Jedi use lightsabers, some use them a lot! However you never see a lighsaber being plugged in, on charge or running out of battery.
What powers a lightsaber and does it run indefinitely?
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3You almost never see spacecraft and space stations being refueled either. And Star Wars resident people almost never eat. That doesn't mean that they don't: just that it is not important to the story. – wallyk Sep 19 '13 at 19:00
The lightsaber is powered by a Diatium power cell:
The diatium power cell was the primary power source for a lightsaber and one of the critical components of a lightsaber hilt. Located directly below and wired into the primary crystal mount, to which was affixed the weapon's primary focusing crystal, these types of power cells were in turn wrapped within the power field conductor, power vortex ring and an inert power insulator. The lightsaber's pommel cap and its recharging port were attached directly to the diatum cell.
Lightsabers were initially (as protosabres) powered by a belt-mounted power pack connected to the saber via a power cable:
It seems the Dark Lords of the Sith Empire were ultimately responsible for the advancement of lightsabers, replacing the belt-mounted power pack with a power cell within the hilt. An internal superconductor was introduced, which transferred the returning looped energy from the negative-charged flux aperture back into an internal power cell. With this modification, the power cell would only expend power when the energy loop was broken, such as when the lightsaber cut something, solving the power supply problem.
answered Sep 19 '13 at 13:51
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So you're saying they do expend energy... but only when actually cutting and not when simply activated? – Liath Sep 19 '13 at 14:23
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@Liath So it seems, thanks to the use of a superconductor. I guess that there's some negligible loss through heat and light. – coleopterist Sep 19 '13 at 14:35
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3The brown beads, with no label, located on each side of the Primary Crystal Mount are the flux capacitors. – zundarz Sep 19 '13 at 22:15
