TheEEStory.com

Follow up investigation is making some progress.

Saturday, August 28, 2010 15:12 PM ET
October 10, 2010 : Who Will Own It?

Ported from B’s Original Article:
10-10-2010 : October 10, 2010 : Who Will Own It?

We had some competition last year on 9 September 2009 with various companies making announcements on that day. Yet, so far, no one has tried to own 10 October 2010. It's like people hate the number 10 or something. I can think of about 10 ways to use this date myself. Maybe I should seize this day? I can call it the 10 most important things you never knew until you hit October 10, 2010. Or whatever, it doesn't matter. It's a valuable date going largely unused.

And B Gave Them 10 October 2010

That's it, I'm fired up. I'm taking it and making it mine. October 10, 2010 is mine! Aaannd...BEGIN! You hear me? (I'm not promising anything EEStor related.) I'm just letting you know that that date is now mine because no one else has tried to harness it's power until now, until I did it right here today. It's mine. Keep your damn dirty paws off of October tenth two thousand and ten!

We Worship B On October 10, 2010

And also, please don't send me a bunch of links to what IS actually scheduled to occur on that day because as of now none of them matter any more. Forget those jerks at Toyota with the Prius' tiny battery. This is the best place to make the most of October 10, 2010. That's right, on October 10, 2010, I will be taking over the day. Top 10 lists, Top 10 This, 10 of those, 10 times 10 times 10. We'll see where the number takes us.

I bet you 10 dollars 10-10-10 is all mine

What's that? 10 means nothing to you? That's because it's not October 10, 2010 yet, is it? See how that works? And if you're planning to get married on this day, I'm going to need you to move your wedding up or back a day, ok? So, let's meet right here promptly at 10:10:10 AM to discuss October 10, 2010 for at least 10 hours

10-10-10

Now, I know last year many of you got all mixed up about whether or not September 9, 2009 would bring any useful news. This is at least 1 better than that.

Friday, August 20, 2010 8:56 PM ET
Secretary Chu on EEStor? You tell me.

Ported from B's Original Article:
Secretary Chu on EEStor? You tell me.

Apologies for tardy porting - nekote

Secretary Steven Chu. Source: ABC News.

DOE chief Secretary Steven Chu was recently asked about whether or not he was aware of EEStor Inc. What did he say in response? Quite a bit but completely sidestepped the question. Is there any significance to HOW he answered the question?

You decide.

Long time EEStory follower Corwinbad supplies the audio of his question which he gathered as a public relations event Chu attended at Stanford University recently.

I've screwed up, big time.
I guess we all have.

August 5, 2008 at 8:56am ET was this TheEEStory.com's Birthday.

Happy Birthday

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 10:41 AM ET
Ported from B’s Original post:
Vinod Khosla: 'Only Interested In Shares of EEStor Inc.'

Vinod Khosla Source

In late 2007 and 2008, one of the better ways to land a meeting with Vinod Khosla was to pitch a business plan that included almost any opportunity closely tied to EEStor Inc. Khosla's keen interest in anything EEStor-related stems from his exposure to it during Kleiner Perkins' EEStor due diligence phase, a process that included Khosla's participation as a partner of KPCB. Wikipedia points out that he started Khosla Ventures in 2004 but it was not a clean break as he was heavily involved in multiple investments beyond that date, according to SEC records. Although he has publicly expressed doubts about EEStor Inc., insiders say Khosla is secretly one of EEStor's cadre of fanboys, and a rather frustrated one at that.

One of the firms in negotiations with EEStor to obtain a license in the early 2008 timeframe approached Khosla with their business plan and funding request. He politely took the meeting but quickly cut to the chase: was this firm offering any opportunity--now or in the future-- to obtain shares of EEStor? No. Khosla pointed out that the main reason he was willing to entertain the opportunity was on the chance that maybe the firm had positioned a deal with EEStor which would include an equity stake. What he did not point out that was that he very likely had access to more information about EEStor Inc. than the individuals making the pitch.

