Experimenting with Supercapacitors
An introduction
Hello everyone, in this first blog I will talk about the reasons that led me to participate in this design challenge and what I would like to achieve.
I have often heard of supercapacitor technology and I am intrigued by the possibility of building a power system which, kept under charge by renewable sources, such as photovoltaic panels or wind generators, can keep simple circuits powered without using batteries or external power sources.
Using this technology it is possible to create completely independent systems that could be placed in environments far from the electricity grid and that do not require periodic replacement of the batteries.
I received the kit a couple of days ago, I'm still studying the datasheets of the different devices to choose which one to use and how to interface it to the circuit I want to make and I'm still waiting for some components I want to use in my project.
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The capacities of the supercapacitors in the kit range from 0.1 F to 40 F, exaggerated values for those used to considering 1000 uF electrolytic capacitors as "huge" capacitors.
In the photo below you can see the comparison between a 10 F supercapacitor and one of the two 47000 uF electrolytic capacitors that I used in the power supply stage of a very old amplifier with a Hexfet final stage that I made in the 90s. They were really expensive at the time and their dimensions were extraordinary, similar to a 500 ml can.
The project I intend to implement consists of a simple monitoring system that sends data to a remote server using LoRaWAN protocol.
I close my introductory blog here and go back to my experiments!
I thank Element14 for the possibility it gave me to participate in this design challenge that will allow me to learn more about this technology that I have never used before.
I wish a good job to all the other participants in the challenge.
Carlo
