TheEEStory.com

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.

Note: I've asked BEST Magazine for permission to post the article from their magazine.

in the mean time here is their URL:

BEST Magazine

as i read his points are:
1)k of 19000 at 3500v is impossible.
2)if one of 30000 components fail, the whole thing shorts
3)heat build up in charge/discharge would melt it.
if 1) weir has lied and published false data in wipo.
for 2) haven't seen this discussed as to solution.
for 3) agree with point, so adequate cooling necessary, plus this won't be the only engineering problem.

I just can't wait to see who is correct. I want so badly to believe that EEStor is for real, but the science is way over my head.
B have you had an interview with an SME that believes this is possible? There is so much here I may have missed it.

Keep in mind, Burke said it was dangerous to say this is impossible. Miller did not agree with that--he thinks it's impossible. When you are able to view Miller's article in Best magazine, you will see that he very carefully connects all of his ideas the patent description. But does that patent contain the secret sauce?

Keep in mind we're talking about an incredible innovation if it comes to fruition. Of course people are going to say it's impossible because it's never been done before.

I've dabbled in the history of philosophy and history of science. I'm a fan of Collingwood but credit for his way of thinking often goes to Thomas Kuhn. What often happens in periods of tremendous innovation is an abandonment of the accepted assumptions of the day. An innovator adopts a new set of assumptions and proceeds to carry out the logical investigation of the implications of those assumptions.

This is not something that is always well known to academic scientists. I'm sure I'll catch a heap of ridicule for that view but it won't sway me one bit. The compartmentalization of academia is a view I hold strongly. It enables many things but it also stifles many things.

What Miller is saying is not just that Weir's invention would violate one law of physics, but a bunch of them. He also says he thinks Weir believes in what he is doing but that he doesn't have experts on BT the way the people at Penn St do, and they think it's ridiculous.

I find Miller convincing and I find the fact that he's willing to go on record at risk to his reputation, compelling. On the basis of this and Burke's opinion, I am pulling out of Zenn.

Its probably here but I cant seem to find it right now so who is this John Miller? Its not the same John Miller, VP at Maxwell Technologies is it?

Miller and all other skeptics only claim one "law of nature" obstacle, saying that such a material, one that has k of 19000 at 3500v cannot exist. other claims are engineering issues.

no, it's not that john miller at maxwell. this john miller runs JME Inc. google it.

finnsense, keep in mind that in both instances, weir did not offer the info they were seeking. i should have asked about the NDA to clarify possibly why Weir wouldn't provide it.

B

I agree with what you just said, and I also agree that all the specululation about the science of all this is just that - pure speculation. None of us know the details, not Miller, not Burke...all they can commnent on is known science.

If Weir has found a new way of doing things then it changes everything, and makes any comments by these two experts worthless.

I don't think anyone should change there minds about the validity about this unless someone can come forward who knows, or has seen, what Weir has created.

2)if one of 30000 components fail, the whole thing shorts

That is a very serious concern.
Especially in catastrophic accidents.
Say, a bullet, shrapnel, bomb or fire.

A momentary short, at 3,500 V, channeled through a fault in one of 31,351 (or one / a few of the 31 million, as I like to think of them (each of the 31,351 "components" is built of 10 units that each have 100 layers)) would almost certainly result in a puff of smoke as stuff melted / vaporized. But that would leave an open circuit, very similar to classic fuses. Possibly only melting / vaporizing the aluminum electrodes into, at worst, a fine mist?

As all of these capacitors are in parallel to the 3,500 V, the EESU would loose the use of the damaged / open circuited units. Quite possibly, that will be a natural state of affairs, within the EESU, especially when first charged. Some inevitable few flawed cells will go poof, but the vast majority will work as advertised?

A big concern is collateral damage. Further debris / shrapnel causing a cascading / chain reaction. That would be a very baaad thing!

3)heat build up in charge/discharge would melt it.

EDIT: I completely missed it / forgot it!
@3,500V, the amount of current is comparatively small.
Any heat generated is proportional to I**2.
Still, 52.2 KWH = 3500 V * 15 A * 1 hour
So, to compress that down to 5 minutes: 180 A, at the + / - terminals.
Spreadout over 31,351 (or 31 million) capacitors.

Very good point.
What's the effective Internal Resistance of an EESU?
Does the self discharge of 0.02% per 30 days suggest that it is super extraordinarily low? Basically just the resistance of the copper conductors and "solder" that interconnects the "components"?
Or that the leakage currents, as reported in the 05812758.0 patent, measured for 10 52.2 KWH EESUs averaged 4.3 µA?
(Those are two sides of the same coin?)
So, the answer might be that the EESU isn't 99.9%, but 99.999999 something % ?

At some incredibly low resistance levels, simply leaving air gaps between the "components", as depicted in that patent, is sufficient for the "small" amount of heat?

