LiCAP Technologies has introduced a rack-level ultracapacitor energy storage system aimed at AI data center power events that happen fast—millisecond-scale transients, short-duration voltage disturbances, and other brief interruptions that can stress upstream electrical infrastructure.
The Rack Level Ultracapacitor Energy Storage System builds on LiCAP’s existing ultracapacitor cells and modules, adding build-to-spec rack systems designed to respond within milliseconds to AI workload transients, voltage disturbances, and other short-duration power events. LiCAP says the systems can be tailored to customer-specific voltage, power, energy, runtime, and physical-integration requirements, and integrated with a Cabinet Management System for real-time monitoring of system status, health, and safety.
For data center power engineers, the framing is straightforward: GPU-heavy AI workloads can drive sharp, sub-second swings in load that push on utility feeds, generators, UPS systems, and batteries. Ultracapacitors are built for rapid charge-and-discharge cycles and high-power bursts, which makes them a practical tool for shaving the edges off those transients while longer-duration storage and generation cover the energy part of the problem.
LiCAP also lists cycle life and maintenance as core design targets for the rack-level systems: more than one million cycles, 15+ years of expected service life, and near-zero maintenance. The company calls out a set of intended use cases including AI transient support and peak shaving, voltage sag support, bridge power between grid interruption and longer-duration backup availability, shutdown protection for active data writes and controlled server shutdowns, and battery support to reduce high-power transient loads that can accelerate battery degradation.
“The challenge is no longer only how much backup energy a data center has, but also how quickly and repeatedly the power infrastructure can respond to dramatic changes in load,” said Richard Qiu, president of LiCAP Technologies. “Ultracapacitors address the high-power, short-duration demands that batteries alone were not designed to handle, making the two technologies highly complementary.”
LiCAP’s ultracapacitors are manufactured using the company’s patented Activated Dry Electrode (ADE) process. LiCAP says the dry-electrode approach eliminates NMP solvent and the related drying and solvent-recovery steps, and supports low internal resistance and leakage current to enable fast response while reducing energy loss and thermal stress.
Source: LiCAP Technologies
