everything PE recently interviewed Brian Eichler, VP Sales & Marketing at Tecate Group. Tecate Group is a global manufacturer and supplier of electronic components and assemblies, specializing in ultracapacitors, capacitors, and custom electronic solutions.

Q. Can you tell us about the Tecate group? When was the company established, and what were its founding objectives?

Brian Eichler: Tecate Industries was founded in 1975 with the establishment of a capacitor manufacturing facility in the border town of Tecate, Mexico. The goal of the founder, a San Diego-based businessman, was to have cost-effective capacitor production at a nearshore facility, and Tecate, Mexico was a perfect location. In 1987, a new division named Tecate Products was founded in San Diego, CA to meet contract manufacturing needs and to offer full turn-key design solutions for the audio and automotive industries. A third division was added to the Tecate Group in 2004 to market and sell ultracapacitors and ultracapacitor module solutions. As one of the first companies to offer ultracapacitor products, the Tecate Group has developed superior engineering capabilities and application expertise with ultracapacitors over the past 20 years. Tecate’s product offerings today include audio assemblies, ultracapacitor cells, lithium-ion capacitor cells, standard multi-cell ultracapacitor modules, and custom ultracapacitor module design and manufacturing services. Tecate Group still offers capacitor products but sources the capacitors from manufacturing partners in Asia.

Tecate Group Headquarters, San Diego, CA

Tecate custom ultracapacitor module

Q. What market segments do you cater to? Which segment is the largest for you?

Brian Eichler: Tecate serves a wide range of markets, including enterprise servers, smart grid, military/aerospace, industrial, medical, and telecommunications. The largest segment today is industrial. Companies that make industrial automation systems use ultracapacitors in a variety of areas, including automatic guided vehicles (AGVs). In many cases, ultracapacitors are preferred over batteries in AGVs due to their rapid charge capability, high reliability, and long life. Batteries in this application are typically heavy, require a much longer time to charge, and have a shorter lifetime. Ultracapacitors are also environmentally friendly since there are no toxic materials used in their construction. Lithium-ion batteries can have thermal runaway events that will not only destroy the AGV but could also impact the entire production facility.  Ultracapacitors have no thermal runaway potential and are known for higher reliability than any type of batteries. Ultracapacitor solutions enable customers to operate their AGVs 24/7/365 due to no extended downtime required for battery charging. In all cases, Tecate’s custom module solutions for AGVs have outlasted their 10-year design life.

AGV

Q. Can you tell us about your product portfolio? What product segment within this portfolio is the largest for you? Which one has been growing the fastest?

Brian Eichler: The products offered by Tecate Group include audio assemblies, capacitors, ultracapacitor cells, lithium-ion capacitor cells, standard multi-cell ultracapacitor modules, and custom ultracapacitor module design and manufacturing services. Our highest-selling product line is ultracapacitors, specifically custom module solutions containing ultracapacitors. Since ultracapacitor cells are rated at 2.7 V or 3 V, it is usually necessary to connect cells in series to achieve the required system voltage for an application. To ensure optimal life, there needs to be cell voltage management included, and sometimes temperature and over-voltage monitoring.  In most cases, the customer will have a specific volume of space available in addition to special mounting and system-connection requirements. Tecate can consider everything and design a custom module that meets the application's electrical requirements, including voltage management, monitoring, and lifetime, that fits in the space available with appropriate mounting and system connections. Many customers do not have this expertise in-house, so are pleased to use a solution developed by Tecate Group. Our custom module solutions are also cost-effective. The main cost component of custom modules is the ultracapacitor cells, which are in mass production, enabling lower cost. Our other product line that is rapidly gaining momentum is lithium-ion capacitors (LIC’s). LIC’s have significantly higher energy density than ultracapacitors and very low leakage current. They also have a longer life than batteries and lower internal resistance, which enables higher power capability than lithium-ion batteries.

Q. What are the critical operational factors to consider when selecting the appropriate ultracapacitor for a given application?

Brian Eichler: The important factors to consider when selecting the appropriate ultracapacitor for a given application are cell voltage, temperature, and application voltage range. Cell voltage and temperature influence the life of an ultracapacitor, so must be understood to have optimal performance and lifetime. In higher-temperature applications, we will recommend adding additional ultracapacitors in the series string to reduce the voltage per cell to achieve longer life. Another consideration that can have a large impact on the size and cost of an ultracapacitor solution is application voltage range. When an ultracapacitor discharges, the voltage drops. The ideal voltage range for an ultracapacitor is from rated voltage to 50% voltage.  At 50% voltage, the ultracapacitor has discharged 75% of its stored energy, so there is little additional benefit to going below 50% voltage. An application with a narrow voltage range will result in an oversized and costly bank of ultracapacitors. DC/DC converters are sometimes used to allow the ultracapacitors to discharge to 50% voltage while the DC/DC outputs the narrow voltage range required by the system.

Q. What are ultracapacitors? How do they function? What are its key applications?

Brian Eichler: An ultracapacitor is an energy-storage device that combines the high-power characteristics of traditional capacitors with a higher-density energy-storage process. These features are enabled by high-surface-area activated-carbon electrode materials that store energy electrostatically. When it comes to high-power applications, electrostatic energy-storage technologies enable higher power, longer life, wider operating temperature range, and higher reliability than the traditional electrochemical energy-storage process used in batteries. In fact, ultracapacitors outperform batteries in all major areas except energy density:

* Ultracapacitor operation to +85ºC is possible with voltage derating.

