5 ms·

we have dozens and dozens of AA batteries here, like everyone else. and your suggestion "why aren't you using rechargables" is compelling, buying a ton of the

by zzzeek 3y ago

we have dozens and dozens of AA batteries here, like everyone else. and your suggestion "why aren't you using rechargables" is compelling, buying a ton of these and just having them in a charger seems like a good idea. So what are the little things in my mind making me hesitate? 1. how long they will continue to remain rechargable; and if they begin to hold less and less of a charge. if they are still recharging fine for you after 8 years, that seems pretty good. 2. what happens if the rechargable battery is left inside a forgotten toy or device for 7 years? if I find it 7 years later, is it a leaky mess or still viable? this is a big reason "AA's are disposable anyway, who cares" is appealing - we have forgotten batteries all the time. if we forget about a toy and our $3.50/each batteries are ruined we could be buying a lot of these pricey batteries 3. how long do they last on a full charge? if use them for camp lights are we going to run out of light after a day ?

frabert 3y ago
For point 2, NiMH cells are _way_ less prone to leakage than alkalines. In fact, I've never seen a leaky NiMH cell (that hadn't completely vented due to severe overcharge, anyway)
- zzzeek 3y ago
  good to know thanks! im going to try these out
- milesvp 3y ago
  Yeah, at one point big clive mentioned this about NiMH, and that they have really good slow discharge variants now. I now make sure that any of my expensive gear has NiMH so that I don’t have to worry about battery acid.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
> 1. how long they will continue to remain rechargable; and if they begin to hold less and less of a charge. if they are still recharging fine for you after 8 years, that seems pretty good. > 3. how long do they last on a full charge? if use them for camp lights are we going to run out of light after a day ? The batteries last long enough that I can't answer these questions. I will say I don't own any devices like camp lights where battery life is a significant problem. The batteries in e.g. my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard last for months. One thing to be aware of is that the voltage curve is different than for alkaline batteries†, so devices like my keyboard will start giving low-battery warnings when they are still mostly charged. This is legitimately annoying on e.g. macOS where you can't disable the warning. Why I would ever want to replace the batteries before they're actually dead is beyond me. † I don't really know what I'm talking about, this is the explanation I found when I looked up the problem online years ago. > 2. what happens if the rechargable battery is left inside a forgotten toy or device for 7 years? if I find it 7 years later, is it a leaky mess or still viable? this is a big reason "AA's are disposable anyway, who cares" is appealing - we have forgotten batteries all the time. if we forget about a toy and our $3.50/each batteries are ruined we could be buying a lot of these pricey batteries I've been using the batteries continuously for that long and they haven't leaked. I'm not even sure these types of batteries can leak? I'd love for someone who knows more about battery chemistry to chime in here.
- onewheeltom 3y ago
  In my experience, I notice the most leaking problems with devices that constantly draw power, even when off. The battery becomes totally drained then starts to leak.
memco 3y ago
> 3. how long do they last on a full charge? if use them for camp lights are we going to run out of light after a day I had some eneloops in flashlights when we lost power for several hours—almost all the batteries died within an hour of use. I will use non-rechargeable batteries for those from now on unless the higher capacity rechargeable ones won’t drain so fast. My kitchen scale, remotes and mice have all been fine (often needing to be recharged only once every year or two) but some uses don’t seem suited to rechargeables.
Espressosaurus 3y ago
1. I've had batteries for 10 years before the charge was small enough I started noticing and began replacing them 2. I've had the odd leak from an unused rechargeable, but we're talking one out of 16 batteries. I've had more leaks with the unused alkaline batteries in the same long-ignored dish. 3. They last as long as their mAh rating. They're fine.
tzs 3y ago
> 1. how long they will continue to remain rechargable; and if they begin to hold less and less of a charge. if they are still recharging fine for you after 8 years, that seems pretty good. My first generation AA Eneloops, which I bought sometime in 2008 or earlier (I know this because I bought them at Circuit City which closed in March 2009 and I bought them at least several months before then), are still working fine. Their specs say minimum 1900 mAh capacity, typical 2000 mAh. Most of them have fallen to slightly below that, in the 1850-1900 mAh range. My first generation AAA Eneloops, purchased at the same time, are all in the 790-840 mAh range. Spec is min 750 typical 800. My 4th generation AA Eneloops, bought almost 9 years ago (their 9th anniversary is in 3 days), which I've used more heavily than the first generation ones because they have a lower self discharge (1st gen is 80% after one year, 4th gen is 90%/80%/70% after 1/3/5 years), are mostly still in the 1900-2000 range, with one at 1880 and one at 2055. I've had 2 (out of 21) first gen AAs and 4 (out of 16) first gen AAAs die. None of my 4th gen AAs have died. By "die" I mean my PowerEx MH-C9000 charger says they fail an impedence check that it does before charging and refused to charge them, and no attempts to revive them worked. > 2. what happens if the rechargable battery is left inside a forgotten toy or device for 7 years? I don't know but someday I'll maybe find out, because I have 3 first gen AAs that I've lost track of. They are probably in something in my junk pile, like a remote for a VCR.
