What Should You Notice Before Buying Rechargeable Battery
How many batteries do you have at your home? How it costs you in a year? Isn’t it annoying to buy new sets of batteries every week? Well, in my case I forget almost every time to buy new battery cells and later curse my memory with powered off radio (which is no use without battery). So, I think it is lot better to cope with rechargeable batteries.
Before buying a rechargeable battery you must have to understand why and where you should use it against regular alkaline batteries. Then you will understand which rechargeable battery will suit you most.
Rechargeable batteries are meant to save your money and environment; and off course you don’t have to buy batteries every week. But, don’t use this against low-drain equipments (like remote control, flash light, smoke detector etc), where you don’t have to change batteries now and then. High drain equipments (like CD player, Radio, and Gaming Console etc) where regular alkaline battery discharges often; rechargeable ones are meant to be used against them. You will save a lot of money.
Before buying you have to keep in mind two major things, 1) Performance records and 2) Energy capacity. And it is better to avoid toxic contained batteries. Usually general purpose batteries are for household applications and heavy duty batteries are for industrial use.
Performance records
Rechargeable Alkaline Batteries: Don’t confuse them with regular alkaline batteries. They are different. They are cheap, it’s their only advantage. But they require a special charger, that doesn’t come in free. Long term performance record makes it a poor choice. However, they don’t need any special process to recycle.
Ni-Cad batteries: It was most popular and one of the first Bigfoot in modern era of rechargeable batteries. Nickel Cadmium battery will serve you for almost 800 times of lifetime of regular alkaline batteries. But, as time passes it lost the performance war against others. They lose reliability on the end of their life. They also contains a problem named “memory effect”. That means battery is only charged on its last partial chargeable segment. That means, sometime you charge the battery overnight and then you will only be able to use it for half an hour in morning; horrible problem. It also contains heavy metal that is toxic for environment and need special disposal. Another drawback of them is they can’t hold their power for long time.
NiMH Batteries: It is another counter part of Nickel but free of toxic metals. It serves fantastic and has better performance record. Nickel Metal Hydride will serve you for almost 400 times of lifetime of regular alkaline batteries. They have quick recovery rate and free of “memory effect” disaster. It is a wonderful choice. NiMH battery chargers can also charge NiCad batteries too, while the opposite is not quite true all time.
Lithium ion Batteries: It has superb performance record ever, can hold its power for long by loosing almost nothing. It has quick recovery rate. You can use a good lithium battery for 10 years. The only drawback of these batteries is their price rate. They are very expensive and also requires special charger. Use them on camera, laptop, cell phones etc high drain rarely used equipments. They show almost same performance in very cold weather too.
Energy Capacity
Energy capacity of a battery is symbolized by mAH (mill ampere Hour). Higher mAh means this battery can contain higher energy for longer time. If you use rechargeable batteries for general purpose it’s ok, but when you are using it on industrial purpose or sophisticated equipments (like laptop, cell phones, etc)check and double check if any fixed rate of mAH it requires.
Don’t forget to buy good chargers and when you are charging more than one batteries; always charge which have same discharge level. Wish all best of luck on this phenomenon.
Tuhin Hasan is a successful Internet Business expert. To know real information about rechargeable battery, visit his site: www.aa-rechargeable.com