Are capacitors evil?

[woodski]

Hi All,

Coming from a non electronic background one of the items I can't get my head around are capacitors. I understand to a certain degree as to what they are and what they do.

However, in terms of our search for overunity, should they be used except in the case of collecting radiant spikes?

My understanding is that in normal circumstances they require double the energy from a battery to get to the same voltage level. Surely that means that you are 50% down to start with!! I read that if I have an inductor in between the battery and a capacitor then this improves the performance. However, I don't see many people doing this. Why?.

The reason I am bringing this point up is that I am working on a tesla switch - bedini cole window motor hybrid setup. Initially I will be starting with 2 banks to 2 batteries. Long term, I would like to have 4 batteries in 1 bank and an array of capacitors in the other bank to push alot more voltage through the system. However, if the capacitors do waste alot of energy then I believe that the long term plan would fail before I start, yet one of the tesla switch setups is to use one battery with 2 capacitors switched between parallel and serial.

So are capacitors evil or is my head full of dung????

[Armagdn03]

Hi All,

Coming from a non electronic background one of the items I can't get my head around are capacitors. I understand to a certain degree as to what they are and what they do.

However, in terms of our search for overunity, should they be used except in the case of collecting radiant spikes?

My understanding is that in normal circumstances they require double the energy from a battery to get to the same voltage level. Surely that means that you are 50% down to start with!! I read that if I have an inductor in between the battery and a capacitor then this improves the performance. However, I don't see many people doing this. Why?.

The reason I am bringing this point up is that I am working on a tesla switch - bedini cole window motor hybrid setup. Initially I will be starting with 2 banks to 2 batteries. Long term, I would like to have 4 batteries in 1 bank and an array of capacitors in the other bank to push alot more voltage through the system. However, if the capacitors do waste alot of energy then I believe that the long term plan would fail before I start, yet one of the tesla switch setups is to use one battery with 2 capacitors switched between parallel and serial.

So are capacitors evil or is my head full of dung????

All things have their place. capacitor to capacitor switching does indeed loose energy. Inductor to capacitor energy transfer is very very efficient. these are two properties of any electrical structure, and they represent or are the potential aspect and the kinetic aspect of nature. They interchange energy with each other at their points of commonality (their fulcrum), which dictate an impedance and a time factor (frequency).

[realmikel]

Hi All,

I understand to a certain degree as to what they are and what they do.

I believe that the long term plan would fail before I start, yet one of the tesla switch setups is to use one battery with 2 capacitors switched between parallel and serial.

So are capacitors evil or is my head full of dung????

If you understood them you would not have the questions? Original electrical generation were all capacitor driven. Losses then are not a problem unless your design is a problem. An excellent use of them is very much like a diode. You can direct the ac component away from the dc component so that you can run them on the same wire and seperate them at any time. and you can use them to choose how much ac you want to extract at any given point.
Switched parallel to serial caps double the voltage and serial to parallel switched caps can double the current yet the wattage remains the same unless you pull a few more electrical stunts. In parallel resonance circuits with high q will operate a coil at effieciencies that require only 1/10 of the wattage that coils that do not have the parallel capacitor. A good place to grasp this is on youtube where they demonstrate parallel resonance with a light bulb in the circuit and one on the input. The difference in efficiency is so dramatic that you wonder why every motor does not have the parallel capacitor installed.
Smart people ask questions to become smarter. people with dung just demand they are right

[woodski]

Take a chill pill

Easy on there realmikel.

As I said, I do not have an electronics background, so I don't know all that capacitors are used for or I would not have asked the questions I did.

I see capacitors used in alot of schematics. My query was to do with charging them efficiently. In almost schematic diagrams, I do not see how they are charged effeciently, therefore I have asked a legitimate and smart question.

We are all here to learn, so wind your neck in and offer advice and wisdom instead of insults.

[stargate22]

Evil caps

Hi All,

Coming from a non electronic background one of the items I can't get my head around are capacitors. I understand to a certain degree as to what they are and what they do.

However, in terms of our search for overunity, should they be used except in the case of collecting radiant spikes?

My understanding is that in normal circumstances they require double the energy from a battery to get to the same voltage level. Surely that means that you are 50% down to start with!! I read that if I have an inductor in between the battery and a capacitor then this improves the performance. However, I don't see many people doing this. Why?.

