Before we get to supercapacitors, it's worth quickly explaining what a regular capacitor is to help demonstrate what makes supercapacitors special. If you've ever looked at a computer motherboardor virtually any circuit board, you'll have seen these electronic components. A capacitor stores. Capacitors and batteries are similar in the sense that they can both store electrical power and then release it when needed. The big difference is that capacitors store power as an electrostatic field, while batteriesuse a chemical reaction to store and later release. Supercapacitors offer many advantages over, for example, lithium-ion batteries. Supercapacitors can charge up much more quickly than. Supercapacitors are also known as ultracapacitors or double-layer capacitors. The key difference between supercapacitors and regular capacitors is capacitance. That. You've probably used products that contain supercapacitors and didn't even know it. The first supercapacitors were created in the 1950s by a General Electric engineer named Howard Becker. In 1978, NEC coined the name "supercapacitor" and used the device.