Maxwell sent out a press release today about their “new” PC-10 ultracapacitator. In it, they tout the benefits it has for providing backup power for, among others, solid state drives and enterprise storage systems. That comes as no surprise; Sun has shown that capacitators can be used successfully as a backup power source for storage systems by integrating them into their new F5100 system.
Ultracapacitors have some very obvious advantages; the most important ones are that they can be charged very quickly, and can go through millions of charge/discharge cycles without the performance degradation that is common in traditional batteries. But there is a major drawback, which is the relatively small amount of energy that can be stored in them.
This means the primary use or ultra capacitors will be as an alternative for battery backups on RAID controller caches; don’t expect them to replace your UPS system just yet. Maxwell also sees this as the primary use for now:
“In enterprise backup storage applications, ultra capacitors are a much more reliable option than the traditional Lithium-ion, nickel and alkaline batteries commonly used today,” said Michael Liedtke, Maxwell’s vice president for sales, marketing and business development. “Ultracapacitors eliminate the need for replacing a battery in enterprise storage devices every year and conducting performance tests.”
The only thing I doubt is whether the PC-10 model that is presented in their press release would be the best choice. According to Maxwells datasheet, it can store a whopping 0.009Wh of energy. Or, in plain English: if it’s used as a battery backup for a RAID array that needs 1/10th of a watt to power its cache memory during outages, it can offer that power for just over 5 minutes. That’s a far cry from the 72 hours that most controllers offer!
Maxwell PC-10 ultracapacitor
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