Last edited Mon, 02 Mar 2009, 8:16am by nekote

Heat generated during charging for a high voltage device storing 52 kwh would seem small if the postulated heat is due to resistance of conductors as current is small. I wonder what charging heat Miller was referring to. Also, by design, I see no reason why fusing could not be employed to protect against device meltdown. And what is with the problem with 30,000 components. I seems everything these days deals with millions of components.

Miller wanted to take the powder, he had test results from the patent. So why was he surprised when the ignorant Weir didn't comply. When secrecy is your only protection from jumping into your game before you are ready, NDA's are really no use.

Now Miller seems to have an altruistic axe to grind to stamp out breakthrough claims that he can't figure out.

Miller claimed that while BT has a k of 20000+ at 0v, the k drops to 100 or so at high v. Schneibster says k never drops as voltage rises tho it levels off then drops dramatically toward zero at breakdown voltage. He also challenges anyone to show him data where k drops with rising voltage. If this is so, Miller just became a non-expert

I am going on my pontoon boat to pontificate this article, it's 80 degrees here in NH... a few beers out there, and time with my friends sounds good right now.. maybe take a cigar to..

B said,

"An innovator adopts a new set of assumptions and proceeds to carry out the logical investigation of the implications of those assumptions.

This is not something that is always well known to academic scientists. "

IMO, very astute B. In ther reading I've dome about major inovations/inventors of the last 100 years, this is a common theme.

Miller is like everyone schooled heavily in BT research. the science of pure BT alone does not fit the dielectric box. this view is common place and has already been known to opponents and proponents of EEstor since the beginning. The whole thing about what is different with EEstor is that Wier and company seem to have Changed the BT at the atomic level. hense, the modified BT powder. I read in another blog where a blogger suggested that Wier has produced a Hibrid BT powder fused with zirconium. this seems like the direction wier has gone. and would explain why Wier has consistantly refused to give any info regarding how he has made the immposible possible. because any solid info would reveal the secret.

In this light, BT experts are really barking up the wrong tree. and Wier is silently using this skepticism to his advantage cleverly leading the competition to a place where his invention has been unilaterally dismissed as immposible. effectively "squashing" the competition thoroughly in the onset.

Wier will let his product speak for itself. there is no reason to let everyone in on the secret sauce before product release. This would be a catastrophic dis-advantage in an industry already littered with theft, deciept, and big money constantly muscling for position and profit.

Already we see people and companies alike trying in vien to squeeze the secret out before it gets to market. It seems obvious to me that the industry would like to be in a position to compete with this tech if and when it finally does come to market.

Finally, Wier only has to answer to stock holders. All stock holders of EEstor seem to be very satisfied and excited. This shows that not only has Wier made a breakthrough in BT technology, but he has proven to ALL Stock holders that the breakthrough is as described.

I'm getting out of Zenn. Cold fusion guys. You finally get a top-notch person who's been there 3 times and you still want to BELIEVE. Who do you guys think you are? Have you had any credible person tell you it works? What do you know about Richard Weir that didn't come from EEstor or Zenn. Have you ever seen his name on a hard drive discovery or in the annals of IBM research? Did he ever get a bachelor's degree? I've seen two references where companies lost money investing in his companies. Did anyone ever make a profit with his prior patents? Why did Zenn and KP invest so little to get so much? Did Lockheed invest ANYTHING? Consideration means they are bound to do something, like maybe purchase stuff in the future, nothing more.

Faith-based medicine works. Faith-based investment does not. It's a sad day for all of us. It's time to buy some 7-year oil futures as a hedge against your stock holdings. If oil goes down, no problem, you lose some money. If oil goes up...massive inflation, halting economies, tumbling DOW and S&P, and 3rd world starvation because we can't make their food without cheap oil-based fertilizer. The price is already up 500%. Small farmers around here are shutting down because of it. Record corn prices and my guys are going out of business!

zawy,

Guess we better hope something like EEStor will happen and drive down oil prices?

As for record corn prices, I don't care what farm state Senators or others say.

Despite the very best of intentions, the Federal Govenment mandates, subsidies and import tariffs favoring ethanol from corn is the problem. Such favor should be terminated, with extreme prejudice, ASAP.

Corn had been $2 - $3 / bushel "forever".
Spot prices have now exceeded $7 per bushel.

Last edited Sat, 09 Aug 2008, 5:41pm by nekote

Pretty amazing, I look at all the work that went into the wet chemistry to produce the ultra high purity alumina coated CMBT and Weir is dismissed as clueless (doesn't he know that much energy can't be stored in CMBT?) and fraudulent (measurements in a patent signed by R. Weir). Quite a non sequitur. And does anybody think that Mort Topfer would waste his time on anything? It is all so confusing.

