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Anatomy of the New Supercapacitor Industry Revealed by IDTechEx Research
The new large versions appear in trains at 1kWh and 1MWh appears as hospital and data center uninterruptable power supplies that double for peak shaving. It is a long way from small supercapacitors usually made to standards, easy to make and mostly commoditized at prices of 1 cent /F or less. IDTechEx counts 89% of supercapacitor manufacturers making them though Panasonic recently exited. 37% of these are in China because it exports them strongly, its share of the supercapacitor value demand being only 27% because of its giveaway pricing and lateness into car stop-start.
An exception to the commoditization is small supercapacitors in the form of battery-supercapacitor hybrids BSH, aerospace and military ones working at 150C, capacitor-supercapacitor hybrids beating tantalum electrolytics on ripple and one fifth to one tenth of the size and weight and ones in odd formats such as to go in a watch or smart card. Those working at 85C, -40C and 3V as single cells are less common and in demand.
Battery-supercapacitor hybrids (BSH) are almost always lithium-ion capacitors. They offer higher energy density often with effectively infinite cycle life and better charge retention than pure supercapacitors. Energy density several times that of pure EDLC supercapacitors. There is almost always confined to small units for electronics. IDTechEx measures that 24% of supercapacitor manufacturers now have a BSH range and of those 32% are made in China , where they are most successful commercially. China leads the world here, partly because they have so many large BSHs.
Several companies declare their supercapacitors to be "graphene" as a badge of honor. It can mean non-flammable, relatively non-toxic, no use of the volatile, toxic carcinogen acetonitrile, valuably improved series resistance, better voltage and energy density in a pure EDLC – all good things justifying a higher price.
Raghu Das adds,
Large supercapacitors are more difficult to make, more profitable and represent the majority of the addressable market 2021-2041. Unlike small ones, they typically come with integral power electronics for optimal safe operation, microprocessors for intelligent response, often cooling systems. 47.5% of supercapacitor manufacturers now claim to make them, up from few in the past. However, many of those are barely in the business, their web entries being more of a wish list that reality. 34% of these are in China – no dominance though it is coming up fast in this respect. This is assisted by the fact that a disproportionate amount of the demand for large supercapacitors is in China with the Government requesting that all parts of trains, buses etc. be made in China . On the other hand, China is badly behind in researching supercapacitor bodywork, smart skin and other radical advances scoped in the IDTechEx Research report, "Supercapacitor Materials and Formats 2020-2040".
Raghu Das predicts,
For more information on this report, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/supercaps or for the full portfolio of research available from IDTechEx please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research.
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