There are just three weeks left until IDTechEx's Supercapacitors USA event in Santa Clara California, on November 20-21. The supercapacitor industry keeps on growing every year, and this conference keeps on growing in success as well, now in its third edition.
Remembering some of the speakers at our first conference held in Washington in 2012 we find that they have done quite well this year, for example Ioxus, the NY based supercapacitor manufacturer received $US15 million in equity finance last July. On the other hand, Maxwell Technologies has reported a 30% growth in supercapacitor revenue in Q3 2013 vs 2012. Dr Priya Bendale, Sr. Director of Advanced Development at Maxwell Technologies will be with IDTechEx in Santa Clara presenting on how supercapacitors gain traction in a world of batteries.
In our second conference, Supercapacitors Europe 2013, held in Berlin last April we had the pleasure to have Cap-XX's CEO, Anthony Kongats, presenting their advance in supercapacitor systems for automotive applications. This year the company has focused on improving its profitability and has successfully achieved a 30% of product gross margin. In Santa Clara, Pierre Mars, VP of Applications Engineering at Cap-XX will showcase the company's supercapacitors applications in energy harvesting.
Supercapacitors Europe 2013 saw the emergence of many organisations presenting their progress in applying graphene to improve the performance of supercapacitors and now Supercapacitors USA 2013 builds on that experience presenting leading Graphene companies that are pursuing the supercapacitor market. For example Ian Fuller from Angstron Materials will present on a key topic for all graphene companies, namely what are the challenges and opportunities for this emerging industry in reaching scale production. Ryan Mendoza from Graphene Frontiers will present advances on graphene applied in hybrid supercapacitors. In the same line Robert Anstey from Graphene Device and Jesus de la Fuente from Graphenea will present their own advances in energy storage applications including supercapacitors. Finally Stevens Institute of Technology, represented by Dr Linh Le will present their progress on inkjet printed flexible supercapacitors.
While the graphene companies focus in applying their material to supercapacitors, some other companies are focusing on improving already implemented materials in some cases with exciting results. An example of this is American company, Coulometrics who will present how the structure of activated carbon can improve volumetric capacitance and therefore performance, in supercapacitors. Along the same line, JSR Micro will present their advances in supercapacitor development. New materials will be presented by the Australian National University and new supercapacitor devices by Florida State University and the University of Newcastle, Australia.
The growing supercapacitor industry is seeing more new entrants, who will need to engage in challenges such as scaling their technologies from lab to fab. In this respect the University of Surrey and UC Davis will provide the most valuable insights in the complexities of upscaling and methods of evaluating the performance of materials.
Finally, but not least, Supercapacitors USA 2013 is presenting the response of the electric vehicle industry in relation to the current adoption of new devices and the future needs for delivering the energy that these vehicles require to power their powertrains and auxiliary services. In this section, Chrysler Group LLC will present the SAE standards development activities for capacitive energy storage devices, for automotive applications. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, known for its strong relations with industry, will present their performance evaluation of low energy storage alternatives for hybrid vehicles.
Exciting electric vehicle start ups will be joining the conference this year. Visedo, an emerging company is integrating supercapacitors in all different types of electric vehicles, not just cars, but also industrial and marine vehicles. They will present the case of how the implementation of supercapacitors in high power hybrid electric powertrains improves overall powertrain efficiency with a payback of just 1 year. In the same line IFEVS and CNR-Solbian will present their developments in e-vehicles and key implemented technologies such as photovoltaics.
Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of technology and services, will provide their vision on Future Trends in Energy Research for e-Mobility.
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