Beam Capacitor

"Pulsating direct current through the capacitor results in increased range and reduced charge time for Energy weapons."

General
The Beam Capacitor boosts Energy weapons by extending range and reducing charge time. It is limited to T6 hulls and above.

Advantages
Beam Capacitors are incredibly lightweight, taking up minimal space on your ships while providing a range increase comparable to that of Focused Optics.

They reduce the charge time of your weapons, which effectively increases the DPS of beam weapons because the firing cycle is shortened while the damage per shot remains unchanged. The longer the charge time with respect to the complete firing cycle, the greater the bonus.

When paired with Arrestor Beams on battleships, they can start impeding enemy ships sooner, enhancing your kiting capability.

Disadvantages
Beam Capacitors are only designed for beam weapons; the vast majority of other ship weapons do not benefit from the charge time increase, although this special is still much more mass efficient than Focused Optics.

The Harmonic Beam Capacitor is in general more efficient except when you are fighting squadrons and modules or when you only have a single ship in the fleet equipped with the Harmonic special.

Trivia

 * This is the first weapon boost that reduces the charge time of a weapon.
 * Along with other T6 equipment, this item's build time was significantly reduced during the late April 2019 update as summarized here.