My digital cameras are powered by lithium ion batteries. I have several spares that I take with me on my annual vacation. According to the manual, the batteries should be stored “empty” if they won’t be used for six months or more. Is this really the correct way to store unused lithium ion batteries?
If so, how should I discharge them? I keep recharging them during my trip so even at the end of the trip I usually have several that still have a charge.
Most Lith batteries require a small charge to be kept in them NOT empty. They usually have a minimum voltage (baseline) which they should be kept at when stored.
Viz some 12v Liths have a min voltage of around 10v…any lower and the battery could be damaged.
Surprisingly, these batteries last a longtime stored with min voltage. I forgot one for 18 months, checked it…it was ok, but I charged it up anyway.
As regards discharging them…I would not bother.
I agree with Ross; I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If you had a smart charger capable of discharging and charging to storage specs you might get a few more cycles out of the packs, but camera chargers are pretty dumb.
I’ve had my camera and 3 LiIon packs for over 5 years now. Recently I haven’t been using it enough to cycle through 3 packs and occasionally I’ll find one that has lost its charge in storage, but they all charge up and seem to have the same capacity they always did.
I store them fully charged.
Great, thanks!
The manual I have accompanying my lithium batteries says they ought to be discharged to about 50% if they are not going to be used for some time.
Art - That’s an accurate statement, but how can you really do that without a charger that supports discharge and storage charge? I can do that with my trains using a smart charger, but now way to guess 50% discharge on a camera battery.
Jon, At present, I just don’t recharge the battery after a run until the evening before I intend to run again. That could be weeks or even months since the last run. But yeah, I don’t know how to guess 50% on a lithium battery mounted inside a loco.
The “manual” I mentioned goes with my Phantom 2V quadcopter that provides output information to my smart phone - I get a direct readout of the remaining battery life. In fact, the smart phone alarm squeals when I get down to 30% during flight, and the quadcopter will land itself when the battery gets down to 15%. I can discharge the battery from a full charge by flying for a while until my smart phone tells me I’ve reached 50%.
Seems to me some electronic techie could design a similar way for a smart phone to read out the status of a large scale loco battery.
Plenty of LiPo battery testers on EBay. Dirt cheap as well.
I should have guessed that EPO testers exist, Ross, but my problem is that my lithium battery is buried deep inside my USAT loco and requires removal of 14 screws to get to it. I cannot imagine how I would get a tester to the battery. Ideas?
charging jack?
Is that possible? Is there a battery tester that would merely plug into the charging jack and not have to be plugged onto each of the electrodes? I don’t see one on E-Bay.