Charging the Battery Properly

P

Phileas

Member
Hey everyone:


I just have a couple of simple questions about charging a 5400mah li-on battery...

Does it make a difference if you...


a) Put the battery into the charger before it is depleted?

b) Remove the battery from the charger before it is fully charged?


...just want to make sure I don't do anything to cause unnecessary damage!

Thanks for your help!
 
A battery wears out a little more when it is discharged to the lowest level, so it is better to not discharge it completely. You can remove it from the charger at any time, can not cause damage.
HTH
 
I remember the opposite being told to me and I've been fully discharging my batteries since. I have not had any noticeable shortness of battery life in any of my older mini-dv cameras. I was told to discharge the battery completely because if you don't the charge will shorten the power time of the battery. Have I been wrong this entire time?
 
Yes, this advice is very old, it was true for the older chemistries like NiCad. There was so called "Memory effect" that was supposed to be minimized. The Li-Ion batteries do not suffer from it, by discharging them you shorten their service life, without an upside.
 
There was so called "Memory effect"
Click to expand...
Thanks, that is what I remember but I guess technology has changed.

Guess it's time to stop discharging my batteries. Even the older mini-dv cams have
Li-ion batteries. It really sucks when you take the time out to do something that you think is correct only to find out you may have been doing more harm than good. Guess that's the story of my life. Thanks again to everyone and the endless pool of knowledge at this site.
 
thanks for the feedback guys. much appreciated. i love this site so much. i am a lot more informed now. didn't know that you shouldn't discharge lithium batteries completely...!
 
as long as its not the very first time two to three charges, you can discharge / charge it however you'd like.
 
kingofpoland said:
It really sucks when you take the time out to do something that you think is correct only to find out you may have been doing more harm than good. Guess that's the story of my life. Thanks again to everyone and the endless pool of knowledge at this site.
Click to expand...

Haha! I hear ya buddy. I've been doing the same thing as well, glad I came across this post :)
 
Here is a little more information. I extracted this from the Sanyo Li-Ion Engineering Guide, which is widely used by design engineers in the battery industry. The graph shows how the cycle life of a battery gets shorter with deeper discharges. The solid line is full discharge, resulting in about 80% of its original capacity after 350 cycles. The dots show about 700 cycles for shallow 50% discharges. It is clearly better not to run a battery down if you want it to last longer.
 
The memory effect happened to me.

I have the panasonic 5-6 hour battery, and a 3-4 hour battery. I wanted to save the panasonic battery so I used the 3-4 hour battery as a main battery, then went to the big panasonic as backup.
I've been using this cycle for about 6 months.
One day I noticed the panasonic battery only charged half way. Battery life was only 2 hours. I tried charging the battery over night, but it didn't work.

Then when I went on the road to a humid climate. The battery charged fully. Few possibilities, but I think because the air was wet, and different levels of power from the outlets.
 
superhardrocker said:
The memory effect happened to me.

I have the panasonic 5-6 hour battery, and a 3-4 hour battery. I wanted to save the panasonic battery so I used the 3-4 hour battery as a main battery, then went to the big panasonic as backup.
I've been using this cycle for about 6 months.
One day I noticed the panasonic battery only charged half way. Battery life was only 2 hours. I tried charging the battery over night, but it didn't work.

Then when I went on the road to a humid climate. The battery charged fully. Few possibilities, but I think because the air was wet, and different levels of power from the outlets.
Click to expand...
doubt it, the memory effect with lithium ion batteries can happen but it goes away after a couple charge & discharge cycles.
 
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