- copperx 3y ago
  It's unnerving to see someone keeping highly accurate records of mundane things such as battery purchase dates, nominal capacities, and charger model numbers. I need to ask, do you work with these things daily, or do you just have an exceptional memory?
  - tzs 3y ago
    I got the charger number by glancing at the manual, which I have as a PDF in my "manuals" folder. For the purchase dates for the 1st generation batteries I simply remembered that I bought them at Circuit City and that it was at least a few months before Circuit City went out of business, so a quick Googling gavee me that it was in 2008 or earlier. For the 4th generation batteries I bought them at Amazon so simply have to type "eneloop" in the purchase history search and it shows me. The charger includes a "Refresh & Analyze Mode" that rechargers the battery, rests for one hour, discharges the battery (and notes the capacity), rests for one hour, and the recharges the battery. They recommend doing this every 10 cycles. I don't strictly follow that schedule, but I do occasionally do a refresh/analyze to see if a battery has degraded and needs to be retired. And so I have a spreadsheet to record the last refresh/analyze and the result. Here's what columns are in that spreadsheet: Number: I've written a number on each battery with a Sharpie so I can tell them apart. Bin: when a battery is not in use or in the charger, it is in a small numbered storage bin. This is the number of that bin. R/A: the date of the last refresh/analyze. Years ago: a computed column that is simply the difference between now and the R/A date, in years Capacity: the capacity found during the last R/A. Prior Capacity: the capacity found during the previous R/A, so I can see if it has gone down much. Total cycles: how many times I've charged the battery. Cycles before last R/A: how many times the batter was charged before the most recent R/A. Location: what the battery is in, if it is not in the charger or its assigned bin. Example values are "bathroom scale" and "TV remote". Date deployed: if the battery is in a device this is the date it went in. Blank if it is not in use. Days in use: the difference between the current date and the date deployed column, in days. Charged: for batteries in their bins this is the date they were last charge. Ago: Difference in days between now and the date in the "Charged" column. That sounds like it might take a lot of work, but it doesn't. Let's say the batteries are getting weak in the TV remote, which uses two AA batteries. I take a quick look at the spreadsheet, looking at the "Charged", "Ago", and "Capacity" columns to pick a couple of batteries that aren't too far apart in capacity, and were last charged not too far apart. I enter "TV remote" and today's date in their "Location" and "Date deployed" columns, and clear their "Charged" columns, and go put them in the remote. (If the remote's batteries are still good enough that I don't actually need to change them immediately I might first put the replacements in the charger to top them up). For the batteries that come out of the remote I clear their "Location" and "Date deployed" columns, add one to the "Total cycles" column, and stick them in the charger. When I noticed they are fully charged, I put the date in the "Charged" column, and put them in their bins. I've got some other things on the battery spreadsheet not directly concerning rechargeable batteries. For some devices I track battery life. That too is pretty simple. Each such device has a table that consists of two columns: Date: the date of a battery change "Used For" or "Years Used": how long those batteries lasted. For the last row in the table, that is how long the batteries have been in use so far. For any prior rows it is how long it was until the next battery change. "Used For" if in days, "Years Used" if in years. For these tables they have a label above with the name of the device, and a subheader saying what kind of battery they take. For example here is the table for my car: 2006 Honda CR-V group size 51R --------------- Date 2013-12-08 4.0 2017-12-23 5.6 There are also tables for my iPhone and iPad where I record battery life/health information as reported by CoconutBattery. Every few months I'll plug those into my Mac and check them. For example I can see from the iPhone X's table that it had 100% capacity when I bought it on 2018-07-03. By 2021-04-30 it was down to 96.3% and had 189 cycles. By 2022-12-19 it was down to 92.2% and had 299 cycles. I then had the battery replaced, and after that on 2022-12-21 it was at 102.0% (!) and 0 cycles. Finally, for things that use batteries that are not AA or AAA or car batteries or UPS batteries I have a section that simply lists which device uses which battery type. For example I can see from this that I have these things that use CR2032: HP-15C Limited Edition, Casio FX-702P, guitar case humidity meter, an old tuner that I don't use anymore, and the remotes for my garage door openers. This comes in handy when buying new things. Suppose I'm deciding between two things and see that one uses a CR2032 and one uses a CR2020. A glance at my spreadsheet tells me that the only thing I currently have that takes CR2020 is an old Casio watch. Since I haven't used that watch in decades, but do have things I currently use that use CR2032 (humidity meter, garage door openers, and occasionally the HP-15C) that will be a point in favor of getting the device that uses the CR2032.

