For the past decade, battery technology development has largely been driven by the needs of smartphones and electric vehicles. Yet despite significant advancements in rapid charging rates, batteries still struggle with longevity. Lithium-ion batteries, for example, can be used for around 500 cycles and require more frequent charging as they age. This constant need for replacement creates a cycle of waste and perpetuates the world’s reliance on environmentally harmful mining and manufacturing processes.

Skeleton Technologies addresses these problems while also unlocking new energy opportunities by manufacturing high-power energy storage systems that utilize supercapacitor cells. Their patented Curved Graphene material endows supercapacitors with superior power density and faster charging compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries. These advanced energy systems are driving us toward a net-zero future by enabling the decarbonization of a wide range of industries, including automotive, transportation, marine, and industrial sectors.

Harnessing the Power of Supercapacitors

Unlike batteries, which rely on a chemical energy storage mechanism, Skeleton Technologies’ supercapacitors use a purely physical one. This fundamental difference means that supercapacitors do not undergo the chemical reactions that degrade performance over time. Consequently, they can handle high power input and output demands without compromising their efficiency. 

Supercapacitors represent a very safe and efficient energy storage technology, and their effective utilization requires sophisticated electronics. These electronics are crucial for monitoring supercapacitor capacity, temperature, and current, allowing for informed decision-making at the system level.

Skeleton Technologies' hardware team developed a controller and module as key components of their larger energy storage system. To achieve this, they chose to partner with Altium to streamline their electronics development workflow by using Altium Designer and Altium 365. 

Overcoming Collaborative Challenges

Designing a controller and module for a comprehensive energy system required seamless collaboration between Skeleton’s electronics team, software developers creating firmware, mechanical engineers, and various client application teams.

To address these collaborative challenges, Skeleton Technologies turned to Altium 365’s data management and version control system to provide a single, secure location for all of the team’s hardware design data, component libraries, and manufacturing packages, accessible from any device with a browser. This was particularly beneficial for their software development team, which enabled concurrent firmware development by having access to schematic designs in their browser.

With browser-based access to rendered project files, team members could measure, search, cross-probe, and comment on designs from any device without installing ECAD software. These capabilities facilitated design conversations within the context of a project, with comments that were captured digitally and pinned to design assets, ensuring that discussions were never lost or misplaced.

Ensuring Longevity During Component Selection

Creating an energy storage system that remains effective throughout a product’s entire lifecycle meant the team needed to use components that would be available from manufacturers for years or even decades. To address this, Skeleton required access to a single source of intelligent supply chain data at design time, a defined process for adding new parts to their library, and a centralized repository for storing and accessing components.

Skeleton Technologies utilized Altium 365’s Cloud Libraries to maintain the integrity of their component library in a central and secure location. This ensured that everyone working on a design, from engineering to librarians and procurement, had access to the same set of validated components in Altium Designer or from any browser. 

For engineers designing electronics, Altium 365's Manufacturer Part Search provided data from over 300 distributors on more than a billion parts directly within Altium Designer. This enabled the team to define primary and alternate components at design time thanks to availability data, manufacturer lifecycles, production risk alerts, and alternative part choices. 

For an organization like Skeleton Technologies, which has a dedicated component engineering team, a managed process for growing and maintaining their component library was essential. Altium 365 provided Process-based Part Requests, allowing the hardware engineering team to request the creation of new parts and receive notifications when those requests were completed by component engineers. The Process Workflow Editor provided the team flexibility to visually build workflows that met their specific requirements, ensuring a streamlined and efficient approach to managing part requests.

Moving Forward to a High-Power Future

Skeleton Technologies embarked on a transformative journey with Altium to overcome significant challenges in developing their cutting-edge energy storage systems. The team is already seeing impressive results and reported 50-70% energy savings when their high-power technology was implemented within elevator systems. 

Looking to the future, Morten Vaalma, Head of Supercapacitor Development at Skeleton Technologies, reflects on the potential of their groundbreaking technology: “We are nowhere close to the limits of what curved graphene can do in terms of energy storage. There is still plenty of headroom in how you can optimize the material’s internal structure or compatibility with electrolytes that can keep on pushing the energy density of supercapacitors up.