This was a blurb I wrote a few months ago in an email.....
I guess the biggest issue with this particular claim... is that an available product for sale, does not exist. You cannot buy one of these batteries. This is the Achilles heel for EV'ers. They have been pumped up and let down so many times, that until a product is available and proven capable for an application.... it is "vapourware". If you want to glamorize an emerging battery technology, I would rather pick EEstore and the Zenn Motors saga. This one has been set to revolutionize the world of energy storage for quite some time now. It's undergone 3rd party testing, arms-length evaluations etc.... still, no product.... and yes, I have read all the various reports.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/27/the-race-for-the-perfect-battery/
I have no doubt that CSIRO have some kind of product. We've seen pictures. If you look at the working prototype, it is a 12 volt, 8.5 Ah battery. The car that was tested to 160,000 km or whatever it was, is a hybrid. That means it was driven around the track by an ICE.. not by these batteries. The "cycles" described are braking, and resuming travel, cycles. The pack used in this car is a string of 12. Series connected, that's 144 volts. 144 volts @ 8.5 amp hours. By their admission (and typical in the world of discharging pb) 80% DofD is used. 144volts of 8.5 Ah @ 80% DofD is about 980watt-hours of energy. There is something known as Peukert's effect, which simply states that the faster you draw energy out of a battery, the less u get. For pb, that is usually around 1.3.... This is why batteries often have a time factor stated. The prototype batteries are 12 volts, 8.5 Ah at a 5 hour rate. This means, if you draw the power out of them over the course of 5 hours, you will get 8.5 amp-hours or 8.5 amps for 5 hours. EV's are very aggressive at using energy and 1 hour rates often apply. This means you don't get the 8.5 amp-hours any more... you get more like 70% of that. Let's say for the sake of argument that there is NO Peukert's effect (which is unlikely...although, it could be quite low) Assuming you get a full 80% DofD, usable energy of 980 watt-hours would drive my EV truck about 2 miles... maybe 3 with the wind behind me.
Obviously, these batteries were made for a hybrid application and have never been touted for any other purpose. This is likely because of their ability to absorb and discharge quickly due to the assistance of the ultracaps. Pure EV's or in your case a rail application, need very heavy sustained current draws for longer periods of time. It would be a severe mis-application....even if a significantly larger battery did exist....which it seems does not.
Cycle life is another issue. This controlled study touts the Ultrabattery as having 1100 cycles to 80% Dof D. This is significantly better than pb although currently produced Li product that you can buy today and is used in heavy motive power applications will exceed 5000 cycles to 80% DofD.
You may want to look at something like this battery.
http://www.thunder-sky.com/pdf/2010723133950.pdf This cell contains 22,400 Wh of energy. With a string of these in series (to what ever voltage you want) you could discharge at a continuous rate of 7,000 amps and a short period burst of 140,000 amps. If you ran a parallel pack, you could double those numbers. Most rail applications use diesel over electric. This is too take advantage of the huge, low RPM torque offered by electric motors. Batteries would only need to be used as a buffer in this case. I'm not sure that battery energy density has reached a point where it would be well applied to battery-only motive power for rail use. I think a dedicated rail is much better suited to having electrical power delivered to it as needed. The electric trolley cars in Toronto have been in operation for many decades. . .granted the overhead lines are a bit dated. This mode of delivery could be easily modified to safe, concealed and of lower elevation...like below the car. The great things about electric drive are it's efficiency and low maintenance. ICE's are typically 18-22% while electric motors are 85-98% efficient.
I wouldn't get too hung up on the Ultrabattery, at least not yet. When it comes to market, if it comes to market...then we'll see. In my world of Engineering, we always kept an eye on emerging technologies....but we designed with proven ones
