Great build! I feel the caps should be held down with something more robust. If they ever shook lose, they could do some damage. I'm impressed with your hand-made voltage boosting matrix!
Yup it's just hot glue holding those down. If a metal wire shorted them it would vaporize. The booster matrix took a while and multiple iterations cause I was trying to do better load balancing first with resistor droop or other methods but ran into some issues with those methods.
For the cost of those supercaps you could have gotten a 40 Ah LTO cell. That's over 80 Wh energy! You also only need a single boost converter otherwise you waste most of the energy in quiescent drain.
I am aware of the severe energy inefficiency. If you listen to the explanation, the point was to store energy for a long period of time at low voltage, then be able to boost it up, and not to use lithium batteries.
The problem you seem to try to solve here is how to store electrical energy over a longer period as an emergency solution. I wil not comment your hardware overkill, it has been done before. But I have a suggestion for you: Try to work out something with a fuel cell. You can store a small bottle of hydrogen and oxygen very compact and it will not decay in a 1000 years.
Yeah I know there are better fuel cells like nickel hydrogen is great and lasts a real long time. But the point was to use something a bit more commercially available, and to learn about supercapacitors.
Li-Ion batteries only die after a few years *IF* (and only "if") you dont keep them between 20% and 80% charge, make their environment way too hot or too cold, cycle them way too often or damage them otherwise. If you use, say, Li-Fe-PO batteries, keep them in their comfortable zones of charge and temperature, properly pack them with fireproof isolation foam and dont abuse them ... they might as well last 20 years or more. Its very possible to make them live for even longer - it all depends on how well you build & use them. Advanced charging algorithms help *A FRIGGIN LOT*. Climate control helps even more. Perfect climate all the time = unbelievable lifetime. We're talking "all of one human lifetime" if you also control humidity. Also : these supercaps will not last 300 years. They will probably break down after two decades, if not less. Thats just .... IRL physics, my guy.
The supercaps are max 2.7V. I'm only charging them to 1.2V. Lifespan will be about 300 years yup yup yup. Your enthusiasm for lithium batteries seems to come with many constraints on where and how you have to use them. I am aware of how to properly CC CV charge lithium batteries and how to take care of them. However, if you try to use them like a normal person would for emergency energy storage, then when you come back to them a while later, they are puffed up marshmallows.
@@MatthewRodgers Physics and material degradation facts dont change - yup yup. Even if you put "enthusiasm" into the topic. My emergency energy storage _(also : regular energy storage for my entire house)_ even has 10 years of warranty and more than 20 of expected lifetime. Thats much more than your little caps will ever be able to demonstrate. Just saying. Also : yup yup.
MORE CAPS!!!! Make a monstrosity!!! But I’ll say this, maybe panels on a seperate board and have them plug into the box via some connection plug, just cause it’s going to be in the sun…
This kept getting worse and worse. I mean you made a working thing and that's all fine and well... but man. So many vastly superior options that could run in the same basic setup.
Nothing in that box makes sense. The wires are way to big. Why would you need 60 boost converters for usb output. Using supercapacitors makes no sense ether, one 18650 cell has the same Wh and no, they dont destory themselfs after a few years!. If you dont use a 18650, they last 10s of years. This is just expensive waste of resources.
Obviously yes it is not energy efficient at all. If you bothered to listen, you would have heard the explanation for why this was done. As your assignment, instead of using 60 boost converters, please create a single boost converter for me that is commercially available to go from 1.2V to 5V at a minimum of 500mA.
Great job! Good video. Would have liked to know the part numbers for the specific cells, caps, and boosters you used. Perhaps the description can be tweaked to have a list?
They were 3000F Maxwell supercaps with 2.7V max. The boosters were cheap things like this: www.amazon.com/0-9V-5V-Voltage-Converter-Booster-Supply/dp/B0BYV1YNY6
I built something similar for powering small appliances or a powertool. It's hard to build these nowadays cuz the supercaps aren't as abundant on the market like it was 10 years ago. The ones on amazon are either fake or too expensive.
When I order the 3000F capacitors, sometimes they come with different sized center leads than specified on amazon, so I had to be creative to make connections to them. Autozone was the answer.
Great build! I feel the caps should be held down with something more robust. If they ever shook lose, they could do some damage. I'm impressed with your hand-made voltage boosting matrix!
Yup it's just hot glue holding those down. If a metal wire shorted them it would vaporize. The booster matrix took a while and multiple iterations cause I was trying to do better load balancing first with resistor droop or other methods but ran into some issues with those methods.