So why didn't he just pick up the phone and talk to his Kleiner buddies, in particular, Bill Joy, the lead partner on the EEStor investment and Khosla's co-founder of Sun Computer to inquire about obtaining shares of EEStor? The simple answer is he most likely did but was turned down. By this time, Kleiner had already recouped it's original investment in EEStor through a sale of a portion of it's shares to Mort Topfer and Mike Long, two individuals whose business experience more than their personal investments fit Kleiner's strategy of reducing risk. What did Khosla bring to the equation? At the time, nothing. Reaching out directly to EEStor would have been a no-no as well given his former and at the time, ongoing relationship with KPCB. This left Khosla looking for alternative ways to gain access to the opportunity.

One of the ways he attempted to do this was to do exactly what Kleiner Perkins proper has refused to do: talk about EEStor. Although no other Kleiner partner has publicly uttered the word EEStor since 2005, Khosla has used it liberally, allowing it to populate his powerpoint lectures (an illustrative example of what a 'black swan' is) and infiltrate his most reasoned blog posts. But it's not simply references to EEStor that are so telling--it's the substance of the references.

Khosla was at his gabbiest about EEStor a year ago in a guest article he penned for Grist.org on the limits of electric vehicles, an article he had to write after accidentally mentioning to earth2tech.com's Josie Garthwaite that "lithium-ion batteries are overhyped and will possibly be replaced. The statement became Garthwaite's next headline (and sparked some blog discussion) even if it didn't inspire her to ask the question, "replaced by what?" Nonetheless, Khosla provided many interesting clues into his mindset regarding breakthrough energy storage and his article should be read with the intensity of an inspired young attorney.

First, note especially Khosla's emphasis on manufacturing as trumping chemistry when it comes commercialization:

Selecting manufacturing processes that have been used successfully in lab-scale demonstration, in pursuit of "world's best," will not work for automotive markets. What is needed is scalable, low-cost manufacturing technology. Without that, the role of lithium ion batteries as a meaningful tool of carbon reduction will remain fairly limited.

But before you over-focus on manufacturing, note that he also says new "chemistries hold out more hope than the traditional style of lithium battery." Newer chemistries than lithium ion? I take Khosla to be speaking literally here and not referring to newer formulations of old chemistries such as lead acid. He's talking about approach 'even more disruptive' than that found in incremental innovations ie, he's specifically referring to 'EEStor-like approaches' or 'new science similar to that proposed in its patents.'

President Obama with Vinod Khosla on right. Source.

With his investment in Recapping Inc., we can now see more clearly what Khosla is up to here. When he talks about manufacturing improvements, he is specifically referring to the sorts of manufacturing that take place within integrated silicon circuit fabrication, an industry that makes traditional battery or capacitor manufacturing seem like blacksmithing. This is supported by Recapping's first patent which became public late last week. In it, we learn that "energy storage devices may employ core-shell protonated perovskite submicron or nano particles in composite films that have one or more shell coatings on a protonated perovskite core particle" which according to ARPA-E has a chance of exceeding lithium ion in energy density while still being able to be labeled a capacitor by Penn State, an organization with numerous relationships with capacitor companies all over the world. Additionally, we learn ---as I stated previously--- that although Penn State is working on developing the technology, they are not the primary inventors. So who is? Not so fast.

If you work in the capacitor industry, it's probably not too difficult to imagine capacitor innovation coming from some organization other than Penn State. Pockets of insight do exist. But what does not compute is the idea of capacitor innovation coming from outside the capacitor industry. We know this because for the past 3 years everyone everywhere has been telling all of us that experts in disk drives or memory or integrated circuits cannot overcome the cold hard facts spread out before us by the traditional material scientists carving away at incremental improvements in capacitor energy density. Yet, here we go again because Recapping Inc.'s principle inventor appears to be just that--another integrated circuit fabrication freak like Dick Weir and Carl Nelson.

