Capacitors

Capacitors (historically known as condensators) are used to store a small amount of energy in an electrical field. Ideal capacitors do not dissipate their energy. The charge stored in a capacitor is known as capacitance.

The unit for capacitance is the farad. One farad is equal to 1 joule per square volt, or 1 coulomb per volt. This means that a capacitance of 1 farad at 1 volt can maintain a current of 1 amp for 1 second. The amount of energy stored in a capacitor can be calculated using the formula:

Where:

• E is the capacitor's stored energy.
• C is the capacitor's capacitance in farads.
• V is the voltage of the capacitor.

A capacitor at 50V with the max amount of redstone will have a capacitance of 1daF (10F). Using the above formula, we can calculate that it stores 12.5kJ of energy.

Capacitors can be thought of as a slow charging battery with a very rapid discharge. Capacitors can be used to smooth power output, and stabilize voltage and power flow in large networks. Capacitors can also be used to provide short bursts of backup power, such as bridging the gap between one generator failing over to another.

Installing your Capacitor

Once you have your capacitor placed down, you must put two ingredients in. Redstone and Dialectics. The quantity of these will determine both the nominal voltage and the capacitance. Adding redstone (up to 13) will increase the capacity while adding dialectics (up to 20) will increase its nominal voltage while also decreasing its capacity as well. For this reason, it's highly suggested that no more dialectics are used than necessary, as adding more reduces its performance.

Common Values

50V at 10,000 mF

200V at 625 mF 800V at 39.1 mF 1000V at 25 mF