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In the design of a parallel resonant induction-heating system, choosing a proper capacitance for the resonant circuit is quite important since both output-power maximization and capacitor heat loading should be considered. The temperature rise often blows up the water-cooled capacitors in high-power induction heaters or reduces the lifetime of capacitors significantly. This paper, therefore, presents a method of finding an optimal capacitance that maximizes the output power while considering the capacitor loss at the same time. To count the effect of the capacitor heatup, an equivalent series resistance is included in the model. Based on the equivalent circuit model, the output power and the capacitor loss are obtained as the functions of capacitance, and an optimization technique is applied treating the capacitance as a control variable. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulations and experiments. Index Terms--Equivalent series resistance (ESR), induction heater, optimal selection, parallel resonant circuit.