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UC Irvine students win $25,000 “Crazy Green Idea” contest

February 5th, 2009, 7:39 am · 9 Comments · posted by

YouTube Preview ImageTwo UC Irvine students who proposed construction of the “ultra capacitor” — a battery-like device for storing energy — were declared the winners Thursday of the $25,000 “Crazy Green Idea” contest sponsored by the X Prize Foundation.

Kyle Good and Bryan Le, both 19 and both second-year students at UC Irvine, submitted one of 133 Youtube videos explaining an idea, and learned last week that their concept was one of three finalists. (Photo shows Good, center left, Le, center right, courtesy X Prize Foundation.)

Some 4,000 members of the public voted on the finalists, X Prize officials said, and Good and Le won the highest number of votes.

“It’s exhilirating,” Good said Thursday. “It’s awesome. We put a lot of effort into the voting process, promoting our video.”

Good said he and Le, who learned of their victory Tuesday, will split the winnings, and that both might use some of the money to travel. Good might also “pay off some loans” and save some as well, he said.

The two conducted a kind of Web campaign urging friends to vote for their idea.

It was “mostly online, through social networking, facebook, word of mouth,” Good said. “Through friends, through friends of friends, through friends of friends of friends.”

The competition was for the idea, so none of the contestants were required to build a working model. But the ultra-capacitor concept could be used as the basis of a much larger X Prize in which would involve building a prototype.

Today’s capacitors are too low in energy to take the place of batteries. But if an “ultra capacitor” could be built, the two argued, it could power a variety of devices, even cars, without ever wearing out and with the ability to charge instantly.

Developing such a device would be extremely expensive, and there is little scientific interest in doing so. A big payoff from an X Prize, the two students argued, would stimulate development of the “ultra capacitor.”

The X Prize Foundation is the same organization that awarded $10 million to the team that built SpaceShipOne.

As finalists, Good and Le were up against Alan Silva of Roy, Utah, who proposed building a “100 percent energy efficient home,” and Jonathan Dreher of Cambridge, Mass., whose suggested holding two-year contests between communities to see which could use the least energy.

Related post:

UCI students are finalists for “crazy green idea” contest

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     9 Comments

    • fishtale says:
      February 5, 2009 at 10:04 am

      Zot!!

    • Interesting says:
      February 5, 2009 at 10:05 am

      Way too expensive huh?

      It sounds absolutely awesome to me. Not knowing much about capacitors, I do know enough to buy into the idea. Yes, one LARGE enough to power a car would be initially quite expensive. However, in mass production WITH the element of competition an ultra-cap “could” feasibly reach the hundreds of dollars, just like computers.

      However, there would be enormous resistance from Big Oil, to the sum of billions of dollars to suppress or buy out the technology. Yet, if it could reach high-up governmental agencies and get support it might have a sliver of a chance.

      Zot Zot!

    • John says:
      February 5, 2009 at 10:28 am

      This isn’t anything new. You won’t save any energy, since you would only be storing it in the capacitor, the energy would still need to be generated. Plus, unless some new technology is developed, the charge on the capacitor would slowly dissipate unless used right away.
      These guys should have been awarded for the creative use of the internet to win a cash prize: “The two conducted a kind of Web campaign urging friends to vote for their idea”, but then again that’s not anything new either.
      The proof is in the pudding, develop a prototype.

    • Larry says:
      February 5, 2009 at 10:46 am

      Sorry folks — but the “Ultracapacitor is anything but new. A company in San diego, Maxswell Technologies, has been making ultracapacitors for over 30 years, and they have been used by the defense department for nuclear testing simulation and are now being used by the auto industry to assist powering hybrid and electrical vehicles.

    • Larry says:
      February 5, 2009 at 10:48 am

      Sorry folks — but the “Ultracapacito” is anything but new. A company in San Diego, Maxwell Technologies, has been making ultracapacitors for over 30 years, and they have been used by the defense department for nuclear testing simulation (and other applications) and are now being used by the auto industry to assist powering hybrid and electrical vehicles.

    • RC says:
      February 5, 2009 at 11:33 am

      Imagine all the D&D and Harry Potter stuff they can buy with $25,000.00

    • Ben says:
      February 5, 2009 at 11:38 am

      Umm… are there electrical engineers around who didn’t know about this already? The problem with ultracaps isn’t so much the cost as the volume (though price can be a problem if you need a lot). Batteries have high energy density and low power density; ultracaps have high power density and low energy density. You can’t build an electric car with ultracaps because they’d take up the whole car to give you any decent driving range. One common proposed solution is to use a two-stage power system, with batteries that provide the bulk of the power and a small ultracap bank that handles fast charging and discharging, but I don’t think it’s been implemented because of the cost and complexity of the control system required for a relatively modest efficiency improvement.

    • John S. says:
      February 5, 2009 at 1:48 pm

      A company called Nesscap already have electric vehicle capacitors.
      http://www.nesscap.com/products_applications.htm

    • eric says:
      February 19, 2009 at 9:32 am

      Wait….
      What?!!!!!!

      These guys won $25,000 for “inventing” the idea of a Ultra-Capacitor?!!!

      Every SINGLE Engineering student knows that a UltraCapacitor would be good for the environment.
      Its common knowledge. Its like saying that if everyone in the world had money, no one would be poor… Its stating the blatantly obvious.

      I’m just shaking my head… what a waste of $25,000. There are so many creative and interesting alternative energy ideas out there, putting $25,000 towards those could have actually made a difference.

      Look up “Solar Power Towers” – Clean with no emissions energy source right there.

      Generating Electricity from wave energy of ocean… also creative idea.

      Landfill Gas

      Wind turbines

      and countless more….

      UltraCapacitors? Congrats, you might as well could have invented a “time machine” to go back and stop the combustion engine from being built. Would have a great impact on environment… because without a prototype the idea is just a old idea that I learned about my alternative energy class a few years ago.

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