Hi Ben,Assuming the "lossiness" of the capacitor dielectric (Dissipation Factor or DF) is constant with respect to voltage and frequency (which it usually is not...), then the capacitor loss will be proportional to the square of the applied voltage and directly proportional to the operating frequency:
Power Loss = V^2*2*pi*f*C*(DF)
Where V = RMS voltage
f - Operating Frequency (Hz)
C = capacitance (in Farads)
DF = capacitor dielectric system Dissipation Factor
The DF for various glasses range from about 0.0002 (fused silica) to
0.0036 for common borosilicate glass.
Halving the applied voltage reduces losses by a factor of four. Unfortunately, this also reduces your system's "Bang Size" by a similar factor. Halving the frequency will halve the losses (again, assuming that the DF stays constant). So, a workable strategy would be to design your system with as large a capacitance as possible (for the power supply) and operate the bank at a lower operating voltage and frequency.
BTW, you can read more about capacitor losses in chapter 3 of Dr. Gary Johnson's excellent write-up on Solid State Tesla Coils:
http://eece.ksu.edu/~gjohnson/tcchap3.pdf Bert -- *************************************************** We specialize in UNIQUE items! Coins shrunk by huge magnetic fields, Lichtenberg Figures (our "Captured Lightning") and out of print technical Books. Visit Stoneridge Engineering at http://www.teslamania.com *************************************************** bsneath@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
With all the talk about bottle capacitors latley, one thing came to mind that could mean bottle capacitors mightn't be as bad as theirreputation says.Is the power dissipation of a glass bottle cap exactly proportionalto the voltage across it?By this i mean that does the power dissipated in the glass drop to exactly half when the voltage across it is halved? Does it drop to less than half? Not qiute to half? Could it mean that bottle caps could be made relatively efficient if enough of them were connected in series... BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px; } any thoughts? thanks ben _______________________________________________Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla
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