marketing the voltage stabilization system it has developed to its automotive OEM customers.

As I mentioned earlier, recent events have made it clear just how hard it will be to build any new energy infrastructure – clean or dirty.  Yes, we will need new sources of energy.  But until then, it is easier and better for the environment to use enabling technologies such as ultracapacitors where we can do more with less.  That’s the energy solution companies should be investing in today.