text: <s>[INST] VFD Capacitor Life Summary: Curious about average capacitor life of a drive. Greetings all, I was asked by a customer today, what is the expected shelf life of a typical VFD capacitor. So, not knowing that answer, I turn to all you wonderful folks out here in the VFD world to draw on your experience. M customer's primary concern is how long they should feel comfortable with a spare drive on the shelf before worrying about the capacitor dielectric breaking down. I look forward to seeing all the responses. Thank you. [/INST] Hi I worked in a plant until the start of the year that was installed in around 1996 with hundreds 1336s, we had a few failures of drive capacitors in the first 3 to 5 years but after that I can not remember drive capacitors going, the controller cards are just starting to fail, spare drives in the store always worked. So from this I would say 10 to 15 years. Hope this helps Ian \\n </s>