On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 4:34:04 AM UTC-7, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 01:31:47 -0700, jpg797 wrote:

To me the big story about electrical energy storage advancement is that
despite numerous claims of a revolution just round the corner it has
been stubbornly incremental in reality.

You're spot on about promises of new battery technology, usually made
about results from an initial small scale laboratory demonstration, that,
after a glowing announcement in New Scientist, mysteriously vanishes,
never to be heard from again. It would be really wonderful if at least
one of these efforts resulted in something more substantial than a PhD
thesis and, at least sometimes, a newly fledged PhD graduate. But, I'm
not holding my breath for this wondrous event because known electro-
chemical properties put limitations on future capacity increases.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

For aircraft power, energy density is king. Even the company's own press release does not claim to be competitive with LiPo batteries (as used in the FES and Antares), they say the may eventually "approach" that.

The dirty secret of all electric vehicle power is that you've got to get the power somewhere. At our glider port, if more than 1 or 2 electrics plugged in overnight it would bring the electric service to it's knees. We barely have power to recharge the golf carts. As an energy source, gasoline is still hard to beat.