The capacitor bank is used to generate the voltage required to fire the flash lamps of the disc amplifiers.
The 20 kV, 3.2 MJ Vulcan capacitor bank was upgraded in 2001 and consists of 18 capacitor charging modules each connected to four banks of four or five capacitors.
The capacitors are configured to deliver 50 kJ of energy to a series-coupled flashlamp pair in a pulse length of 600 microseconds, with each disc amplifier containing eight flashlamps.
