Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
From a cost perspective, I don't think you will save money overall on batteries by having a capacitor bank. Perhaps the batteries would only live 5% longer.
Since your car doesn't have power doors or an alarm, I think it's even more important to discover what the parasitic draw is. If it's low enough, you could get away with just capacitors and no battery. If you park outside, a very cheap solar maintainer should keep it topped up.
.. Now I just need to figure out how to disable my alternator and measure typical power consumption.
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I'm not too familiar with how batteries work, but I always thought that heavy loads cause damage or at least reduce lifespan significantly, which is where the capacitors would help. Aka, it's not heat that kills them, high current draw can do it too. If we're talking lead acid, I feel like caps would increase the battery's lifespan considerably because they're very sensitive to depth of discharge.
Solar panels are definitely in the plans. If the capacitors and car's electronics bleed off 0.5W sitting there, a tiny solar panel sitting on the dash or under the rear window would do the trick. A 15V panel can be wired together from cheapo panels for under 10 dollars. Even so, I feel like a small battery is still a good idea, it's not a big weight penalty for a massive increase in reserve energy storage.