• zurohki@aussie.zone
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    8 months ago

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

    • ji17br
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      8 months ago

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

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        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.

        • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          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.

      • WaterWaiver@aussie.zone
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        8 months 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).

    • davelA
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      8 months 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.

    • j4k3@lemmy.world
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      8 months 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.