Tradeoffs in capacitor bank design

When designing a capacitor bank for energy storage, the engineer should not use more capacitors, voltage, or energy than necessary to supply the load and to overcome losses. Universal curves presented here aid the designer in making intelligent choices. For example, there is a minimum stored energy to be achieved, but no minimum voltage at which to store it. Included in the curves are the effects of series losses such as voltage drops in regulator tubes or in current-limiting resistors. Capacitor bank designs for the neutral-beam power supplies on 2XIIB and TMX are compared using the developed criteria