Thurs, Aug 7, 2008
John Miller
Blogger: I've learned that you have some strong views concerning
EEStor. I wanted to...
John Miller: I published something in Best Magazine. So that's on the
public record.
What I published is it has 3 major flaws. These are flaws that can't
be overcome by being clever or spending more money. They're natural
problems that are inherent in the approach.
B: In the materials or....?
JM: In the approach.
B: Do you think other people have attempted what Richard Weir says he's been able to do?
JM: Nobody's done what he said. He has not done it himself either. I am
convinced of that.
I've met the man generally. I've evaluated the technology 2 times for
the US govt. This is back in 2000/2001. I gave my recommendations that
and he's just asking for....give me money, give me money. I mean there's
nothing there. Pull the curtain off the stage, the stage is empty.
B: What were the two US agencies...
JM: I cant reveal clients that I have.
B: Can you at least say if it was DoD or DHS or....
JM: No, its govt. I just say its two separate entities, they're both
agencies of the US Govt.
He first approached and so I got hired and evaluated it in a meeting.
He was present asking questions. He's a very nice fellow. He seems to
want to answer questions to the best of his ability....he's not
strongly technical, he talks big words but he doesn't understand the
science of what he's talking about really. In a way, you just feel a
little bit sorry for a gentleman like that but......that's not the
point here. Its got fatal flaws. It will not work, cannot work.
B: I just spoke to Prof. Burke from UC Davis and he said he also had
a meeting with Mr. Weir and he felt he did have a grasp of the
fundamental issues here. But you think that he lacked the
scientific...
JM: Yes, he does. For instance, the reliability of what he's
proposing. When you make something that you want to work, if its made
up of lots of constituent parts , its usually lower reliability. And
if you read the patent they have there, he's talking about putting
together 10s of thousands of parallel connected capacitors. And any
one of them fails, means the system fails. And they will fail,
Capacitors fail by dielectric breakdown. They will fail. Now you can
get around that on capacitors that have what's called self clearing
mechanisms. But Barium Titanate does not have self clearing
mechanisms. So once you have a breakdown, it's a short. So
calculations that I did..... well I also was also hired by EPRI. The
Electric Power Research Institute to write a position paper on this
and I did. Apparently they were getting a lot of questions from
their customers..utility customers...is there anything there? [with eestor] The
reliability is just not practical when you don't have self clearing.
Problem number two, he's operating at the breakdown strength and you
never do that with a capacitor because you always have avalanche
breakdown. The rule of thumb is you drop it down an order of magnitude
in voltage and your energy goes as the voltage squared so that's 100
times lower.
Now the third problem with this is thermal management issues. He's
talking about charging this thing in his patent and all his
publications ...charging it very quickly. Even if it's 99.9%
efficient, the energy that 10th of a percent energy lost during that
process over the 5 minutes he's talking about would cause the whole
thing to melt down. It's too compact. It's incredible, it's twice the
energy density of lithium ion batteries, the highest energy density
battery. You just can't put that heat in there and expect the thing to
survive. [laughing] It's ceramic material, the temperature would rise
so great it would melt down. The metalization what he's talking
about, low temperature metalization....that would all melt.
[pause]
It's just so full of flaws that.....that..... And you know...and
the investment company called me up and says "oh you're so negative."
And I says, I know what I'm talking about. And go ahead an invest your
money, lose your money. But I worked for a lot of other investment
companies and they stayed away, they took my advice. And with that
Lockheed Martin....they got no money from them. They just said, if
you're able to meet these specs, we'd be interested in using it. So
it's no relationship its.....and Lockheed won't say any endorsements but
Dick Weir is using it as an endorsement.
But anyway, I wouldn't put my money in the company.
B: You said Kleiner Perkins called you then.
JM: Of course, I've been at this game for 25 years.
B: So you're an expert in the field and......how many people have
called you on this topic? Am I like the 400th person that asks, is
EEStor going to work?
JM: I usually don't talk to people. [laughing] I usually don't talk.
Phones are screened. I picked it up this one. I'd say over the last
5yrs, easily 100 calls.
B: From financial firms and what not?
JM: Primarily its other people thinking is this good to do or
not.....companies.
Yeah, there's nothing there. You take credible scientific people....the fact that Lockheed Martin
picked up on something says nothing. It's not a technical evaluation
that they did. It's their marketing people or business people or
there.....they said, if you can meet what you said, we're definitely
interested. But who wouldn't be? Who wouldn't be?
B: What do you make of the new release on powder purity?
