Recharging the battery


hughsey

Still Fresh
Joined
Mar 16, 2011
Messages
14
Hello guys and gals,


Just interested to find out what percentage you let your battery run down to before recharging?
 
Not sure yet, but here are 2 examples of chit-chatter from various sources.

Pro personal tip: I cycle my rechargeable batteries
(full charge/full discharge) as often or as frequent as i can or is convenient, And


i still have batteries that are nearly ten years old that still hold a decent charge.

Which is exactly the way to damage the Lithium Polymer battery in your Caanoo. While NiCd and NiMH batteries had a memory effect which reduced the charging capacity, if you recharge the battery, before it is fully empty (e.g. recharging at 20% remaining capacity let to a battery with 80% overall capacity), in Lithium Polymer batteries this effect doesn't exist.
Completely decharging an LiPo battery can cause damage to the battery and is not advised.


The main reason, why users of LiPo batteries think, they have to dry their battery completely before recharging is, that the batteries have a fixed number of charging cycles (around 500), so the theory is, if you only can charge your battery 500 times, better charge an empty battery and not a half full one. But this is a false assumption, because a loading cycle on a LiPo battery isn't calculated like this. If you empty your LiPo battery to 50% and recharge it you only used 1/2 charging cycle. So it doesn't matter how often you charge your battery, but only how much energy you give it.
 
Not sure yet, but here are 2 examples of chit-chatter from various sources.

Pro personal tip: I cycle my rechargeable batteries
(full charge/full discharge) as often or as frequent as i can or is convenient, And


i still have batteries that are nearly ten years old that still hold a decent charge.

Which is exactly the way to damage the Lithium Polymer battery in your Caanoo. While NiCd and NiMH batteries had a memory effect which reduced the charging capacity, if you recharge the battery, before it is fully empty (e.g. recharging at 20% remaining capacity let to a battery with 80% overall capacity), in Lithium Polymer batteries this effect doesn't exist.
Completely decharging an LiPo battery can cause damage to the battery and is not advised.


The main reason, why users of LiPo batteries think, they have to dry their battery completely before recharging is, that the batteries have a fixed number of charging cycles (around 500), so the theory is, if you only can charge your battery 500 times, better charge an empty battery and not a half full one. But this is a false assumption, because a loading cycle on a LiPo battery isn't calculated like this. If you empty your LiPo battery to 50% and recharge it you only used 1/2 charging cycle. So it doesn't matter how often you charge your battery, but only how much energy you give it.

Isnt the last quote a little confusing/contradicting. We are told that you can get roughly 10-14 hours of life out of the Pandora battery. Im taking that this is if you run it totally out. But the quote says that depleating it totally can damage the battery.


I guess you have to meet it half way or around 20-30% you fully recharge it
 
Isnt the last quote a little confusing/contradicting. We are told that you can get roughly 10-14 hours of life out of the Pandora battery. Im taking that this is if you run it totally out. But the quote says that depleating it totally can damage the battery.
There are safety checks in place to keep it from going way too low. Letting it drain all the way down every once in a while shouldn't cause too much problem, so long as you charge it back up immediately. Making a regular habit of draining it down below 5% is probably not a good idea though.


I just charge mine up every night, regardless of the level.
 
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