Capacitor
Purpose
Ideal capacitor
Library
Electrical / Passive Components
Description
This component provides one or more ideal capacitors between its two electrical
terminals. If the component is vectorized, a coupling can be modeled between the
internal capacitors. Capacitors may be switched in parallel only if their momentary
voltages are equal.
See section Configuring PLECS for information on how to change the graphical
representation of capacitors.
Note A capacitor may not be connected in parallel with an ideal voltage source. Doing
so would create a dependency between an input variable (the source voltage)
and a state variable (the capacitor voltage) in the underlying state-space
equations.
Parameters
-
Capacitance
- The value of the capacitor, in farads (F). All finite positive and
negative values are accepted, including 0. The default is 100e-6.
In a vectorized component, all internal capacitors have the same value if the
parameter is a scalar. To specify the capacitances individually use a vector
. The length
of the vector determines the component's width:

In order to model a coupling between the internal capacitors enter a square
matrix. The size
of the matrix corresponds to the width of the component:

The capacitance matrix must be invertible, i.e. it may not be singular.
-
Initial voltage
- The initial voltage of the capacitor at simulation start, in volts (V).
This parameter may either be a scalar or a vector corresponding to the width of the
component. The positive pole is marked with a "+". The initial voltage default is
0.
Probe Signals
-
Capacitor voltage
- The voltage measured across the capacitor, in volts (V). A
positive voltage is measured when the potential at the terminal marked with
"+" is greater than the potential at the unmarked terminal.
-
Capacitor current
- The current flowing through the capacitor, in amperes (A).