JM: That means nothing. That means nothing. Lets see, whats the
dielectric constant at the voltage you're going to operate at? That's a
question I asked him. Give me a sample of the powder. People at Penn
State can immediately measure its properties. You don't need to make
capacitors, I just need a piece of the powder. And....'oh no, we cant
let that out, the university people will steal it.' But the Penn St
people are eminently qualified for barium titanate. It's the most
common ceramic dielectric material in use today. There's nothing new
about barium titanate.
B: Are you talking about Clive Randall
JM: No, it's the center for dielectric studies at Penn St. It would be
Lanagan and all of his group. They're world experts on barium titanate.
They just dismiss this as a joke. The govt. people asked...is there
something there? No, he's violating nature. He's got a dielectric
constant of 27000 or something like that that he pulled out of a
Phillips patent. That's at zero volts. You charge it up, that
constants down at 100. I mean it's just...there's nothing there. And
I don't know why all the big hub bub..myself. I mean get people
excited on something that has promise.
B: What does have promise?
JM: Well there.....and he calls this thing an ultra capacitor...well
that's not even a technical word, its a trade name by a product made by
Pinnacle Research a number of years ago. Its an electro static
capacitor.
What has promise? Look at capacitors that are made by reputable
companies that are on the market, you can buy and test. [pause] The
electro chemical society its their fall meeting, it's in Honolulu, in October. Go to their website, electrochem.org. Click on the
meeting and session B2. It's energy storage devices. And you'll see
the program, there's 150 papers going to be given at that
international meeting. And you'll see where the action is, what
people are working on. That's where the action is...its not somebody
working down in Texas that thinks he's got the solution and it's
being handled by a few man shop. That's not the solution down there.
He can be very sincere and believe what he's doing is what should be
done. But has it been reviewed by other people? No, I don't think so.
Does he have the combined intelligence like the people at Penn St
that have been spending many many careers on dielectric studies.
That's why I'm saying, what's all the hub bub and all the big noise?
B: What was he proposing to the government?
JM: He's going to make these super-capacitors that are suitable
for every application you might have. Make every capacitor their
currently using outdated.
B: And they said, we need an expert to evaluate this and they hired you?
JM: Well, they hired more than just me. They don't go off on whims
like this. As a taxpayer if they spent money on this, I would protest!
They do enough bad things but doing something that violates the laws
of nature is unacceptable.
B: Just one last question here which I hope you are not offended by my
asking because I'm clear on what it is you think on this whole thing.
But I need to ask this nonetheless. What if in 6 months, one of these
cityZenn cars is driving around with one of his units in it and it
works. What would your reaction be if that came to be?
JM: Well its not going to work as he has advertised it. It might work
like a conventional barium titanate material because the energy
density will not be what he says it would because it would probably be
5 orders of magnitude lower. Its like products I can buy out of the
catalogue right now.
B: No I'm wondering what if he has a 5 minute charge that can drive 250 miles.
JM: Well, if he does that...then I would question....boy he's very
sophisticated in his heat management because that should melt down in his
5 min charge. It's built beyond the realm of possibility. It's like
what is the possibility that a spacecraft is going to fall out of the
sky during the time I'm talking to you on the phone and land on you
where you are wherever you're sitting. (laughing)
If he did 1% of what he's saying....uh...I would be surprised. I would
expect him to achieve 10 to the minus 5 of what he's saying...that I
would expect him to achieve.
B: You can't even wrap your mind around a world where he delivers on
what he's claiming here?
JM: No, look at it fundamentally. He's talking about exceeding what
you get with an electron transfer....you know, bond breaking. He's
doing a physical charge storage that exceeds that of a chemical bond
breaking. It just violates general concepts of science. It's
ridiculous thinking...why try to wrap your mind around it, it's beyond
science fiction.
B: Did Kleiner talk to you after they invested?
JM: I don't know when they talked to me. It's a young lady there.
I've got her name some place and I just don't know. [laughing] I
worked for a lot of other companies and they do choose to hire me. And
investments of this sort on energy storage and I give my opinions.
This one I know very well because I've been through it 3 times. 2 for
agencies and EPRI.
Go bug EPRI , try to get that white paper I prepared for them
released.
That's why...why the big fuss?
I would suggest to you, if you've got an
interest in energy storage, that you'd pick a winner rather than a
loser, help promote that and encourage that. If you get people's
expectations high, they're going to be disappointed. When someone
comes up with something that is high cycle-ability, that's got 20 watt
hours per kilogram which is 4 times what today's products are. That
would be significant. But people will say, "oh it's not 200 like Dick
Weir promised." Well, your expectations have just been raised to a
level that's just unattainable. So don't do that because it's bad for
everybody. You get expectations up and it doesn't happen, so what's
the next thing you know...people just ignore the real accomplishments
that you have.
