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About Us

"Silicon Valley's Battery Lab"

SpectraPower

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Located minutes from Silicon Valley, SpectraPower offers contract services, energy consulting, and expert witness services for li-ion and other types of batteries. SpectraPower is a contract R&D and consulting company that serves the energy storage industry. We focus on lithium ion and lithium metal batteries but also work on super capacitors, fuel cells, and other related technologies. In our prototyping work, we specialize in R&D mixing, coating, building coin cells, single layer and multi-layer pouch cells, and testing and reporting on performance. We work with all types of materials, including silicon anodes, any cathode from NMC 811 to LFP, solid state materials, and all separators and electrolytes+additives. Many of our customers have us build cells to test new materials they’ve developed, so that they don’t have to develop cell building expertise.  We can also help evaluate their materials against comparable industry benchmarks. We frequently help companies do early validation work while they are scaling or setting up their own labs. We also do analytical tear-down and reporting on batteries, from EV packs and drone packs to high end consumer electronics batteries. These can be for industry bench-marking, reverse engineering, legal purposes such as expert witness, quality verification, or whatever other reason requested. On the consulting side, we cover a wide range, including advising on materials, processes, and equipment for companies setting up pilot or full manufacturing lines. We also provide technology, pathway, competitive landscape reviews/ reports/ consulting and due diligence evaluation of companies/technologies for investors.

SpectraPower's Heritage​

​PolyStor

​In 1993 President Clinton announced that PolyStor was awarded a DARPA/DSO TRP contract to commercialize its aerogel supercap invented at LLNL. PolyStor spun-off PowerStor, acquired by Cooper/Bussmann (now Eaton) who manufactures in high volumes (www.bussmann.com) and sells through Digi-Key, etc.

With installed capacity of 6M cells/yr, starting in 1996, PolyStor is the only U.S. company to have manufactured and shipped >1M lithium-ion batteries from a U.S. manufacturing plant.

Over an 8 year period, PolyStor developed and produced every major form factor and technology, including High Power automotive cells for DOE’s PNGV program with Ford, GM, Chrysler and AeroVironment.

SpectraPower’s founder and CEO, James Kaschmitter founded/co-founded the following companies in energy storage: 

  • PolyStor Corporation (1993): pioneered li-ion manufacturing in the U.S

  • PowerStor Corp (1997): developed and manufactures carbon aerogel supercapacitor. Sold to Cooper-Bussmann

  • UltraCell Corp (2002):​ working with LLNL, DARPA and U.S. Army CECOM, UltraCell  manufactures the world’s only micro Reformed Methanol Fuel Cell (RFMC) for the U.S. military.​ Sold to Brentronics.

  • SpectraPower (2002/2014): Advanced battery and supercap R&D

Facilities and Equipment

        SpectraPower operates a 4000 sq ft facility specially equipped for development, manufacturing, and testing of advanced batteries and supercapacitors. We have a full set of equipment for production of fully packaged battery and supercapacitor prototypes starting from raw materials. SpectraPower also has in house analytical services available for testing battery components. Including Peel/Pull tests for separator, Gurley for air flow, MIP for pore size, LPSA for particle size, and more.

**Click on photos to view more info
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