Capacitors and supercapacitors: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Capacitor prices follow electronics manufacturing: aluminium foil, activated carbon electrodes, electrolyte and dielectric materials, plus factory scale in East Asia. The proxy index covers circuit capacitors broadly, so it reflects electronics demand more than any single raw material.
Proxy US PPI: capacitors for electronic circuitry index · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for capacitors and supercapacitors itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkCapacitors and supercapacitors and Aluminium
Monthly changes -0.05 little or none correlation 12-month changes -0.10 little or none correlation Last 5 years -0.08 monthly changes Lead or lag +5 mo Aluminium tends to lead by 5 months (r 0.11) Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Capacitors and supercapacitors ≈ 0.621 × (Aluminium)0.68 R² 0.12 On this fit, a 10% higher aluminium price goes with a 6.7% higher capacitors and supercapacitors price over the long run. Units: index and $/mt. The fit is loose, so treat the function as a rough guide.Chart: Capacitors and supercapacitors and Aluminium prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Capacitors and supercapacitors price against Aluminium price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Supercapacitors store charge on the vast internal surface of porous activated carbon, often made from coconut shell, so electrode carbon is the core material cost. There is no public price for capacitor-grade carbon, so this link is shown as text only.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Aluminium foil collects current from the electrodes and aluminium cans hold the cells. The link barely shows in the data: monthly moves correlate at -0.05, because the proxy is dominated by small circuit capacitors priced by contract and factory scale rather than metal.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsCapacitor electrodes are carbon materials, and the carbon and graphite products index is the nearest public carbon series. Monthly moves barely correlate, at 0.12, but yearly moves reach 0.47, which points to a shared industrial cycle rather than direct cost pass-through from one to the other.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsTantalum capacitors, used where small size and reliability matter, are made from tantalum powder. Supply scares in tantalum, much of it mined in central Africa, have pushed up prices for that segment, though tantalum has no public price series here.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Supercapacitors and lithium batteries compete for short bursts of power such as braking recovery and grid frequency support. Cheaper batteries take share from capacitors. The two indices hardly move together, with monthly changes correlating at -0.03, as they are priced in separate supply chains.
little or none co-movement month to month · 243 months Show chartsBuses, trams, cranes and lifts use supercapacitors to soak up braking energy and release it on the next start, because they survive millions of fast cycles. Growth in electrified transport therefore lifts demand, but regenerative braking has no price series of its own.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.