NiCad Battery Question

Hi Lou...

Go ahead and use the larger capacity; it will make virtually no difference, but if dollars mean much to you...

Last summer in our Walmart (Winnipeg, Canada) they had the smaller capacity nicd's at a price that was almost a give-a-way. (pkg of 4 for only two or three dollars). The trick was that they weren't in the places that you'd normally expect to find batteries, but were rather hanging on the wall in the garden supplies department

Take care.

Ken

Agreed. It certainly won't harm anything.

It's really difficult to find those low capacity batteries any more.

NiMH AAs are up to 2700-2800 mAh now if you go for the latest hi-spec ones.

Graham

Simply charge it first in an external charger. Problem solved.

Some of my cheapo garden lights batteries failed, and as an experiment I just popped in normal AA duracells. That was last summer and they are still working fine. And yes, before you flame me (groan)they are in a place where an explosion of fire wouldn`t be a problem. They stay lit all night on an afternoons sunlight charge.

Ron(UK)

You can actually get 'rechargable alkaline' types I believe but I expect the wide availability of cheap Nicad and NiMH means they never took off.

Graham

According to Which? tests they performed badly especially if heavily discharged. Only possible benefit I could see was the nominal 1.5 volts per cell.

ignore it, just put it out and it'll run fine. There is some bizarre advice about in instruction leaflets on this for some reason. Maybe an exercise in reducing successful guarantee claims.

NT

I've never understood this long charge with new batteries. Ages ago I bought a PPPro cordless drill with a crude fast charger (4 hours) which reckoned you doubled that for the first one before using. Which I'd say would fry them, as they arrived with near a full charge anyway by the lights on the side of the battery.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk:

Some batteries are not shipped formed (charged). The solar lights are NOT fast chargers...

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It's an old scheme to attempt some form of SOC equalisation in series strings. Fine for C/10 but a bit extreme for fast chargers.

Also dont you think double charge time a bit excessive for this though?

Also I'd think in this app it would be more important that the cells run flat at the same time than that they hold the maximum battery capacity.

And of course equalising is more relevant to used batteries rather than new.

NT

I've yet to come across a power tool recently supplied with totally uncharged batteries. It may have been the case once.

Didn't say they were. Just expanding a point which was brought up.

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

As already suggested, do the initial charge with your normal NiCd/NiMH charger. For several days, the solar lights will probably still be lit at dawn the next morning! Also, once in a while, it won't do any harm to repeat this exercise, and especially if you 'lay them up' for the winter. Ian.

Yes. But having said that, we are talking consumer electronics, and the uncontrolled variable is the consumer.

Yes.

Not necessarily so. AFAIR no-one ever claimed that all cells in a pack started life in the pack at exactly the same SOC.

Certainly SOC variation is a result of cell use in the real world.