Mark Wendman. Source

Hello World: introducing Mark Wendman
Recapping Inc.'s non-capacitor-expert, capacitor-breakthrough-inventor. It has a fitting ring to it. Wendman's background is eerily similar to Weir and Nelson's as far as someone like me can tell. The only notable difference between Weir and Wendman (besides age/experience) appears to be Wendman's refusal to talk with anonymous bloggers about his work. ;-) ...which is not to say Wendman hates blogs. No, he's been authoring one for the past 36 years judging from the number of posts....a prolific tendency that shows up in Wendman's commentary on other people's blogs as well.

There are several reasons for me to like Wendman out of the gate. The first is that he likes to challenge skeptics and arm chair quarterbacks using real world experience working in chip manufacturing--at Intel and Motorola among others-- as many of his passionate posts attest. Secondly, if he's chasing EEStor, he's come remarkably far since March 14, 2006, his likely first introduction to EEStor--an experience he documented in a now deleted blog post recovered from WayBackMachine.org I wonder if he was embarrassed to have mentioned EEStor and so deleted the post? I know when I first started speaking with various folks at Penn State a couple years back, it was difficult to glean any credibility for DW and CN based on integrated circuit innovation. (of course that changed at some interesting point--thanks to Wendman?)

Regarding Recapping's ARPA funding, some have suggested the BEEST program is another example of big government giving away funds for the sheer joy of it. According to several officials within ARPA, this is a false conclusion. According to ARPA program manager and scientist, Dr. David Danielson (PHD MIT),

We would never fund something where there was a physics based show stopper because it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. I haven’t seen data that tells me there is a physics based show stopper for capacitive approaches to energy storage. There are very strong practical challenges and obviously, with your blog you know there's a lot of controversy around this subject which sometimes keeps people away from a subject. We aren't afraid of controversy but if we see a physics based show stopper, we aren't going to waste time or money on it. But if there's controversy somewhere and there is big upside opportunity, what a great place for ARPA to work.

David Danielson: ARPA

Danielson went on to explain ARPA's rigorous due diligence process to evaluate the numerous proposals they received under the program. First, in a clear nod to my own anonymity, ARPA's process has called for keeping the evaluators anonymous. Danielson: "These are definite leaders in the field" something echoed to me by more than one person seeking BEEST funding. These experts began by reviewing/scoring concept papers and after a downselect, they met together in DC to discuss and select the final promising projects. ARPA director, Dr. Arunava Majumdar (of Lawrence Berkely National Lab fame) also held veto power over all projects with his personal review being the final hurdle to an award. The net of this process has caused Danielson to make a prediction, "at least one of these BEEST funded projects is going to be a game changer. I have high confidence in that."

So now here we are again with yet another strange, little-understood technology laid out in a strange published patent by a stealth startup company who got funding after pitching the idea to Vinod Khosla (and/or Kleiner) and claiming energy densities greater than lithium ion in a capacitor format and invented by someone outside the capacitor industry. The only substantial difference appears to be Penn State's involvement with Recapping, something you can't quite attach to EEStor unless you consider that Kleiner Perkins hired Penn State to evaluate EEStor prior to their investment. Yes, the connections raise intriguing questions about whether or not Recapping is working on their own project or EEStor's project or a project that any determined expert in nanofabrication can figure out if they connect the dots. At least one long time observer and fanboy of EEStor has stated he is happy to learn Recapping may give us another interesting shot on goal at capacitive energy storage. (along with Stanford BTW)

Recapping Inc. has declined repeated requests for comment about their work. They tell me they are too busy but I wonder if it's their story that's too hard to deliver with a straight face? Vinod? They, apparently, aren't too busy to have invested some time investigating me however--an amusing fact implied not so subtlety...not to worry, Lockheed did the same thing....so have others....a project with an uninteresting destination I'm afraid.

Oh and one more thing...what does the name Recapping mean anyway? Is it as in, "Recapping what we think we know..." or is it "Once it's capped, recap it again and again?" ....or???

NOTE to the cadre: this post is not related to my Colombo tease.

Forum Discussion Here: http://theeestory.com/topics/6449

Monday, August 9, 2010 10:06 AM
Ported from B's Original post:
Thought for the Day

"There are a couple of loose ends I'd like to tie up. Nothing important you understand."

