Anatomy of the New Supercapacitor Industry Revealed by IDTechEx Research

BOSTON, Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Surprises abound in the new IDTechEx Research report, "Supercapacitor Markets, Technology Roadmap, Opportunities 2021-2041". In 2010, there were no Chinese manufacturers in the top ten supercapacitor manufacturers. In 2020, 40% of them are Chinese. This has been achieved by world-class R&D, being in one of the largest markets globally, strong investment and government support including protective trading. However, China is not leading in capacitor-supercapacitor hybrids where the USA saw a $7 million follow on order recently.

Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx advises, "Supercapacitor manufacturers used to be divided into those making small ones for electronics and those that also made similar flat or cylindrical formats for electrical engineering such as the archetypal 2.7V 3000F cylinder. No longer. A considerable market for even large supercapacitors is rapidly emerging. The first big success with large ones is boxed car stop-starters at around 20Wh, with over five million sold. The number of automakers going for that fit-and-forget, grab more electricity, waste less electricity proposition still increases. The natural extension of this logic is the newly committed adoption of larger supercapacitors for peak-shaving and acceleration boosting at 30-100Wh across the batteries in mild hybrid cars then full hybrid then totally replacing the lithium-ion battery if pure electric cars have not destroyed the hybrid car business by then."

The new large versions appear in trains at 1kWh and 1MWh appears as hospital and data center uninterruptable power supplies that double for peak shaving. It is a long way from small supercapacitors usually made to standards, easy to make and mostly commoditized at prices of 1 cent/F or less. IDTechEx counts 89% of supercapacitor manufacturers making them though Panasonic recently exited. 37% of these are in China because it exports them strongly, its share of the supercapacitor value demand being only 27% because of its giveaway pricing and lateness into car stop-start.

An exception to the commoditization is small supercapacitors in the form of battery-supercapacitor hybrids BSH, aerospace and military ones working at 150C, capacitor-supercapacitor hybrids beating tantalum electrolytics on ripple and one fifth to one tenth of the size and weight and ones in odd formats such as to go in a watch or smart card. Those working at 85C, -40C and 3V as single cells are less common and in demand.