by zzzeek 3y ago

frabert 3y ago

For point 2, NiMH cells are _way_ less prone to leakage than alkalines. In fact, I've never seen a leaky NiMH cell (that hadn't completely vented due to severe overcharge, anyway)

zzzeek 3y ago
good to know thanks! im going to try these out
milesvp 3y ago
Yeah, at one point big clive mentioned this about NiMH, and that they have really good slow discharge variants now. I now make sure that any of my expensive gear has NiMH so that I don’t have to worry about battery acid.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

> 1. how long they will continue to remain rechargable; and if they begin to hold less and less of a charge. if they are still recharging fine for you after 8 years, that seems pretty good. > 3. how long do they last on a full charge? if use them for camp lights are we going to run out of light after a day ? The batteries last long enough that I can't answer these questions. I will say I don't own any devices like camp lights where battery life is a significant problem. The batteries in e.g. my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard last for months. One thing to be aware of is that the voltage curve is different than for alkaline batteries†, so devices like my keyboard will start giving low-battery warnings when they are still mostly charged. This is legitimately annoying on e.g. macOS where you can't disable the warning. Why I would ever want to replace the batteries before they're actually dead is beyond me. † I don't really know what I'm talking about, this is the explanation I found when I looked up the problem online years ago. > 2. what happens if the rechargable battery is left inside a forgotten toy or device for 7 years? if I find it 7 years later, is it a leaky mess or still viable? this is a big reason "AA's are disposable anyway, who cares" is appealing - we have forgotten batteries all the time. if we forget about a toy and our $3.50/each batteries are ruined we could be buying a lot of these pricey batteries I've been using the batteries continuously for that long and they haven't leaked. I'm not even sure these types of batteries can leak? I'd love for someone who knows more about battery chemistry to chime in here.

onewheeltom 3y ago
In my experience, I notice the most leaking problems with devices that constantly draw power, even when off. The battery becomes totally drained then starts to leak.

memco 3y ago

> 3. how long do they last on a full charge? if use them for camp lights are we going to run out of light after a day I had some eneloops in flashlights when we lost power for several hours—almost all the batteries died within an hour of use. I will use non-rechargeable batteries for those from now on unless the higher capacity rechargeable ones won’t drain so fast. My kitchen scale, remotes and mice have all been fine (often needing to be recharged only once every year or two) but some uses don’t seem suited to rechargeables.

Espressosaurus 3y ago

1. I've had batteries for 10 years before the charge was small enough I started noticing and began replacing them 2. I've had the odd leak from an unused rechargeable, but we're talking one out of 16 batteries. I've had more leaks with the unused alkaline batteries in the same long-ignored dish. 3. They last as long as their mAh rating. They're fine.

tzs 3y ago

> 1. how long they will continue to remain rechargable; and if they begin to hold less and less of a charge. if they are still recharging fine for you after 8 years, that seems pretty good. My first generation AA Eneloops, which I bought sometime in 2008 or earlier (I know this because I bought them at Circuit City which closed in March 2009 and I bought them at least several months before then), are still working fine. Their specs say minimum 1900 mAh capacity, typical 2000 mAh. Most of them have fallen to slightly below that, in the 1850-1900 mAh range. My first generation AAA Eneloops, purchased at the same time, are all in the 790-840 mAh range. Spec is min 750 typical 800. My 4th generation AA Eneloops, bought almost 9 years ago (their 9th anniversary is in 3 days), which I've used more heavily than the first generation ones because they have a lower self discharge (1st gen is 80% after one year, 4th gen is 90%/80%/70% after 1/3/5 years), are mostly still in the 1900-2000 range, with one at 1880 and one at 2055. I've had 2 (out of 21) first gen AAs and 4 (out of 16) first gen AAAs die. None of my 4th gen AAs have died. By "die" I mean my PowerEx MH-C9000 charger says they fail an impedence check that it does before charging and refused to charge them, and no attempts to revive them worked. > 2. what happens if the rechargable battery is left inside a forgotten toy or device for 7 years? I don't know but someday I'll maybe find out, because I have 3 first gen AAs that I've lost track of. They are probably in something in my junk pile, like a remote for a VCR.

