IBM 029 progress

Nico de Jong wrote: Well, here's a rough off-the-cuff comparison of the two as energy storage devices: - If a 12V 40Ah battery supplies 40A for one hour into a load, then the load resistance is 12V/40A = 0.3 Ohms. - To achieve an RC time constant of 1 hour with 0.3 ohm R requires C of: 1h * 60m/h * 60s/m / 0.3 Ohms = 12000 Farads. (There is a lot to criticise in this comparison, notably that the RC time constant involves a significant drop in the voltage and hence current. A better comparison would utilise energy equations but then I'd have to look them up.) With that said, a battery is not a capacitor. They have a gross similarity as electrical energy storage devices but the electrochemical reactions of the battery result in very different electrical characteristics and response than does the 'pure' electrostatic nature of a capacitor.