Nope. Mum used to buy milk on sale and freeze the excess. Careful thawing it, as the fat can separate out and it looks curdled and nasty.
Eggs, no. Putting cartons too close to the cold-air outlet in the fridge, and some eggs would freeze and crack.
I buy organical milk which lasts lots longer (UHT pasteurisation, kills more bugs but almost “cooks” the milk, giving it an “off” taste drinking it straight, but is absolutely fine in coffee, farina, etc.). Now I can actually buy milk by the gallon, vs rushing to kill off a gallon of normal milk before it’d to sour/rancid (ie, almost all the time).
And it’s ridiculous, like 3.99 for a half-gallon of (normal) milk, vs 4.99 for a full gallon. So I always go for the big’uns.
Before storage, I run them through a capacity test and measure the IR (at full charge). I write those values on each cell with a Sharpie then run them through a discharge test but I pull them off the charger when they get around 3.6V.
Every once in a while, I pull them out and check the cell voltage. So far, most of the cells still read 3.6V. I’ve only seen a few cells drop voltage over many months of storage. I haven’t measured them since before Covid. Probably time to check them again.
Agreeing with something does not make it right. Coal is absolutely the worst polluting fuel you can actually have in every single way.
Back on topic however, I wouldn’t worry much. Production of cylindrical cells is currently being bottlenecked not by actual factory output, but shipping woes mainly.
When international shipping for bulk orders cost 2-5x as much, you prioritize orders in which the orders numbers are large enough to not actually matter too much in terms of shipping costs, which is why smaller sellers seem to have a harder time getting the cells.
Not to get political but the politicians went after those few coal miners left in west Virginia. They put them out of business. Promised them “green” jobs” which as we know never happened. The women were forced to turn into prostitution to feed their families, There was wide spread drug abuse. To think that those coal miners were going to get office jobs selling solar panels is absolutely absurd.
I was thinking more of the raw materials, if priority is going to all these electric vehicles and companies will there be enough for us and our recreational use? And if so, at what price? I keep reading that lithium production will hit a bottleneck by 2025 or something like that.
I wonder about the future of 18650s. They were produced in the zillions for every laptop in the world.
Now none of laptops use them.
Then some electric cars used them in the millions(?) of cells.
Now makers seem to be moving to a higher density cell.
What’s left for the 18650? Lots of medical devices use them for internal backups. Many inexpensive rechargeable thingies use them. But perhaps it is the abundance of cheap 18650s that drives the inexpensive thingies market.
If another format becomes the cheapest option, the cheap thingies market will shift.
Remember the 5.25” floppy drive? They went from common as sand on a beach to not available in like a year of two. And I’ve still got 3 new in the wrapper ones sitting on the shelf. Guess I didn’t read that one real well.
All the Best,
Jeff
Agree 100% with that statement. I remember reading that the way China is growing they are having to build a new coal burning power generating plant every week to provide enough electricity for their needs.
Trying to bring this thread back on track: Should you stock up on 18650 (and other cells) now?
My thoughts along the lines of this, too:
Perhaps, in the future, 5-10 years, new 18650 flashlights won’t be a thing any more as manufacturers make bodies to fit whatever the popular cell size is at that time. Cells last 5+ years after theyre manufactured, so plenty of time to upgrade.
Could well be possible to bore the bodies of our lights to take new sized cells- used to be a popular Surefire mod to run 18650 cell in place of CR123s…
Hopefully the 18650 size will be similar to AAs and 9 volt batteries, a staple for lots of stuff for many years/decades to come.
But if not, what can we do? Li-ion batteries will only last so long (even if not used) so it doesn’t seem practical to stock up on them. For me, I guess I’ll take my favorite LEDs and drivers and transfer them to new hosts.
To me capacitors are the holy grail…. They charge in less than a minute and can discharge hundreds of thousands of times. The only issue is they have lower capacity than Li-ion
Someone made a handheld power drill with one but I can’t seem to find it. I think it only have half the run time as a chemical battery drill though
