[TCML] ESR ESL figures in caps

[Chris Swinson]

Hi Bert, all,

May seem a daft question, though what about current ratings of caps, if I 
have an array of caps rated at 800amps each, does the array add up in amps 
terms or is it still 800amps regardless of number of caps ? I've always just 
assumed they add.....

Cheers,
Chris




> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Bert Hickman" <bert.hickman at aquila.net>
> To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla at pupman.com>
> Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 2:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [TCML] ESR ESL figures in caps
>
>
>> Hi Chris,
>>
>> In theory, when paralleling N capacitors, overall ESR and ESL will be 
>> divided by N (similar to paralleling discrete resistor or inductors). The 
>> capacitance will be multiplied by N. So, the equivalent ESR and ESL will 
>> be the individual ESR and ESL divided by the number you have in parallel.
>>
>> However, in practice, what you ACTUALLY obtain will be a function of your 
>> physical layout and interconnection scheme. For reasonably 
>> interconnection schemes, both ESR and ESL will still be significantly 
>> lower than that of a single cap, but not as low as theory predicts.
>>
>> Bert