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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

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Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#81

Post by vzaliva »

dragontamer wrote: post #9

I think the main issue with AA Alkaline is the proliferation of cheap low-self-discharge NiMH cells (aka: Eneloop, but also Energizer and other brands have good LSD NiMH available). A huge number of appliances seem to be designed for the 1.35V NiMH chemistry now. Perhaps a random TV-remote still prefers Alkaline but most seem to work fine with NiMH. ----- Buying a pack of 20 NiMH cells and rotating your collection be…

I've switched to rechargables for home electronics years ago. It makes me feel better doing my share of lessening environment impact caused by disposable cells.

One notable exception for which I am still buying alkaine batteries is the August Smart Lock. When using NiMH batteries it starts complaining about depleted battery in a week, while it still Ok and works for much longer. It was reported to them and they advised to us alkaine. This is very annoying because all they need to do is to fix the software which does the voltage check and generates annoying notifications to the users. Just a few lines of code (or maybe single constant) could have an immence environment impact.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#82

Post by bluGill »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #10
zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

Anecdata, I recently had to replace batteries in several smoke alarms. 3 were Duracells and 2 were Rayovacs. All Duracells were from 2016/2017, i.e. assuming they were installed right away they lasted around 5 years. Rayovacs were from 2010 and 2011, despite both brands being rated for 5 years. It is possible that old Rayovacs were installed around same time as new Duracells and both lasted around same time, still ma…

Rayovac was bought out by Energizer not too long ago. They used to have a 10 year no leak guarantee, now they leak in a few months as I've learned the hard way.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#83

Post by wlesieutre »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #65
zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

More anecdata - I don't have anything to add regarding Duracell, but I've experienced the same thing you describe with Energizer. Recently I've leaned toward ACDelco batteries, which aren't on the test list.

I had no idea ACDelco made anything other than car parts, huh.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#84

Post by grumbel »

tzs wrote: post #46
wmorein wrote: post #6

Apologies for the slightly off topic question but can anyone point me to the best test/comparison of Alkaline batteries vs. the new Lithium rechargeable ones? Older rechargeable AA and AAA batteries were terribly short lived and so mostly useless but I assume Lithium ones are much better?

I've been a bit puzzled by the 1.5 V lithium AA batteries I see on Amazon. They say they are a constant 1.5 V all the way from 100% charged to 0% charged. With the battery presenting a constant voltage, wouldn't that make battery level displays useless? They rely on the voltage declining as the battery discharges. With a constant 1.5 V battery your device is going to say the battery is full right up until it suddenly…

The AA lithium-ion rechargeable are internally 3.7V, just like any other lithium-ion battery. They have a buck converter build-in that regulates that down to a constant 1.5V. Which can be handy in the handful of applications that don't deal with the 1.2V that NiMH provide. This does in turn make battery indicators indeed completely useless for many of them, as there is no detectable drop in voltage from the outside of the battery.

However, there are newer ones take care of that and regulate the voltage down to 1.1V or so shortly before they run completely out of juice, so that the battery indicator can give a warning. Don't know how widespread that feature is yet, but it exists.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#85

Post by PragmaticPulp »

zwieback wrote: post #72
dragontamer wrote: post #9

I think the main issue with AA Alkaline is the proliferation of cheap low-self-discharge NiMH cells (aka: Eneloop, but also Energizer and other brands have good LSD NiMH available). A huge number of appliances seem to be designed for the 1.35V NiMH chemistry now. Perhaps a random TV-remote still prefers Alkaline but most seem to work fine with NiMH. ----- Buying a pack of 20 NiMH cells and rotating your collection be…

I agree, rotating collection of charged cells is the way to go but: - need to establish a system of keeping track what's charged - train family to participate - train family to stop buying alkaline (mainly because in the alkaline recycling process you'll lose a lot of your eneloops) - grow immunity against complaints from family

> - need to establish a system of keeping track what's charged

This seems to be the root of all of your problems.

Just charge all of the cells that aren’t in use.

When you take drained cells out of something, they go in the charger.

Charger is always plugged in and right next to where you store the cells.

