Military contractors have a history of throwing money (they have a lot of it, thank you Mr. taxpayer!)at a technology even if there is less than a fifty/fifty chance of it working. Witness the huge amount of funds thrown at the “Star Wars” program. Most of these experimental programs show no results. An article for Technology Review, published by MIT, show there are a lot of scientists who are very skeptical this new battery will work. The comments are interesting, while the scientists cite papers and explain why they don’t think the Eestore device is viable, the other comments throw around platitudes and wishfull thinking as to why it will. Maybe a new way to measure the acceptance of the reality peak oil - peak platitudes.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/

There is an obvious military use for these high voltage devices. As noted in the interview:

......In the situation where you are trying to store energy, transport it without discharge obviously thats very attractive in the utility grid load leveling (situation). If your talking about powering for example a high energy weapon that requires a short burst of energy a capacitor is a great approach to do that....

...We are basically working with them exclusively and in the homeland security and defense department’s markets...

One of the big problems with laser weapons is the high energy requirements over a short period of time. If these ultra capacitors are as good as described, think of IR lasers mounted on Humvees. There was a story about such a scenario while back. The IR laser is invisible and the comment went something like "the bad guy was standing in a group talking with his buddies and suddenly his head exploded". Such systems would also be of use in airborne applications, including lasers to intercept incoming missiles. They would be used for delivering a series of rapid pulses, then could be recharged over a few minutes from lower power sources, such as an APU. Then too, there are the potential orbital applications...

E. Swanson

I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but to me it has all the signs of investor fraud. The product capabilities probably violate the laws of physics. But hey those capabilities, are just what anyone who knows what the specs for energy storage mean would kill for this.

Yes, ultracapitors are really amazing devices. But in the real world they have limits. It would be great to combine UC with LiIon for all sorts of plugin technology, but the current cost is prohibitive.

This makes all the sense in the world to me.

"The new boss is same as the old boss."

They military-industrial complex is continuing to strengthen it's position for a post FF transition.

Goal: Present vested interests remain vested.