Course -- thanks!

I'm hoping to move as much of my life over to renewable energies and this is a step in the right direction. I'm getting a recharger within a week or so and this looks like a great deal.

Make sure you get a charge good for this type of battery. When I got my first set the store made a big deal out of it.

Everyone probably already knows this but I wanted to mention it.

For AA and AAA NiMh batteries, I highly recommend this site:

Thomas Distributing

They may not be able to match the promo price you quoted, but they know batteries.

Also, if you want to see an amazing battery comparison, to see which batteries perform the best, you definitely need to visit this site:

The Great Battery Shootout!

Man, I love the Internet.

This guy spent months doing some wonderfully scientific battery tests, using quite a bit of custom equipment, and this site is the summary of his results.

According to this new report

. . but please don't forget WHERE the energy is coming from to charge these batteries? The loss on supply and the GREEN trade off moving away from the already "charged" batteries ? Yes? Tricky isn't it? Maybe a solar and/or small wind driven gennie/dynamo set discreetly around your house OR a tiny prop wind-driven generator/dynamo on your car . .. OR charge from your car . . period!

But yes . . .the debate is starting to take hold . . this is a good "thing"!

Grazie

Grazie, i doubt that charging your batteries from household current uses up even a tiny fraction of the energy and resources consumed by producing and disposing of a non-rechargable battery.

Of course, your comments about solar/wind driven power are good even without talking about rechargeable batteries. On the other hand, starting your car just to charge batteries is probably very wasteful ... unless you happen to be driving somewhere anyway. Even in that situation, you'll use more gas while charging batteries than you would if you weren't charging them.

On the topic of NiMH life, i have yet to find any that even come close to lasting as long as alkaline cells. In fact, i've had trouble finding any that perform as well as NiCad. The only advantage seems to be that they are rechargeable, and recharge better than NiCad. Probably the technology is steadily improving though.

On the topic of memory, very few rechargeable cells show memory effect anymore. This is pretty much an obsolete topic. The loss of lifespan after multiple discharge/recharge cycles is actually caused by imbalanced charge among the individual cells of multi-cell packs. Once the amount of charge starts differing the effect snowballs. Those with more charge tend to also charge faster while those with less charge are slower. This exacerbates the condition and eventually you'll have some cells at full charge while others are nearly empty. Of course this reduces the useful life because the whole battery is only partially charged. Ideally, each cell should be independantly drained and independantly charged. It is possible to do this with individual AAA, AA, C, and D cells, except that very few chargers do this. Most chargers run the sells in series and compound the problem. When looking for a charger ask for one specifically that operates all cells in parallel (although very few sales people will have any clue what this means). This could extend the useful life far far beyond what most people experience. And of course, if you have multi-cell packs that are complete units, such as 9v or camcorder batteries with all the individual cells sealed inside a case, there is no useful way to get to the individual cells separately, so you're stuck there.

Sometimes the dark side of me broods on the fact that while the manufacturers could redesign multi-cell packs to allow parallel discharging/recharging, they probably don't want to because they know that the sooner the battery becomes useless, the sooner you'll have to buy a new one. *sigh*

Many thanks guys, that's a lot of helpful information!

I just got tired of going through 48-pak and 50-pak sticks and bricks of disposables.

:O)

On the topic of solar to recharge your batteries, I've come across a portable unit that allows just that -- about the size of a large dinner tray, you set it up in your yard or on your roof (or outside when you're camping) and use it to charge portable devices. It's probably not the best option, but it's a start:

http://www.icpsolar.com/specifications.php3?id_article=40

There are others, as well:

http://www.ascscientific.com/solar.html

http://www.batteries.com/productprofile.asp?appid=272197&cmp=KAC-Froogle

This unit looks especially tailored and priced for our discussion here -- wonder how good it is in reality?

- jim