this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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AC units have beefy capacitors, right? Do you know in what range, for comparison?
If by AC you mean air conditioner, I just replaced mine with a 50+5uF dual cap @ 370/440 VAC
Still tens to maybe low hundreds of microfarads.
Oh. I thought it would be more impressive, but that's still orders of magnitude away. Thanks!
And when they are used for air-conditioning units, they are typically boost capacitors, which means they store up a nice amount of juice for when the compressor powers on and needs a sudden rush of energy, but that's only a very small amount, like you couldn't crank a car with the amount of energy in these capacitors.
No. They provide phase shift to give the single-phase induction motors a rotating rather than oscillating magnetic field. They charge and discharge 100/120 times per second depending on grid frequency.
They do not cover inrush current, and would need to be orders of magnitude bigger and a different topology to do so.