Electronic – Balancing Resistor Values for Series Capacitors

balancingcapacitancecapacitorresistorsseries

I just wanted to confirm my rough calculations are correct in selecting balancing resistors for 2 capacitors in series.

Here are the specs:
2x 10,000uF Capacitors with 500V rating in series.

I found this estimation equation online: R = 10 / C where R =Mohm and C = uF.
Based on this, I got 1kohm resistors to use as balancing resistors for each capacitor.

I'm using this setup to filter out transient behavior from a power cycler supplying 900V. Are those resistor values correct (or in the ballpark)?

Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

As I understand it, you want to make a 1 kV polarized capacitor from two polarized 500 V capacitors:

The bleeder resistors are intended to keep the voltages on the capacitors roughly balanced. OK so far, but this seems rather extreme.

The resistors will draw ½ A with 1 kV in! That's 500 W of power, and each resistor will dissipate 250 W. This might work if you're trying to make a small toaster, but then you wouldn't need the capacitors at all.

Another way to look at this is to see when the result looks mostly capacitive and when mostly resistive. The -3 dB point of 1 kΩ and 10 mF is 16 mHz. If all your frequencies will be substantially above 16 mHz, then you're actually OK from that point of view.

I would look carefully at the worst case this circuit will be subjected to and see if the resistors can't be made much larger.

Dissipating 500 W just to avoid more expensive high voltage caps seems like a poor tradeoff. Look at 1 kV caps, and also pop up a couple levels and re-examine why you think you need this in the first place.