Battery Storage Question(s)

[oneguy]

Shutting it down for this season. During winter I routinely charge up my tector batteries once a week or so for the 6-7 months until spring.  Question.....is this the right thing to do?  What happens to battery life if I don't keep them charged up?  Also curious if I need to keep the wireless ML phones charged regularly and what happens if I don't...???

Thanks for the input.....

[phrunt]

For storage you shouldn't leave your batteries fully charged as this can shorten their life, around 50% charge is a good storage point.

You should only charge batteries when they need to be charged, as they have charging cycles so no point wasting them by charging unnecessarily.

The more time the battery spends at full capacity the shorter its life will be, but you don't want it to run down to flat either (although these detector batteries have a cut off before that can happen) and in storage the battery will lose about 5% of charge a few days after being charged without even being used and a few % of charge per month by just sitting there so around half way is a reasonable storage capacity.

You'll notice whenever you buy a product with a lithium-ion battery it needs charged before use, but the charge doesn't take as long as a full charge, that's because they are around 40% - 50% charged when you get them, again for the same reasons, who knows how long it will sit there on the shelf before being sold. 

[mh9162013]

What phrunt said...

[MSC]

Thanks phrunt, never knew that, always been faithful re-charging all of my batteries (13) for the 5,7  and  now the 6 every month or so to keep them fully charged. 

[phrunt]

9 hours ago, MSC said:

Thanks phrunt, never knew that, always been faithful re-charging all of my batteries (13) for the 5,7  and  now the 6 every month or so to keep them fully charged. 

That's the wrong thing to do, google it for reassurance.  The lazy people who don't look after their batteries end up doing a better job 🙂

It's also why if you run a laptop and only ever use it plugged in you're destroying your battery, you need to let that sucker wear down regularly so you're better off unplugging it often.  I've known of many people that bought a laptop, plugged it in and never unplugged it in an office type situation, a year or two later they try use it for the first time on battery and the battery is useless.... flat in no time and holds no charge.