What Does A Capacitor Do For My AC?

Have you had your air conditioner inspected yet? Are you having issues with it? Your air conditioner has many parts to it that do various things to make your home cool. One of those parts is a capacitor which stores electric charges in your air conditioner and are rate in microfarads. There are two types of capacitors in your air conditioner, run capacitors and start capacitors. The run capacitor is connected to the PSC board and helps the compressor to run on it. When the capacitor for the condenser motor is bad, you will hear noise from the compressor. Your condenser fan might also not start when you have a bad run capacitor. Run capacitors are used in compressors, condenser fan motors, indoor blower motors, and induced draft motors. Start capacitors stay in the circuit for a few seconds and then shut off again. It stays on long enough to allow torque to increase. Capacitors come in oval or round shapes. Capacitors are measured by microfarads, voltage, manufacturing tolerance, and ambient temperature. One of the main causes of capacitor failure is incorrect voltage. You can always go up in voltage,  never down. Electronic Industries Association issues standards for the capacitors so you want to see EIA-456 on the side to ensure quality. This means the capacitor has been tested for 2,000 hours on a 125 percent above its rated voltage and 10°C above it actual rated temperature under Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT) method. Capacitors all have a different range, the ± % tells us the maximum and the minimum range of capacitor microfarads.There are single and dual capacitors. Single capacitors have two terminals, a herm or fan and a common terminal. Dual capacitors have three terminals, fan, herm, and common. They are labeled on the bottom of the capacitor, the fan terminal is for the fan, herm is for the compressor, c is common. Changing a capacitor should be left to a certified professional due to the fact if it is done wrong you have a chance to injure yourself with the high voltage it has. Bartlett Heating and Air will check your capacitor as part of out annual clean and check and replace if necessary so call us today!