For the cost of those supercaps you could have gotten a 40 Ah LTO cell. That's over 80 Wh energy!
You also only need a single boost converter otherwise you waste most of the energy in quiescent drain.
I am aware of the severe energy inefficiency. If you listen to the explanation, the point was to store energy for a long period of time at low voltage, then be able to boost it up, and not to use lithium batteries.
The problem you seem to try to solve here is how to store electrical energy over a longer period as an emergency solution. I wil not comment your hardware overkill, it has been done before. But I have a suggestion for you: Try to work out something with a fuel cell. You can store a small bottle of hydrogen and oxygen very compact and it will not decay in a 1000 years.
Yeah I know there are better fuel cells like nickel hydrogen is great and lasts a real long time. But the point was to use something a bit more commercially available, and to learn about supercapacitors.
Li-Ion batteries only die after a few years *IF* (and only "if") you dont keep them between 20% and 80% charge, make their environment way too hot or too cold, cycle them way too often or damage them otherwise. If you use, say, Li-Fe-PO batteries, keep them in their comfortable zones of charge and temperature, properly pack them with fireproof isolation foam and dont abuse them ... they might as well last 20 years or more. Its very possible to make them live for even longer - it all depends on how well you build & use them. Advanced charging algorithms help *A FRIGGIN LOT*. Climate control helps even more. Perfect climate all the time = unbelievable lifetime. We're talking "all of one human lifetime" if you also control humidity.
Also : these supercaps will not last 300 years. They will probably break down after two decades, if not less. Thats just .... IRL physics, my guy.
The supercaps are max 2.7V. I'm only charging them to 1.2V. Lifespan will be about 300 years yup yup yup. Your enthusiasm for lithium batteries seems to come with many constraints on where and how you have to use them. I am aware of how to properly CC CV charge lithium batteries and how to take care of them. However, if you try to use them like a normal person would for emergency energy storage, then when you come back to them a while later, they are puffed up marshmallows.
@@MatthewRodgers Physics and material degradation facts dont change - yup yup. Even if you put "enthusiasm" into the topic.
My emergency energy storage _(also : regular energy storage for my entire house)_ even has 10 years of warranty and more than 20 of expected lifetime. Thats much more than your little caps will ever be able to demonstrate. Just saying. Also : yup yup.
Just realized "National Biscuit Company" is Nabisco...... lol things ya learn..
yeah I wanted to use it for something... BUT it was kind of bad cause it had a chess board on top which is now covered up
MORE CAPS!!!! Make a monstrosity!!!
But I’ll say this, maybe panels on a seperate board and have them plug into the box via some connection plug, just cause it’s going to be in the sun…
Yeah I could add more supercaps in parallel, and then it would last longer to actually run a high powered USB device for longer than 30 minutes.
This kept getting worse and worse. I mean you made a working thing and that's all fine and well... but man. So many vastly superior options that could run in the same basic setup.
I had a strange purpose and strange requirements for myself, but I made it work.
Nothing in that box makes sense. The wires are way to big. Why would you need 60 boost converters for usb output. Using supercapacitors makes no sense ether, one 18650 cell has the same Wh and no, they dont destory themselfs after a few years!. If you dont use a 18650, they last 10s of years. This is just expensive waste of resources.
I had a good laugh when i Saw all those Boost converters 😂
It doesn't have to make sense, you never made something just for the fun of it? You always learn things even from the dumbest of experiments 😁
Obviously yes it is not energy efficient at all. If you bothered to listen, you would have heard the explanation for why this was done. As your assignment, instead of using 60 boost converters, please create a single boost converter for me that is commercially available to go from 1.2V to 5V at a minimum of 500mA.
Great job! Good video. Would have liked to know the part numbers for the specific cells, caps, and boosters you used. Perhaps the description can be tweaked to have a list?
They were 3000F Maxwell supercaps with 2.7V max. The boosters were cheap things like this: www.amazon.com/0-9V-5V-Voltage-Converter-Booster-Supply/dp/B0BYV1YNY6
I built something similar for powering small appliances or a powertool. It's hard to build these nowadays cuz the supercaps aren't as abundant on the market like it was 10 years ago. The ones on amazon are either fake or too expensive.
When I order the 3000F capacitors, sometimes they come with different sized center leads than specified on amazon, so I had to be creative to make connections to them. Autozone was the answer.
thats alot of hot glue
Yeah. Like probably 2 bags of sticks. But hot glue is fun and you can burn your skin off, so why not?