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A Staggering 19x Energy Jump in Capacitors May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries (www.popularmechanics.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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[–] 29 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Headline is dumb. If capacitors are better at being batteries than batteries are, they just become the next generation of batteries.

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  • [–] 84 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    But capacitors aren’t batteries. Batteries store chemical energy. Capacitors store electrical potential energy. Electronically they behave much differently.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Yes they do… including not holding a charge when the differential drops too far.

    The real wins are in battery-backed capacitors. Charge the caps fast, then let them keep the batteries topped up.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's what I do being off-grid. I have my battery bank then a series of Supercaps to essentially act as an on/off ramp//drawbridge and temper quick demands. Kinda like an inverse soft starter so this is suuuuper interesting to me.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago*

    Only for certain types of capacitors. In practice they can overlap quite a bit, especially with common aluminium electrolytic capacitors (these form & dissolve complex aluminium oxide & hydroxide layers on the plates).

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago

    Headline is not dumb. There are reasons to make a distinction between the two, the most salient one being that capacitors are several orders of magnitude faster to charge and discharge.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Capacitors can theoretically charge MUCH faster.

    However the galvanic potential of lithium is as large as is practically possible. The galvanic potential is what really matters for a battery. Capacitors are nowhere near the joules per weight/volume.

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