Energizer Hi-Energy Lithium Batteries

Nearly.

(compared to AA size alkalines) By looking at the specs, under "normal" conditions, you're looking at an about 50% increase in capacity, for about a 300% increase in price.

In practice, you're likely to see much the same.

Where they come into their own, is abnormally low temperatures (near freezing in the snow for instance), where their life is about 10x alkalines.

Another area they may be better in is shelf life. You can expect about 10+ years for lithiums, and about 5-7 for alkalines.

Another perhaps fringe improvement is mass. They are generally lighter than alkalines.

So if you're only ever in relatively warm climates, chew your batteries in less than a few years, and don't care your saving a few snots worth of mass, then they're largely pointless. Otherwise in the above mentioned conditions, they can present a useful life time increase, (albeit at some cost).

One point to be careful of, we have the e(squared) (e2) titanium batteries here in australia. I'm guessing they're all over the world too. I've never tried them, but going on the specs, they offer zero improvement over the more "standard" alkaline batteries. At a premium of at least 150% cost of the same-branded alkaline batteries. There are minor differences of course, but nothing that you're going to notice under use. Their selling point is "improved" performance on high-current devices. True to their word, they aren't lying (technically). However, you'd better get your stop-watch and calculator out if you're going to note any differences...

It's a PRIMARY battery technology. They were never designed to be recharged. Same with alkalines. They were NEVER designed to be recharged. The fact they ARE recharged is that someone (many years ago) found a charge technique that doesn't fry the battery while still injecting some useful energy back into it (albeit with some conditions attached). Rechargeable alkalines have modified chemistry that tries to improve the recharge life (which was less than a dozen times) at the cost of other performance points. (along with a corresponding increase in price which makes standard secondary rechargeable technologies look attractive).

IMO, get over it. If you want a rechargeable, buy a rechargeable (NiCAD/NiMH).

The only place I have seen them here was a fan forced gas mask which was part of an emergency kit given out to civilians in case of a CBW attack. There it makes sense as the kit was to remain sealed until needed.

Once used, the batteries where the least of your problems.

I would probably put them in my emergency radios, some of which have been the victims of battery leakage, but it's cheaper and easier to rotate the batteries or keep them in a plastic bag outside the radio.

That pretty much fits me. If it freezes at all, it's never for more than a day at a time. In the summer it goes up to 100F for a handfull of days. Abnormally hot is 90F.

Whatever happend to the recharagebale alkalines that Ray-O-Vac came out with in the U.S. in the mid 1990's? I bought a bunch of them to use in handheld radios but found that they never performed as well when recharged as the first time around and eventually gave up.

I did speak to an engineer at the company and at the time they had no reliable way of recharging a battery pack. The charger would only work on single cells, so you had to use AA battery packs and disaassemble them for each charge.

By 1996 when I moved here, I had pretty much stopped using them and since the chargers were never available in 230 volts, left them.

Geoff.

I tried a set once - they "seemed" to do a "tad" better than alkalines - but not enough for the price.

Ahem. I guess so. :-)

They're used that way for emergency EPIRBs. Not Energizer AA sizes of course, but specially made primary lithium based technology cells.

I've had use for them. During our last snow trip, I packed with a few sets of AA lithiums, and used my GPS while sinking knee-deep in soft snow during a hike.

Incidentally, NiCDs or NiMHs are all but completely useless in these environments. I wasn't entirely sure how much worse plain alkalines were going to be, but I didn't take any chances anyway.

Like I said in my last message, there are "conditions" attached to their use. Alkaline chemistry is such that if you flatten it, you will NEVER get a charge back into it. (Yes, I hear the howls of objections, but you're all quite free to piss your money into whatever you think works).

You will get best use if you use a bit, charge a bit, use a bit, charge a bit. They'll last the longest, and is the cheapest technique if you do it that way.

If you treat them like NiCD/NiMHs you may as well send your money to me, at least I'll get some good use out of it rather than keep floating a technology that was never designed to be recharged alive.

That's right. I'm biased, and perhaps a charge perfectionist, but you really do need full and absolute control over an individual cell to charge it correctly. I'd go so far to say that applies for ANY cell type (even though NiCD/NiMHs are somewhat lenient in this respect).

Way back when I first heard about it (about a decade after it was incepted) chargers of this type did not exist commercially. All the battery labels went out of their way to say NOT to recharge them as well. I also knew that carbon battery technologies were not particularly receptive to this type of charge. (didn't stop me trying though)

I had built my own. I had played with it for a while, but it never got past the "play" stage. And this was around the era of NiCDs being outrageously expensive and hard to get. That's how impressed I was. Not.

Good Lord !

What kind of paranoia lead to the that idea ?

Graham

The Scud missles falling during the first Gulf war and the beginnig of the second. The daily rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon which continue to this day.

While none of the missles fired on us during the first gulf war had anything but regular bombs in them, U.S. troops found unused ones in Iraq with traces of both biolgical and chemical weapons dumped in the river. There were also tons of radioactive material that "went missing".

The Iraquis used chemical and bilogical weapons on their own people in the 1980's so it was a good bet.

Since Saddam used the enemy of my enemy is my friend principle, it is very likely that any CBW or unfinished nuclear weapons that were in his country before the second gulf war, ended up in Syria and Iran.

Geoff.

In one of my digirtal cameras, Energizer lithium AA last 8 to 10 times longer than alkaline AAs. Some alkaline brands won't even power up this camera. Chuck