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Supercapacitors to replace lead acid battery for testing
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dorkshoei:
Hi.

I find myself often having to debug charging problems on my motorcycles (voltage regulator/rectifier).     Or doing various other forms of  battery testing.

If I have a failed lead acid battery,  it's sometimes a pain to rob a working one from another bike.

So I was thinking of getting one of the 16v super capacitor setups that are fairly cheap on AliExpress as it's easier than keeping a spare lead acid battery charged (and not sulfating):  https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32992323017.html

My question is do these have overvoltage protection for the entire unit?   In order to protect them if the vehicles voltage regulator has failed?  Usually the pcbs that are mounted to each capacitor are for balance protection to ensure one capacitor doesn't get overcharged while the rest of the string is within limits.   I asked the seller but my experience is that most sellers on AE know little about what they sell.

Thanks for any advice.
SeanB:
They have no overvoltage protection, the balance circuit is very limited in the ability to dissipate heat, only really there to handle tiny amounts of imbalance in the terminal voltage on the capacitors, not handle currents over around 50-100mA. If you want to use one, keep a 12V 55W headlamp ( preferably complete and in the housing) always across the capacitor, so as to provide some sort of load, as your bike charger should be able to at least supply 5A to keep it lit , and regulate the voltage to under 14V5 in doing so. Fail to do that and you get whatever is open circuit voltage of your charger, whatever that is, charging the capacitor till something, either on the bike or the capacitor bank, fails rather spectacularly.
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