3 ms·

Yes, indeed. The marketing point appears to be lower self-discharge rate, but that's going to be pretty boring for a home experimenter to measure (like, 10 year

by jrabone 15y ago

Yes, indeed. The marketing point appears to be lower self-discharge rate, but that's going to be pretty boring for a home experimenter to measure (like, 10 year shelf life - what's the shortest meaningful experiment time you can extrapolate from?)

sp332 15y ago
Well if the warranty is only 2 years, I guess they can say it lasts 1000 years. When you complain that it only lasted 3 years, the warranty will already be up :)
- jrabone 15y ago
  Hmm, they are recommended for use in smoke detectors, think they might be slightly more careful about that if there is actually no benefit... Unless the conspiracy theory runs deeper than suspected :-)
rdl 15y ago
Much less than 10 years. Temperature has a major influence on self discharge and useful discharge; the lithium batteries win for this. They also have more energy per cell. Lithium batteries are also lighter, and more shock resistant/leak resistant/durable. I try to use CR123 lithium batteries wherever possible; they're pretty cheap at BatteryStation.
jdietrich 15y ago
Lithium cells really do have a dramatically lower self-discharge rate. The most obvious application is in smoke alarms, where the current drain is usually less than the self-discharge rate of an alkaline PP3 battery. This has major implications for landlords, where a $2 battery might cost $60 to change. Smoke alarms aside, there are few applications where lithium primary cells would make sense for the ordinary consumer.
ghshephard 15y ago
Side Note - the Lower Self-Discharge rate is important for applications in which you are putting the battery out there in Gas/Water meters to run for 20 years. That isn't a shelf life of 20 years, that's actually _working_ for 20 years. Admittedly, most of the time the device it's powering is in a deep hibernation state, and only waking up once a day and doing a (very brief) radio transmission, but the tolerances become very important - particularly if you are deploying several million of these into the field.

by jrabone 15y ago

sp332 15y ago

Well if the warranty is only 2 years, I guess they can say it lasts 1000 years. When you complain that it only lasted 3 years, the warranty will already be up :)

jrabone 15y ago
Hmm, they are recommended for use in smoke detectors, think they might be slightly more careful about that if there is actually no benefit... Unless the conspiracy theory runs deeper than suspected :-)

rdl 15y ago

Much less than 10 years. Temperature has a major influence on self discharge and useful discharge; the lithium batteries win for this. They also have more energy per cell. Lithium batteries are also lighter, and more shock resistant/leak resistant/durable. I try to use CR123 lithium batteries wherever possible; they're pretty cheap at BatteryStation.

jdietrich 15y ago

Lithium cells really do have a dramatically lower self-discharge rate. The most obvious application is in smoke alarms, where the current drain is usually less than the self-discharge rate of an alkaline PP3 battery. This has major implications for landlords, where a $2 battery might cost $60 to change. Smoke alarms aside, there are few applications where lithium primary cells would make sense for the ordinary consumer.

ghshephard 15y ago

Side Note - the Lower Self-Discharge rate is important for applications in which you are putting the battery out there in Gas/Water meters to run for 20 years. That isn't a shelf life of 20 years, that's actually _working_ for 20 years. Admittedly, most of the time the device it's powering is in a deep hibernation state, and only waking up once a day and doing a (very brief) radio transmission, but the tolerances become very important - particularly if you are deploying several million of these into the field.