Shield Cell Banks are essentially just big pre charged one use batteries. So why do they take up so much active power?

Punished Mobius

Punished Mobius
Shield Cell Banks are essentially just big pre charged one use batteries. So why do they take up so much active power?

I would understand if we could passively recharge the banks and had a reason to draw power from the ship but they don't. So other than for the sake of balance I don't see why they would need so much juice. It just seems redundant to me.
 

Shar

Shar
It's called a trickle charge and they are really big batterys, it tales a lot of power to trickle charge a 20T battery. not unrealistic. You're moblile phone probably tricles at 10-20 mili amps and its tiny. Even more so if it's a 20T capacitor their even less efficient at holding charge than batterys.
 
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Dbrn47

Dbrn47
Shar said:
It's called a trickle charge and they are really big batterys, it tales a lot of power to trickle charge a 20T battery. not unrealistic. You're moblile phone probably tricles at 10-20 mili amps and its tiny. Even more so if it's a 20T capacitor there less efficient at holding charge than batterts.
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Only part I want to correct is the trickle charge. It's more of a rapid charge, akin to our new chargers that have the option. Really it's just a charger that allows more amps, which creates heat that you can feel on both the charger and the device.
 

Darth Ender

D
these things dont charge from the ship, but they have some kind of machinery that contains and stabilizes and operates the "cells" and this is what takes energy.

That's about all you're going to get in terms of explanation.

Whatever it is that these cells are made of or use requires a lot of energy to make use of it. Could be some form of magic dilithium crystals that give off anti-matter when destroyed or something and that whole containment needs to be active and ready prior to actually using it. etc. Either way it's not the cell itself that takes the energy, since that's one-and-done and they dont charge. Shield boosters are more like capacitors in your analogy.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Think less battery and more capacitor.

Capacitors generally have less energy density and worse retention, but vastly greater discharge rates. Given that SCBs have high standing power consumption and can refill shields at more than an order of magnitude the rate they normally regenerate at, I think this fits.
 

Punished Mobius

Punished Mobius
Shar said:
It's called a trickle charge and they are really big batterys, it tales a lot of power to trickle charge a 20T battery. not unrealistic. You're moblile phone probably tricles at 10-20 mili amps and its tiny. Even more so if it's a 20T capacitor there less efficient at holding charge than batterys.
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If it is trickle charged than why do they take ammo? And they function instantly after cut off from power. They are independent of the ships power. That's the whole point of them. Like I said if it passively charged them it would make sense to call it trickle charge but that's not how they work.
 

Dbrn47

Dbrn47
Morbad said:
Think less battery and more capacitor.

Capacitors generally have less energy density and worse retention, but vastly greater discharge rates. Given that SCBs have high standing power consumption and can refill shields at more than an order of magnitude the rate they normally regenerate at, I think this fits.
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Good enough for me... or bad enough. [praise]
 

Morbad

Morbad
Darth Ender said:
these things dont charge from the ship, but they have some kind of machinery that contains and stabilizes and operates the "cells" and this is what takes energy.

That's about all you're going to get in terms of explanation.

Whatever it is that these cells are made of or use requires a lot of energy to make use of it. Could be some form of magic dilithium crystals that give off anti-matter when destroyed or something and that whole containment needs to be active and ready prior to actually using it. etc. Either way it's not the cell itself that takes the energy, since that's one-and-done and they dont charge. Shield boosters are more like capacitors in your analogy.
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Fuel cell analogy could work here as well.

Standing power keeps whatever mechanism that combines the fuels they contain at the ready. When called upon, the two fuels are mixed and the energy from that reaction is shunted into the shield emitters.

Punished Mobius said:
And they function instantly after cut off from power. They are independent of the ships power.
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If you cut power to them during the use of a charge, they stop charging.
 
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John Rhys

J
I also think, capacitor it is. But with that kind of discharge, i don't think there's going to be material, that can do this over and over - even 1000 years from now.

So think about a capacitor, that is one time use only, because of the massive amount of energy going to be discharged from it. Or maybe it's the power conduit to the shield generator, that has to be ejected, because it's just fried after that use and the capacitor can take that much "abuse" without any problem.
 
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Morbad

Morbad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor#Lifetime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_laser

So to elaborate on my earlier posts, one possibility is that an SCB module consists of banks of very high discharge rate capacitors that are only good for one use because (for whatever reason) they are operated at far beyond ideal temperatures. Perhaps the cooling needed to make them on-the-fly rechargable would be too great to justify, either in terms of standing power requirements, mass, or modularity. The standing power requirement is what keeps them topped off (self discharge rate could be very high, but not high enough to damage the capacitors if the power is simply cut).

Another possibility is that they are chemical or nuclear fuel cells of some sort, with the standing power requirements necessary to keep whatever mechanisms responsible for initiating the reaction at the ready.
 
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