Capacitor question

[tige']

Against some highly experienced peoples advice on this forum, I have a capacitor in my stereo system. This is because I ordered it and was stuck with it, not because I didn't trust their opinion (and now maybe I see why they didn't recommend it!!)

Anyway, my question is this....Does the capacitor continue to pull from the battery, even when everything is shut off?

At first I didn't think it would, at least not very much. BUT, when I turn the circuit breaker off (disconnecting the power to the cap) about 10 minutes later the low voltage alarm on the capacitor goes off - even with everything turned off.

This would seem to me that the voltage is leaking out of the capacitor somewhere and if it where hooked up to the battery it would continue to feed itself??

That being said, I am not sure what to do between boat outings. The instructions talk about charging the capacitor before powering it up. So, if I were to turn the circuit breaker off I would have to remember to charge the cap before flipping the breaker back on - seems like a hassle and somewhere along the line I would forget....then what happens??

The capacitor I have is a Tsunami X15H Digital LCD 20 farad capacitor.

Thanks again & again & again.....

[MoneyPity]

Capacitors will have leakage current until the are completely discharged. in theory this period of time in infinite but in actuality the time turns out to be something 2 PI R Sqaured. So even though they are charged leakage current will attempt to discharge them

Where is the capacitor wired and for what purpose. It is hard to diagnose an alarm until how the capacitator is wired in the system.

The Time c0nstand for the capacitor to discharge is
TC=2ΠRC2 where R is the resistive portion of the circuit and C is the capacitor value. Normally it will take 2-3 Time Constants for this to discharge. That is a whopping capacitor. Is it hooked across the + to ground to act as a noise filter?

Back to your question in a perfect world capacitors would not leak. If the Cap is across the power input to expensive amps, IMO it should stay and you must remeber to flip the two breakers. It will give you some DC sag and surce protection.