Electronic – How to work with supercapacitors

capacitorsupercapacitor

I'm thinking of using a supercapacitor to power a device with low power consumption. I have one 1 F capacitor rated at 5.5 V and I plan to charge it using input voltage of 5 V.

What precautions should I take when charging it? I'm afraid that it will overload my power supply if I just connect it directly.

Any other tips would be appreciated too.

Best Answer

I have had several students who have used super cap chargers. They provide a lot of nice features like variable current limit on the charging, the particular one that I linked to will also make it so you could use 2 caps with lower voltage on each one and it will make sure you don't over voltage one.

The only down side is the chips for these are VERY small and can be difficult to solder if you aren't very experienced.