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Capacitors in parallel increase total capacitance due to their tendency to form a single capacitor with combined plate area. Capacitance is determined by plate area and is increased in parallel configurations. This is useful in smoothing DC output voltages in power supplies.
Groups of capacitors are placed in parallel in a circuit to raise the total capacitance of the group to a value greater than any of the individual components. Paralleled capacitors exhibit this characteristic due to their tendency to electrically form a single capacitor with a total plate area equal to all plates of the single capacitor combined when connected in this configuration. Since the capacitance of any capacitor is a product of the component’s plate area, this increase causes an overall increase in the capacitance of the combined component. When connected in series, the reverse occurs, with the total capacity of the assembly being less than that of any of the individual components. This phenomenon is used in applications such as smoothing direct current (DC) output voltages in power supplies.
Capacitors are electronic components that store electrical energy, usually made up of thin metal plates separated by an insulating material. The capacitor’s ability to store energy is known as the capacitance and is expressed in farads (F). Capacitance is largely dictated by the surface area of the capacitor plates and increases with increasing plate area. This feature is exploited in various ways by placing groups of capacitors in parallel or in series with each other in a circuit. This is often done with resistors as well, but with exactly opposite results in each configuration.
In direct contrast to resistors, parallel capacitors increase in capacitance where parallel groups of resistors decrease in overall resistance. Conversely, capacitors placed in series see a decrease in capacitance where resistance increases in arrays of resistors in series. Placing capacitors in parallel is a practical method of increasing the overall capacitance of the group. When placed in parallel, the capacitors effectively become one component electrically with plate area equal to the combined plate areas of all components in the group. This means that the total capacitance of a capacitor group is therefore greater than any of its individual members.
Increasing the total capacitance of parallel capacitor banks is useful in circuits such as DC power supplies. In this application, several capacitors are placed in parallel on the output of a rectified power supply. There, they absorb much of the residual alternating current (AC) ripple from the output, resulting in a smoother DC supply. In this way, the circuit designer can maintain all other electrical characteristics of the smaller components while increasing the overall capacitance and, with it, the effectiveness of the smoothing capacitors.
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