Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Research is interesting!

It seems that super capacitor technology hasn't been fully embraced yet. Having said that, there are portable car starting units that are built from super capacitors.

Browsing around, it seems several people are claiming to have successfully replaced their car batteries with super capacitors. There are reports that alternators die fairly swiftly yet these reports have a pretty even chance of being true or false.

The actual circuitry for the super capacitor is very simple. The capacitors are wired in parallel. The interesting thing is that the individual capacitors act very differently from the way a battery would, adding to the complexity of the task. Each capacitor holds a charge of around 2.7 volts. As the charge reduces so does the voltage but at a greater extent than a battery.

There have been attempts to blend lithium batteries with super capacitors but the results are as yet unknown. Thus far it looks as though my power solution has to be along the following lines:
1. A lithium battery - if the manufacturers website is right about the high amperage output. The limiting factor is the high cost.
2. A super capacitor solution though this is a bit of a mystery at the moment and looks ominously like it'll be expensive.
3. A standard battery solution using an $80 marine battery. This would not power the microwave or the fridge but cooking could be achieved using gas when mains power is unavailable.
4. A standard battery solution using the same $80 marine battery but backed up by a generator that's run every time more than a couple of amps is needed.
5. A further solution could be a hybrid super capacitor and battery solution though this is an unknown.
6. For a final solution, sufficient batteries to provide sufficient amperage to power a microwave though this could be heavy and expensive.

Whichever way the solution ends up going, its going to be interesting!

posted from Bloggeroid

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