Need Uninterrupted Power? Let A Supercapacitor Come To The Rescue

Focus:

A supercapacitor or supercap can deflect a crash condition, allowing backup of critical data by providing a temporary backup current source. This sounds encouraging, but some of the supercap’s characteristics can inhibit a smooth recovery. This article shows how to use a supercap as a real-world charge and discharge solution in a power backup application. In particular, the use of a boost function to overcome supercap voltage limitations and extract more of the supercap’s usable energy is explained. Finally, an integrated design solution based on the MAX38888 backup power regulator is presented. This regulator manages charge and discharge of the super cap. Supercap characteristics are described and compared with those of Li-ion batteries and tantalum capacitors. Formulas are given for calculating backup time and supercap value.

What you’ll learn:

• How to implement a supercap-based power backup circuit
• How to calculate the capacitance value and backup time for supercap-based power backup

View the Source

Author & Publication:

Bonnie Baker, Maxim Integrated, Tucson, Ariz., How2Power Today, Dec 18 2018

This article summary appears
in the HOW2POWER Design Guide.

The Design Guide offers
organized access to
hundreds of articles
on dozens of power conversion
and power management topics.

The Design Guide search results
include exclusive summaries
and accurate "how to" analysis
to help you make faster,
more informed decisions.

Search
for more articles