The reason I am bringing this point up is that I am working on a tesla switch - bedini cole window motor hybrid setup. Initially I will be starting with 2 banks to 2 batteries. Long term, I would like to have 4 batteries in 1 bank and an array of capacitors in the other bank to push alot more voltage through the system. However, if the capacitors do waste alot of energy then I believe that the long term plan would fail before I start, yet one of the tesla switch setups is to use one battery with 2 capacitors switched between parallel and serial.

So are capacitors evil or is my head full of dung????

All...All Capacitors are "Angelic" from a 5th density!

[Slider2732]

I think realmikel was fine there, not insulting, but can see how it may be read so. You aren't a know-it-all and that was his point, the wish to be smarter by asking questions

The fundamental imagery you have of capacitors seems a fair bit askew. How to imagine them, both AC and DC types, is as a temporary store area.
The analogy can be a river, your voltage and current as the water. The water runs down the river and can flow into a side dry lake area, filling it up. If the main river water is suddenly stopped from flowing, the lake will empty and allow the water downstream to still flow. in such a way, the water downstream need not be affected by someone starting and stopping the main river flow.
How big of a capacitor you have, is how big the temporary storage lake area is.

Electrolytic capacitors allow the flow in only one direction and are marked with their polarity (a minus sign on one side). Other types are of usually smaller value (storage capability), but will allow a storage when connected any which way you like.
In the river example, you would be using an electrolytic capacitor, because the water can't flow back uphill

In general terms, there is no loss from a capacitor. You can put energy in and take energy out some short time later, without losing anything along the way. A capacitor will leak energy over time, but within an operating circuit that trait is nearly always of no consequence, it taking perhaps days to lose a charge.
In circuits where less than the circuit running voltage may be seen between time intervals, capacitors can smooth out the supply to a middle value, the normal voltage minus the occasional dips that is within the operating limits for that circuit.
In other circuits, a running condition might only be possible by the gradual filling up of a capacitor...such that at some point it allows the circuit to begin operating. Such a pulsing effect of rise, trigger of circuit and switch off again because the capacitor energy has been drained is used within many simple circuits. For example, one that may flash an LED from very small voltages. Normally, there wouldn't be enough energy to do anything, but the capacitor filling up over time, allows a point at which the circuit can fire and the LED will flash, resetting the whole thing to do the same again a few moments later.

[Raui]

Woodski,
Slider got it pretty much correct. The ideal capacitor isn't a resistance and only stores and returns energy. In practice the capacitor's dielectric medium isn't ideal and so there exists a loss in the dielectric proportional to the conductance of the insulator (Assuming a DC case the conductance, G, is the reciprocal of resistance, R and thus can be calculated as 1/R). This loss is very small in most cases, unless the voltage is excessive (Say <500kV probably much higher for most decent dielectrics).

As an extention of what Armagdn03 said regarding capacitance and the kinetic/potential aspects of the whole we call nature. Think of a car moving down the highway, you apply the breaks and you find there is a force which pushes you forward and you slow down as you move forward because your kinetic aspect is being turned into potential (energy stored in an inductor is discharging into a charging capacitor). Once you've been slowed down to zero potential is converted back into kinetic and you feel a force pulling you back to your equilibrium (energy stored in a capacitor is discharging into a charging inductor). If there were no losses present in the system you'd sit there being tossed forward then backward ad infinatum but no system is perfect and presents loss to the magnitude of this oscillation so you only oscillate for a certain period of time.

If you were to graph this phenomena it would look like this:


So in conclusion you're not just pouring energy down the sink, the great majority of energy is stored in the electrostatic/dielectric field with a tiny bit of energy heating the dielectric of the capacitor.

Raui

[OrionLightShip]

Other uses

Capacitors are also used as filters in AC - Audio - RF applications where certain frequencies or a band of frequencies is rejected while others are passed by the capacitor.

Another version of that is the DC blocking capacitor used in transistor amplifiers which sends the dc component to ground while allowing the "signal" to pass through to be amplified.

This is possible because for any value of capacitance; there is a resonant frequency which passes through that capacitor with a theoretical zero loss. I won't bother posting the formula, but there is math behind everything of course. Well, mostly. I haven't found any math to explain the metaphysical happenings that are just as real as any shock you may receive from one of those "evil" capacitors.

[mbrownn]

Capacitors are a most interesting part of electronics, they can work in many ways but they do bite.

[Dave45]

Do they return energy with an opposite spin direction
send in pos return neg

what say ye

and why

[realmikel]

Do they return energy with an opposite spin direction
send in pos return neg

what say ye

and why

assuming you build your own or know how to have them built for you; you can control that in your design with various combinations. Was there something you had in mind?