This calculator determines the total effective capacitance of any number of capacitors in a parallel configuration.
Enter the capacitance values separated by commas.
Parallel Capacitance Formula
Ctotal = C1 + C2 + C3 +…. + Cn
Units
Units for Capacitance are Farad (F). When entering values above make sure the units are the same – i.e. they should all be one of the following:
- Farad
- Millifarad
- Microfarad
- Nanofarad
- Picofarad
- etc.
Example Calculation
Consider four caps in parallel: 1 µF, 6 µF, 15 µF and 100 µF. The total effective resistance is 122 µF.
If you have two caps – one large and the other small in parallel, the effective capacitance is closer to the larger value. For instance,
1 F and 1000 F in parallel. The effective resistance is 1001 ≈ 1000 F
In the event that the same two capacitors are in series, the effective capacitance is closer to the smaller value.
1 F in series with 1000 F is 0.999 F ≈ 1 F
Related Calculator
- Total Resistance – gives the effective resistance for a combination of series and parallel resistors.
- Series Capacitor
- Capacitor Tolerance
- Parallel Resistance
- Series Resistance