copperx 3y ago
It's unnerving to see someone keeping highly accurate records of mundane things such as battery purchase dates, nominal capacities, and charger model numbers. I need to ask, do you work with these things daily, or do you just have an exceptional memory?
- tzs 3y ago
  I got the charger number by glancing at the manual, which I have as a PDF in my "manuals" folder. For the purchase dates for the 1st generation batteries I simply remembered that I bought them at Circuit City and that it was at least a few months before Circuit City went out of business, so a quick Googling gavee me that it was in 2008 or earlier. For the 4th generation batteries I bought them at Amazon so simply have to type "eneloop" in the purchase history search and it shows me. The charger includes a "Refresh & Analyze Mode" that rechargers the battery, rests for one hour, discharges the battery (and notes the capacity), rests for one hour, and the recharges the battery. They recommend doing this every 10 cycles. I don't strictly follow that schedule, but I do occasionally do a refresh/analyze to see if a battery has degraded and needs to be retired. And so I have a spreadsheet to record the last refresh/analyze and the result. Here's what columns are in that spreadsheet: Number: I've written a number on each battery with a Sharpie so I can tell them apart. Bin: when a battery is not in use or in the charger, it is in a small numbered storage bin. This is the number of that bin. R/A: the date of the last refresh/analyze. Years ago: a computed column that is simply the difference between now and the R/A date, in years Capacity: the capacity found during the last R/A. Prior Capacity: the capacity found during the previous R/A, so I can see if it has gone down much. Total cycles: how many times I've charged the battery. Cycles before last R/A: how many times the batter was charged before the most recent R/A. Location: what the battery is in, if it is not in the charger or its assigned bin. Example values are "bathroom scale" and "TV remote". Date deployed: if the battery is in a device this is the date it went in. Blank if it is not in use. Days in use: the difference between the current date and the date deployed column, in days. Charged: for batteries in their bins this is the date they were last charge. Ago: Difference in days between now and the date in the "Charged" column. That sounds like it might take a lot of work, but it doesn't. Let's say the batteries are getting weak in the TV remote, which uses two AA batteries. I take a quick look at the spreadsheet, looking at the "Charged", "Ago", and "Capacity" columns to pick a couple of batteries that aren't too far apart in capacity, and were last charged not too far apart. I enter "TV remote" and today's date in their "Location" and "Date deployed" columns, and clear their "Charged" columns, and go put them in the remote. (If the remote's batteries are still good enough that I don't actually need to change them immediately I might first put the replacements in the charger to top them up). For the batteries that come out of the remote I clear their "Location" and "Date deployed" columns, add one to the "Total cycles" column, and stick them in the charger. When I noticed they are fully charged, I put the date in the "Charged" column, and put them in their bins. I've got some other things on the battery spreadsheet not directly concerning rechargeable batteries. For some devices I track battery life. That too is pretty simple. Each such device has a table that consists of two columns: Date: the date of a battery change "Used For" or "Years Used": how long those batteries lasted. For the last row in the table, that is how long the batteries have been in use so far. For any prior rows it is how long it was until the next battery change. "Used For" if in days, "Years Used" if in years. For these tables they have a label above with the name of the device, and a subheader saying what kind of battery they take. For example here is the table for my car: 2006 Honda CR-V group size 51R --------------- Date 2013-12-08 4.0 2017-12-23 5.6 There are also tables for my iPhone and iPad where I record battery life/health information as reported by CoconutBattery. Every few months I'll plug those into my Mac and check them. For example I can see from the iPhone X's table that it had 100% capacity when I bought it on 2018-07-03. By 2021-04-30 it was down to 96.3% and had 189 cycles. By 2022-12-19 it was down to 92.2% and had 299 cycles. I then had the battery replaced, and after that on 2022-12-21 it was at 102.0% (!) and 0 cycles. Finally, for things that use batteries that are not AA or AAA or car batteries or UPS batteries I have a section that simply lists which device uses which battery type. For example I can see from this that I have these things that use CR2032: HP-15C Limited Edition, Casio FX-702P, guitar case humidity meter, an old tuner that I don't use anymore, and the remotes for my garage door openers. This comes in handy when buying new things. Suppose I'm deciding between two things and see that one uses a CR2032 and one uses a CR2020. A glance at my spreadsheet tells me that the only thing I currently have that takes CR2020 is an old Casio watch. Since I haven't used that watch in decades, but do have things I currently use that use CR2032 (humidity meter, garage door openers, and occasionally the HP-15C) that will be a point in favor of getting the device that uses the CR2032.