Original Story Ed Beardsworth: The Original EEStor Blogger
Posted 7-26 by The EEStorBlogger

Much has been made of EEStor's development time lines. Skeptics say ongoing delays are proof they have nothing. Industry veterans say development cycles do not happen quickly and cite examples: Tesla, Valence & Bloom Energy, etc ad nauseum.

So, what do you build your case on? For anyone trying to establish credibility for their view on EEStor, it's important to cite actual facts. That's why the initial Internet revelation of EEStor's existence is an interesting one to examine.

Ed Beardsworth is the owner and publisher of UFTO.com which is short for Utility Federal Technology Opportunities, a program he started to give Utility companies..in the words of a client, "early warning about things out there that will change our world." Please note Beardsworth makes it very easy to contact him if you need to talk about something of potential utility to him. I've taken the liberty on more than one occasion to check out facts surrounding EEStor with Beardsworth. Although he has nothing to hide, he also has obligations for secrecy due to his business relationships. Still, Beardsworth has been able to provide background on already publicly released information. Beardsworth helped introduce EEStor to Kleiner and a few other VC firms in Silicon Valley. He has interesting observations about the whole phenomena some of which he will share and some of which he will not share due to the discretion required by his line of work.

In May 2004, he wrote what is probably the first ever Internet reference to EEStor and posted it to his website, making him the original EEStor Blogger. In it, we get the first claims of several important points related to EEStor. I'm going to list a few of the key facts and then post the entire entry.

1) The funding sought was $3.5Mil which matches roughly what we know Kleiner invested (based on SEC records).

2) This is the first public claim that EEStor samples have been tested "rapid-cycled over 1 million times" including measuring for leakage and temperature. It specifically indicates EEStor was aware of the traditional obstacles to using BT in energy storage applications: "leakage, voltage breakdown & temperature sensitivity." Weak minded skeptics have tried to accuse EEStor of being unaware of fundamental obstacles but this initial disclosure shows they were aware. (even if there's not an exhaustive list, it's certainly a sufficient one when combined with the fact that Carl Nelson worked for 8 years with Arthur Von Hippel something compelling enough to make two Penn State veteran researchers state unequivocally he would absolutely know what saturation is. )

3) This is the earliest known artifact which makes clear EEStor offered prototype measurements to support their claims. This may or may not be the exact data that Mort Topfer referred to when he said he was shown a demonstration and data validating the energy density of their technology.

4) EEStor calls their technology "electrostatic" in nature and not "electrochemical or electrolytic." Their achievement is summarized specifically as "eliminating the inherent weaknesses of electrostatic technology."

5) EEStor's business plan is described as completing their first assembly line "to prove out the technology and seed the market." This is the first reference to EEStor's plans to license technology rather than sell equity. People wonder what they've been doing these days. I take this statement to be a literal description of exactly what they have been doing keeping in mind that in 2007, they made major upgrades to improve their specs.

6) The post indicates EEStor claimed not just a device but a manufacturing plan involving "integrated-circuit techniques." This is important because it indicates they are inviting scrutiny not just on their lab success but their manufacturing plan. Kleiner would have hired someone to vet this in addition to what they got from Penn State on the material science front. People who say Kleiner is a bunch of fallible mortals who can't be relied upon to evaluate complex science breakthroughs forget they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to do exactly that.

7) Who are the major companies Beardsworth is referring to in one of the final statements? On one hand, it doesn't matter. On the other, it's obviously Lockheed and likely GE and Ford. But of course, that's my idle speculation, right? Believe whatever you like.

8) The EESU is referred to as an ultracapacitor and an ultrabattery. Keep in mind EEStor stealth was not in effect when this article went up. Everything in it was geared around gaining funding. I believe it's best to read this particular point literally meaning EEStor never claimed to have built a simple dipole system capacitor despite the strawman skeptics would have you believe they can so simply knock down.

