4 ms·
Electronics that constantly draw low amounts of power — such as some wall clocks, headlamps, or bike lights — work better with disposable alkaline batteries I
by Johnny555 7y ago
Electronics that constantly draw low amounts of power — such as some wall clocks, headlamps, or bike lights — work better with disposable alkaline batteries
I use low discharge NiMH rechargables in all of my battery bike lights and they work great, they'll last for about 3 months of my usage (I run the taillights night or day), but I charge them all at the end of the month (I have 2 sets, so one set's on the bike and one set is charged and ready to swap out). I'm on the same set of Eneloops I bought 6 years ago. Every year or so I have my charger run a discharge test and they are still within about 90% of rated capacity.
I'd have thrown away 24 sets of disposable batteries in that timeframe (since I keep an extra set of batteries charged, so it's a ratio of 1:12). I paid ~2.50 each for the eneloops when I bought them, so cost wise it's been a good investment, works out to around 20 cents each so far (ignoring the cost of electricity)
It's getting harder to find non-rechargable bike lights, my main headlight uses a non-replacable LiIon battery.
- digikata 7y agoIt's a shame that so many products default to built in, non-replaceable LiIons now. For many products, it's nicer to have a replaceable rechargeable so you can pop in charged battery and go instead of having to plan for state of charge of yet another device.
- Brakenshire 7y agoI suspect building them is in an environmental benefit in a lot of cases, a lot of people just buy huge packs of alkaline disposables and can't be bothered with rechargeables unless they're built in. I'd be interested to see the statistics but I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of people use disposable batteries given the opportunity.
- Johnny555 7y agoProbably true, but if the LiIon batterypacks/modules were required to be replaceable, that would keep that benefit while reducing the waste of lights that are thrown away after the LiIon battery degrades. Though I'm not sure how much of a factor that is - I don't know how often lights are discarded because the battery life because too short versus lights are discarded because someone wanted a newer/smaller/brighter light.
- opencl 7y agoI just don't get why replaceable standard-sized lithium ion batteries have pretty much completely failed to take off other than those 18650 flashlights and vape pens. The proprietary replaceable batteries are an improvement over non-replaceable but in anything other than cameras the replacements seem to get discontinued by the manufacturer by the time you actually need one.
- fragmede 7y agoE-cigs and Teslas, that is.
- baq 7y agoAren’t Teslas running on 21700?
- reportingsjr 7y agoOnly the Model 3. Model S and X are still using something close to 18650 (although I haven't followed Tesla's batteries for the last 8 to 9 months).
- Scoundreller 7y agoI’m building a solution: integrated bike lights on my bike (various strips, etc.), with a 3S 18650 battery holder that’s supposed to let me run nearly unlimited amperage (but with protection). I’ll probably just recharge over USB, but I could swap the cells if on a longer trip. The plan might include a motorcycle horn. It will be nice to have hard-mounted lights and 1 central battery that I can stow-and-go at any time, rather the attaching and detaching everything to avoid theft.
- fengb 7y agoLi-ion cells provides 3.6V, which makes them incompatible with traditional alkaline or NiMH. I don't think we've invented a standard for Li-ion batteries yet.
- zokier 7y ago
- justsomedood 7y agoMy bike lights are very bright, so I get maybe 10 hours out of them from the AA one i had before it broke. We have a lot of Eneloop batteries so it was great to be able to just swap out the power without waiting for a recharge. My current light is also lithium and gets about 10 hours because of the brightness level, but it's a little smaller. I do miss being able to find ones that use replaceable batteries, though.
- opencl 7y agoIt's still super easy to find bike lights that use replaceable 18650 cells.
- Scoundreller 7y agoThe giant blinding headlight ones that are great for off-roading at night, yes. But most other use cases, no.
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoIf you get a $3 18650 flashlight off ebay with the single XM-L led, they're fairly low brightness (I'd guess 250 lumen) and can be mounted as a bike headlight with a $2 adapter.
- askvictor 7y agoHow are they using their bike lights and head lamps? Wall clocks, sure, use a constant draw. Bike lights and head lamps use a decent amount of power only when you have them switched on, which is intermittent.