rechargeable battery experts info please

Avoriaz

happyhero wrote:

…Going off in a unnecessary direction here, but out of interest why can't they make the rechargeables put out 1.5v, would they have to be bigger. . I mean they make 24v batteries for drill etc, so why not for example make one that is AA size and gives out 1.7v? I know its not important, I'm just interested why they don't exist.

Strictly speaking a single “battery” is a cell. A battery is a number of cells combined.

The nature of the materials used determine that the voltage is 1.2v from a single Ni-Mh and Ni-Cd cell (battery).

A 24v battery is actually 20 cells combined into one 24v battery. 20 x 1.2v = 24v.

It would be very difficult and impractical to make an AA sized battery with 20 internal cells.

More useful information here:

http://www.greenbatteries.com/

happyhero

Hi trawden, this is an old thread of mine you have picked up, but I am always happy to go further with them.

I have gained a little knowledge on this subject since then, researching it etc a little, and there may be more than one reason for not using rechargeables in certain things but the overwelming reason I found was the voltage problem, ie you get 1.5v out of non-rechargeables and 1.2v out of rechargeables, which may not seem too bad but if you have something that takes 4 batteries for example that would mean you would get 6v out of the 4 for non-rechargeables and only 4.8v out of the rechargeables, in other words 1.2v (a whole battery) less and many things with electronics don't like it. The claim is that they will not work properly or maybe not at all, sometimes, and may damage the item they are in but I use them in everything now, cordless mouse and keyboard, all the kids toys and just about anything I come across and I have been doing this for a long time now without any problems, I just make sure I buy good quality name brand rechargeables ie Uniross, and everything I have used them in works perfectly.

The other thing is the cost saving, you can work it out, the rechargeables are supposed to charge about 1000 times, makes them a lot cheaper than non-rechargeables.

Hope that helps you.

trawden

:j Thanks for that Happy hero, as long as i know. I think i'll join you and risk it in everything. I always use uniross, as i have found the other sno where near as efficient.

If the toy doesn't work with them, i'll go back to normal batteries in that one.