Q. What are lithium-ion capacitors? What are the advantages of using lithium-ion capacitors over traditional ultracapacitors?

Brian Eichler: A hybrid capacitor, also known as a lithium-ion capacitor, is an energy-storage device like an ultracapacitor that can store significantly more energy in the same volume of space as an ultracapacitor. The major difference between the two technologies is in the electrode materials. The positive (cathode) electrode material of a lithium-ion capacitor is activated carbon, which is identical to that of an ultracapacitor. The negative (anode) electrode material is composed of carbon material doped with lithium (Li+) ions, which enables the higher energy density in a lithium-ion capacitor versus an ultracapacitor. This electrode formulation enables the hybrid capacitor to have similar life and power capabilities to an ultracapacitor with significantly higher energy density. The main advantage of using lithium-ion capacitors over ultracapacitors is the higher volume of energy that can be stored in the lithium-ion capacitor. The chart below gives a direct comparison between ultracapacitors, lithium-ion capacitors, and lithium-ion batteries:

* Ultracapacitor operation to +85ºC is possible with voltage derating.

Q. What are the key differences between Tecate's TPLC and TPLCE series?

Brian Eichler: The two key differences between our TPLC and TPLCE series are energy density and cycle lifetime.  In the table above, we compare TPLC and TPLCE lithium-ion capacitors in the same 10 mm x 25 mm cylindrical cell. The TPLC is rated at 70F and the TPLCE is rated at 110F, which is a 57% increase in capacitance for TPLCE. The result is a significant increase in usable energy density from 47.5 Wh/L in the TPLC cell to 74.7 Wh/L in the TPLCE cell.  

TPLC Series

The trade-off for the increase in energy density is a decrease in cycle life from 500k cycles (TPLC) to 250k cycles (TPLCE), which is still significantly higher than any battery technology and suitable for many applications.

TPLCE Series

Q. What are the main applications of ultracapacitors provided by Tecate?

Brian Eichler: The applications for ultracapacitors fall broadly into three categories: backup power, pulse power, and main power:

Backup Power: In a backup-power application, the ultracapacitor remains charged for most of its life and discharges when system power is lost. The time duration for ultracapacitor backup-power applications is typically seconds to several minutes, or longer depending on load requirements. There are many applications that have short-duration backup-power requirements, including:

• Graceful shutdown: Enabling a system to save information and shut down safely;
• Bridge power: Providing power to keep a system running until a secondary long-term backup-power source can be brought online; and
• Last gasp: Allowing a remote system to send a final transmission of critical information in the event of power loss. 

In all these cases, an ultracapacitor energy-storage system will have a much longer life, occupy a smaller space, weigh less, and have higher reliability than a battery.

Pulse Power: Due to low internal resistance and the absence of battery electrochemical reactions, ultracapacitors can deliver and receive much higher power pulses than batteries. In pulse-power applications, ultracapacitors are normally used in combination with other power sources to enable higher performance, facilitate more efficient operation, and even save energy. Applications with infrequent high-power demands often have oversized and inefficient primary energy sources. Primary energy source examples include the grid, batteries, a diesel engine, or a fuel cell. Using ultracapacitors to handle the pulse-power requirements and sizing the primary energy source to handle only the continuous low-power energy needs of these applications results in a more efficient and significantly downsized primary energy source. In some transportation cases, ultracapacitors can recapture and store braking energy, which further improves the application’s energy efficiency.

Main Power: The long life and maintenance-free characteristics of ultracapacitors make them an ideal energy storage solution for remote systems and systems with difficult access to battery maintenance. In some cases, customers have designed ultracapacitors into remote systems with solar charging. The system can operate during the day on solar power and then use the energy stored in the ultracapacitors to power the system by night. The ultracapacitors can also be used for peak power to transmit data packets with information from the remote system, then recharge by solar for the next event. Transportation systems sometimes use ultracapacitors for tracking and transmitting location information and other data related to monitoring a vehicle. In all of these cases, the ultracapacitors store the main electrical power required for the system to operate.

Q. What are Tecate's key goals for 2025? Are there plans to expand the company's product lineup?

Brian Eichler: For 2025, Tecate will continue to expand our product offerings, including incorporating additional standard module products and new technology advancements. We will launch a new line-up of 6 V-rated modules in our PBL product line using our 3 V ultracapacitor cell technology, which will be available in capacitances ranging from 2 F through 50 F.  There is also a plan to add additional module offerings to our PBLH product line, which is composed of medium- and large-sized ultracapacitors. 

PBLH Series

On the technology advancement side, we are developing a new, higher-temperature ultracapacitor and also continuing to increase energy density in our ultracapacitor products.

About Brian Eichler

Brian Eichler has more than 20 years of experience in electronic components businesses including ultracapacitors, space-grade semiconductors, and surface-mount fuse technologies. Most of his ultracapacitor sales experience has involved working closely with customers pioneering new ultracapacitor energy-storage applications that perform better than, or were not feasible with, existing battery technologies. Mr. Eichler currently serves as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Tecate Group, where he employs his notable ultracapacitor application experience across multiple market segments.