9) Some have claimed Weir may have written this article for Beardsworth. No. Beardsworth wrote it. If you think this article would suggest he might be willing to relay a message from outer space or promote the tooth fairy, keep in mind Beardsworth is actually a bit of a genius himself. He has a PHD in Physics from Rutgers, a program which admittedly requires in-depth, hands on experience with massive kegs of beer. But he suffered no long term harm, as Brookhaven National Lab dusted him off and put him to work on basic research in physics. He ended up at EPRI, an organization notable for having hired EEStor skeptic, John Miller to vet EEStor. Miller's recommendation was never published by EPRI because it was deemed unbalanced. (check with them yourself--try and find Miller's report, I double dog dare you. ) Finally, please know that EEStor did not contact Beardsworth, he contacted them at the urging of some associates who alerted him to "an amazing story." Of course, all of this small world dot connecting means nothing, right? Keep drinking your kool-aid, and I'll keep drinking mine.

10) I can't really think of a 10th point here but no one ends a list with 9, right? Also, flyer is holding his breath so I have to wrap this up.

So in summary, it's not entirely useless to occasionally assemble the facts you think you know and plot them against a time-line to see if you can find any inconsistencies. So far, I have not been able to find any except related to various EEStor pronouncements about timing. Fortunately, I've had thousands of helpers like you keeping me on course.

Posted in it's entirety, here is the original article.

==================
Subject: UFTO Note - EEStor Ultracapacitor and Ultrabattery
Subject: UFTO Note - EEStor Ultracapacitor and Ultrabattery
Date: Wed, 05 May 2004

There have been so many breakthrough battery claims, but here's one that might deserve a careful look. The specs are impressive, and the entire manufacturing process has been thought through using processes and equipment already proven in a large-scale commercial operations. The founders bring a wealth of experience as senior technology managers in large companies and startups. The company has maintained a very low profile for several years, and I first talked to them in early 2003.

The claim is for systems at 1/2 the cost of lead-acid (per kwh), and 1/10 the weight. Specifically, they quote a product which at 400 pounds will deliver 52 kwh. Discharge (and charge) rates are at "electronic" speed, and would be limited only by the sizing of the drive circuits and external systems. Thus power ratings can be as high as needed. Selling price would be $3200 at modest production rates, and eventually down to $2100 in high volume.

Here are some specs the company is claiming:

present longterm
Energy density, Wh/L 606 1513
Specific energy, Wh/kg 273 682
Price, $/kWh 61 40

The company intends to pursue a licensing model, after building their own assembly line to prove out the technology and seed the market.

The technology is basically a parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric. With it's extremely high permittivity, barium titanate has a long history in capacitors, but one known for high leakage, voltage breakdown and temperature sensitivity. EEStor has confronted these drawbacks head on, and has measurements on prototypes to support their claims.

The product is a ceramic-based unit fabricated with integrated-circuit techniques. The design is based on proprietary technology and there is a patent pending for the production process. There are no corrosive, hazardous, or explosive materials used in manufacturing this product, making this a totally green technology. Also, since it is ceramic, it can be fully charged and discharged using ultrahigh currents and at electronic speeds repeatedly with no degradation to the original specifications. Samples have been rapid-cycled over 1 million times, with no change of any kind. Operating temperature is -40 to +85 deg C.

Until now, electrostatic capacitors have not been considered for energy storage applications because of their low energy density characteristics. Capacitors applied to storage are based upon electrochemical and electrolytic capacitor technologies, which possess higher energy densities. EEStor's development proposition changes that premise by eliminating the inherent weaknesses of electrostatic technology for storage applications.

A number of major companies have said they would issue a purchase order quickly if specs are met.

The company is currently seeking equity investment of $3.5 million. A business plan is available.

Contact Richard D. Weir, President and CEO
EEStor, Inc. Cedar Park, TX
512-258-5669 dick_weir@eestor.us

==================

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-Bretspot

Link to Yahoo story:
http://bit.ly/ZennCFO

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 2:06 PM ET
Ported from B's Original Post

New Charging Station

UL Certified.

Thx ElectricEEL.

Good thing it's future proof.

Posted by B