If there’s ever any question, just stick the cells in the charger. Don’t bother playing all of the games to avoid “memory effect”. It’s much better with modern cells and not worth the hassle to try to work around.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#86

Post by mikepurvis »

dragontamer wrote: post #73
mikepurvis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick googling reveals nothing, but I wonder if a simple hardware mod could address this— basically, identify the voltage divider that's doing the measurement across the battery and change out one of the resistors so that it "sees" 1.35V as 1.5V. Most GBA battery mod posts are about people upgrading units to have built-in lithium packs, USB-C charge ports, etc etc.

Nope. Alkaline at 100% charge is 1.5V, at 50% charge it's 1.2V, at 0% charge it's .9V. NiMH at 100% charge is 1.35V, at 50% charge it's 1.35V, at 0% charge it's like 1.2V Totally different discharge curves. There's no simple circuit to convert between the two. ----- EDIT: For hard data, see: Energizer NiMH : https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/nh15-2300gl1220.pdf Energizer Alkaline: https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/e91gl0…

Oh yeah, I'm aware that for any other chemistry you need an actual coulomb-counter to get a proper gas gauge. My suggestion was more about the specific matter of suppressing an unwanted and inaccurate low battery light.

Though maybe instead of trying to mod the circuit board, it would be easier to just disconnect the LED itself.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#87

Post by zackees »

Moru wrote: post #78
bwbmr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, lots of leaks-- some family even has had a drawer full of unexpired Duracells leak. Myself, I've switched over completely to NiMh except when unsupported by the device to remove the change of leaks (Nest x Yale door lock in particular, which detected NiMh as low battery even when 90% of the cell capacity is remaining). AmazonBasics has been bad with leaks too. Edit: I have a Powerex MH-C980 and that has si…

Just to clarify your point there: Charging batteries as pairs is what kills the rechargeable batteries. There is no way for the charger to keep track of both batteries at the same time so it just charges until both should be done. If one of them is bad, the charger will kill the other one too. If they are differently charged, it will kill one of the batteries and next time it will kill the other battery. (Kill as in…

Also, NiMH batteries can reverse charge and ruin themselves. This happens a lot when batteries are in series and the load will continue to run the batteries until 0 voltage. The weakest battery will deplete first but then the other batteries will continue to pump current through until that weak battery reverses polarity and wrecks itself.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#88

Post by sbierwagen »

bentcorner wrote: post #79

> This can be implemented basically with a fixed value of resistance, but because of the way resistance interacts with voltage, it’s actually very gentle on the battery. As the battery voltage falls, the current falls accordingly, so the delivered power falls even further. For modern appliances, this type of loading is not common. Dumb question - is it at all possible to design a modern device which operates this way…

Some LED flashlights with multiple brightness modes will drop to low brightness mode when cell voltage falls below a certain point.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#89

Post by justjash »

zh3 wrote: post #2

Let me leap in here to ding Duracell. They used to be my goto battery, but over the past few years (there was a hedge fund takeover, which IME rarely results in improvements to long-standing quality products) they've turned into liabilities - specifically, they are extremely prone to leaking once even a little bit discharged. To this day I open old kit and there can be duracells in there with "use by 2010" or even ea…

Same. I pulled down my dad's old camera from the closet a few years ago and it probably hadn't been used since the 90s so the batteries were dead. Threw in some new Duracell batteries and played with it a bit before putting it away. Opened it a year or two later and the batteries had swelled and leaked everywhere. Had to use a pair of pliers to extract the swollen batteries from the battery compartment. Such a huge pain.

Re: Great AA Alkaline Battery Test (2016)

#90

Post by MaKey »

Moru wrote: post #78
bwbmr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, lots of leaks-- some family even has had a drawer full of unexpired Duracells leak. Myself, I've switched over completely to NiMh except when unsupported by the device to remove the change of leaks (Nest x Yale door lock in particular, which detected NiMh as low battery even when 90% of the cell capacity is remaining). AmazonBasics has been bad with leaks too. Edit: I have a Powerex MH-C980 and that has si…

Just to clarify your point there: Charging batteries as pairs is what kills the rechargeable batteries. There is no way for the charger to keep track of both batteries at the same time so it just charges until both should be done. If one of them is bad, the charger will kill the other one too. If they are differently charged, it will kill one of the batteries and next time it will kill the other battery. (Kill as in…

Modern chargers are microprocessor controlled and are able to keep track of each battery individually.
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