Capacitors - Series and Parallel

By March 28, 2019

Capacitors – Series and Parallel

Knowing how to combine capacitors in series and parallel properly is a great practical field skill to employ when you need to get a customer up and running, but you don't have the exact size.

Increasing in size is easy. Just connect in parallel and add the two sizes together. For example, if you needed a 70MFD capacitor, you could easily connect a 50 and 20 in parallel, which will add up to 70MFD. Connecting in parallel is as easy as making two jumper wires with connectors, jumping one side of each capacitor to the other, and connecting one side as usual.

Connecting in series is a little more tricky. It goes like this:

Total Capacitance is 1 ÷ (1÷C + 1÷C) = Total MFD When Wired in Series

The result is that the total capacitance will always be less than the smallest capacitor. Let's imagine a real-world scenario where you need a 3MFD capacitor, and all you have is 5 & 7.5 MFD on your van.

The math would be:

1 ÷ (1÷5 + 1÷7.5) = Total MFD

1 ÷ (0.2 +.13) = Total MFD

1 ÷ (0.33) = Total MFD

3.03 = Total MFD

It's definitely not something you will run into every day but a nice knowledge tool to have in the noggin toolbox.

—Bryan

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One response to “Capacitors – Series and Parallel”

JamesCM813 says:
2023.06.08 at 17:20
This is awesome, I just had a call where this would have saved me a few hours and not having to go to supply house to grab cap! Appreciate all you do for industry see you at AHR if it happens!
Reply

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