Capacitor

[dieselherb]

I have 48v capacitor, I'd like to incorporate into my 48v acid battery bank. Has anyone used a capacitor with lead acid batteries? I'm not familiar to capacitor use.
Thanks

 

[TacomaJoe]

How many farads is the capacitor and what are you trying to accomplish?

 

[toms]

A 48V capacitor isn’t suitable for a 48V battery system. The capacitor value is it’s maximum allowable voltage.

I use a 60V supercap on my 48V system to lower the surge current on the batteries.

 

[dieselherb]

A friend gave me this one. He said it would help if I installed it before the battery bank

 

[RCinFLA]

Unless the supercaps are the large stud terminal types, their ESR will be too high to do any good for limiting surge current from battery.

 

[dieselherb]

Hi think it is 130-150fp and it does have large studs

 

[JBertok]

To your point - YES supercapacitors are a fantastic compliment to lead-acid batteries because a sufficient bank of them allows prevents voltage sag on the DC bus when a surge load hits. Your capacitor bank needs a voltage rating high enough to handle the most possible voltage your DC bus could ever see, like when equalizing, or else the magic smoke or worse will be unleashed. (Mine can handle 24*2.7V = 64.8V)
Pictured below is what my bank looks like, and here's a link to a pre-charge/discharge circuit I put together to mitigate the problems working with supercapacitor banks:

Supercapacitor Pre-Charge/Discharge DIY Circuit

Recently a bank of 24 Nesscap 3500F Supercapacitors was added to my system to assist with DC ripple and surge loads. Although a big investment, their performance and the preservation of battery longevity they provide is worth it, in my opinion. These capacitors will easily pass 1500 Amps and...

diysolarforum.com

(for scale, each of those is about the size of a 16oz. Monster can.)