Why Graphene Supercaps are better than Lithium-ION

However, once we get into the inner workings of both types of batteries, how they work, how long they can be used for and even the speed of their charging and discharge rates and several other important specifications its easy to see why Graphene Hybrid batteries is becoming the new and improved standard of energy storage.

The most glaring advantage of Graphene is its exponentially longer lifecycle in comparison to Lithium Ion. While Lithium batteries range at around 3000-5000 full charge to 100% and then discharge to 0% type cycles, our Graphene Supercaps have 50,000 to 60,000 cycles! Meanwhile, old Lead Acid batteries are left in the dust with only around 300-500 cycles. Meanwhile, the time needed to charge a Lithium Battery can be quite long (an entire evening; 8-12 hours) conversely a Graphene Supercap takes only 1-3 hours at the very most. Furthermore, it is worth noting that our Graphene Hybrid battery (a 48V 5kw model) can have a continuous charging current of 200 amps while most Lithium Ion batteries of the same size/spec may only be able to have a continuous charging current of 50 amps; even 100 amps at the very most can put the battery in danger of a short! Continuing with this topic, the Graphene Supercap can do the same with its continuous discharging current (200A) while the Lithium Ion battery falls behind at around 50 amps as well.

Some other specs many people may not realize that is important to energy storage use is the temperature that the battery operates at. Just like a computer sever as the room it is stored in’s temperature increases the temperature of the battery will also increase and the work required by it becomes more difficult to accomplish (most batteries may even auto shutdown as a result of the temperature being too high). The same goes for extreme cold temperatures, a regular winter night is actually great for any battery but once things get to below freezing batteries have trouble getting their internal temperatures high enough to accomplish any work needed for them. A common Lithium battery operates at around -10 C to ~50C meanwhile, our Graphene Supercaps can run from as low as -40 C to as hot as 60C. If a battery is constantly operating at a very hot or cold temperature it will also lose the amount of cycles it can run optimally overall due to it having to work harder. Here is a graph showing what happens:

Meanwhile, Lithium batteries not only fall down to a mere 1000 life cycles but they also only can hold 70% of their full capacity, spelling disaster for productivity.

“At 45°C (113°F), the battery can only accept 70 percent of its full capacity”

Source: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_at_high_and_low_temperatures

With all of these advantages over Lithium Ion batteries one can now fully understand why we here at AES utilize Graphene Hybrid Supercaps. Here is quick review of the advantages.