any one any experience of these

yes its the having to get another charger that has stopped me buying

any idea what the outcome of putting them in a standard charger would be i presume its not just a voltage issue but the chemistry of the batteries as well

Yes its the chemistry.......dont plan on finding out if my charger will be able to charge them. It would be like putting a lith cell in a charger made for nimh and nicads....lol. I know on CPF there a lot of members who went this route and reported good things. Theres more topics of course, this is just one of many.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=256189

Thanks Al

think i will leave it just now don't want to buy a hole new setup

Yes i know what you mean....more batts of that type and you need a charger.....im sure newer hobby chargers are able to charge these up but mine will only do lith, nicad, and of course nimh. I have more then enough rechargeables for my lights and toys. So for me getting another chemistry would not be worth it.

I already own too many battery types and chargers, I really don't need any more just now. They look interesting though and hopefully will have the abuse tolerance of NiCd - I have 3 still working D NiCds that were bought in 1984. OK, their internal resistance is somewhat higher these days and they are not that keen on holding voltage at 4A current but they still work and get used. NiCd cells are a nasty enivironmental problem to dispose of properly, NiZn should be much more benign. I spent two summers as a student tracking cadmium through water and sewage which is not a good place for it to be.

Don wrote

[ I spent two summers as a student tracking cadmium through water and sewage which is not a good place for it to be]

cant imagine i was a good place for you either

Actually it was fascinating as long as you didn't think too hard about what you were taking samples of. You stop noticing the smell pretty quickly - besides the fumes in the lab could kill off any stench pretty quickly.

This was 30 years ago in the days of fun chemistry when few or no machines were involved, it all got done the hard way and all your clothes had acid burns. I still have some of the scars. These days machines do all the fun stuff.

You don't get as many acid burns though, or get to learn just how unpleasant choloroform intoxication is. Or get to know what hydrogen cyanide smells like. Or how horrible the antidote is.

Wow, it seems that you had a hell of job. Hope your not missing all the field work.

About as much as I miss projectile vomiting

Well im glad see you here and no harm came from it.

any one know if there is a supplier in Europe for these i think i may give them a try if the price is reasonable

I thought I'd found a UK supplier but that was for disposable cells - at £3.95 each.

These guys will ship to the UK - probably at a shipping cost of more than the cells. Google didn't come up with anyone selling them in the UK. Couldn't even find any on eBay.

cheers Don

i have been looking but cant find them over here ether

thanks for trying

But I think it's not yet time to buy these cells. At 39 quid for a basic 4 cell charger (+shipping +VAT +PO clearance charges +Import duty) probably over 50 quid delivered and that seems to be without cells I'd take heed of the reviews here. Click on the Read Reviews tab and see what you think. Sounds like they will become mainstream but from a bit of reading these are being made on a relatively small scale as the company (PowerGenix) seems to be very keen to get someone else to do the manufacturing for them. Hopefully Sanyo will get on board - they are very, very good at making batteries. I'd wait till there is more than one source, there would appear to be at least a small question mark over these just now. I suspect cottage industry (Read the way the Chinese make most things) manufacturing at present but once a big manufacturer starts making them for PowerGenix or selling them under their own brand, things should improve. I'd have said the same about NiMH in the 80's. While the cells were available since about 1980, it took until the 90's and dramatic rises in capacity before they became mainstream.

The place where I live and worked from 84-86 had no electricity and despite the drawbacks of the then-available NiCd cells, I had no alternative. You couldn't buy an AA battery in the whole country at the time which is why I seriously doubt the oft-repeated claim that the AA is the world's commonest battery - D cells are far more ubiquitous in my experience. I could charge stuff in town as long as I didn't mind a 32km round trip on foot (in a desert) to get them charged. Had anything better been available, I'd have been all over it. NiMH had, in theory at least, been available since 1980 but you couldn't get them anywhere I could find.

I suspect that's where we're at with NiZn just now

As you can see, no electricity or much of anything else in sight.

Awesome pic.......hey thats me in front of the hut. Do you guys think its worth it though.....just for that extra voltage as a rechargeable, i have some batts that come off the charger @ 1.4-1.5 volts.

They can kill some things not expecting so many volts. I'm not sure they're ready for the mass market yet. Voltage from 2 of those is getting close to a 14500. 3 of them will probably kill a 14500 light.

That hut was actually a church - made of the local grass. Come the end of the dry season they tended to burn off the grass as it harboured nasty snakes. Sadly, the grass burning got a bit out of control and they burned the church down. This was the partially complete replacement. Nor did it get rid of the snakes - we had to kill a puff adder that came in to visit. If you look up Asiyenye, Zambia in Google Maps you are within 20km of Luweta village, if memory serves

I've looked all over that page and it doesnt state the capacity of a cell......Maybe you should buy a set and do a cell test for us. lol

2600 milliwatt hours. At a nominal voltage of 1.6V.

For comparison, an Eneloop is 2000mAh at a nominal 1.2V giving 2000x1.2 = 2400 milliwatt hours.

They state a minimum of 1350mAh and a normal 1500mAh if you dig around www.powergenix.com for long enough.

Not a long runtime at all if one's using a high powered torch. I'll just stick to my lithiums and nimh rechargeables for now.....dont plan on getting another set of batts that need a new charger.

right after listening to whats been mentioned

looking at the cost if getting them in to the UK [ i cant find them for sale outside the US]

i think i will put it on hold for now

thanks for your Barrie