It is easy to get emotional about money, doubts are always available, and certainty is hard to be found anywhere. Don't bet the butter and egg money, your wife will hit you with a frying pan.

Skeptical SME's are Weir's and shorts best friends.

Strange times.

Is it possible that Carl Nelson is the real scientific brains in eestor, Weir the engineer, implementer, front man?

I plotted a statistical histagram for the permittivity data in the WIPO patent and the 3500v and 5000v data were not derived from the lower voltage data by a calculation. The lower voltage data and 3500V data looked like bell curves with the 5000v data having a distorted bell curve towards a lower permittivity. Looks real to me.

Miller said

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.

From the Lockheed Martin press release

Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

How does Miller know Lockheed Martin didn't pay any money? ZMC has to pay $2.5 million for their exclusive deal of which 1.3 million has been paid so far. It seems unlikely Lockheed Martin got their rights for free but regardless how does Miller know anything about the financial terms of the EEStor Lockheed agreement?

Last edited Sat, 09 Aug 2008, 9:18pm by tvillars

satya51
providing 10 different values for 10 samples doesn't sound calculated either; as has been said either real or fraud

Having followed the discussions for awhile I have assumed that 'zawy' is pretty smart. So what would be the motive of a smart person to start a paragraph by announcing to this blogs' very much involved crowd: I'm getting out of Zenn. ?? Think about it. Particularly not for such a volatile stock. SO either zawy isn't very smart OR has no investment in Zenn.
hmmm. Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye? Who can you trust these days??

taa, zawy like many here has been trying to understand what is known and knowable about a Zenn investment. With incomplete information, hindsight is the best way to know what was right.

Larry, the reason for a histogram is it gives addition information on whether the data involved cherry picking or as some implied, that the higher voltage data was calculated from the lower voltage data and not measured. If I was smarter, there are other tests that could be performed on the data.

not a lawyer, but know some, so here goes:
in the wipo, Weir has made statements of fact based on tested samples that if true mean the science issue is a non-issue and only the engineering to turn science into product remains. He also says this is easy in latest press.
Miller says in his article that Weir's claims are bogus, ie falsified data, ie criminal and civil fraud, since he benefits by getting money and investors lose by relying on his facts.
Miller's stand is at best tenuous if he is wrong.
Weir's position is a huge role of the dice if he made statements to buy time or worse. I don't know who at eestor would be immune to charges and essentially end of the road reputation destruction. Topfer has deep pockets. The rest would never work in a scientific field again at best.
Others have pulled off bigger hoaxes I guess, but this would at least get honorable mention. I think I'll continue to gamble a little on it not being a hoax.

Satya51, I was questioning zawys' motives for 'announcing' that he/she is out of ZENN. Clearly, not financially savvy for a volatile stock. Zawy is plenty smart, so why would he/she do that? Maybe the name 'zawy' could give us a clue?
I think Dan summed it up well:
Reading between the lines seems to be mandatory yet wholly unreliable.

I just want to say that I am less confident in the success of eestor the last few days based on B articles here. I invested in one company before much more than i should based on emotional and deep knowledge of technology that was going to change the world. The technology did prevail, but the company did not succeed. From that experience it taught me to only invest an amount, i could louse and not care less, I know my investment in zenn is strictly emotional, with some knowledge and the secrecy in interesting. I want to warn all of you no matter how much you would like to have this succeed, your mind can trick you to think it will. If you had any smarts, have the amount of stock invested based on this risk, wait until permittivity results, but again there still is lots of additional issues to overcome. On monday, my investment doesn't change, I invested the right amount, still hopeful but if you need to adjust your investment based on very high risk, you should do that.

The heat problem doesn't seem to be a problem. We can calculate the current into the EESU that is required for a 5 minute charge:

30F = 30 C/V (that C is a coulomb)
30 C/V * 3500V = 105000 C (total charge)
105000 C / 5 min = 105000 C / 300 s = 350A

Well, 350 amps just isn't that much -- I get 150A into my house.

The EESU has 30000 component capacitors wired in parallel, so there's 350 A/30000 = 12ma of current into each one, and 12ma through any kind of reasonable conductor does not generate any significant heat. You can keep 12ma going in and out of little tiny capacitors all the time without generating any significant heat.

So, if Miller thinks there's a heat problem, it sure doesn't come from the obvious place. Miller would know this. Did he just not do the math? If he did, then why does he think there's a heat problem?

The shorting problem doesn't seem to be a problem. If one of the components shorts out by dielectric breakdown, then the rest of the components will discharge through it, producing a tremendous current.

Since each component in the EESU only needs to support 12ma when charging or discharging (see last post), each component, or even each block of 10, can simply be connected with a thin wire that will vaporize if the EESU tries to put hundreds of amps through it.

This technology is called a fuse. I'm sure Miller has heard of them, so why is he so adamant that individual failures would be catastrophic?