A discharged or partially charged capacitor appears as a short circuit to the source when the source voltage is higher than the potential of the capacitor. A fully discharged capacitor will take approximately 5 "RC" time cycles to fully charge; during the charging portion of the cycle, instantaneous current can exceed load current by a substantial multiple. Instantaneous current declines to load current as the capacitor reaches full charge. In the case of open circuit, the capacitor will be charged to the peak AC voltage (one cannot actually charge a capacitor with AC line power – this refers to unidirectional alternating voltage output from a rectifier).