Lithium vs NiMH Battery for Storage in Remote Control?

I’ve never had a problem with a lithium primary, but don’t use many. I’m still barely started on an AA 8-pack purchased over a decade ago. Zero experience with AAA lithium primary.

Lithium ion cells have failed, but never leaked or caught fire.

I’ve had lithium poly lose lots of capacity and get puffy, but never worse than that before I disposed it them.

Alkalines have leaked in storage after partial usage and in devices, although so far no completely unused alkalines have leaked.

NiMh have never leaked. AAA’s are more problematic, and although none have become completely worthless, the capacity and self drain is terrible, often so bad that it’ll only charge if I partially charge it by shorting it with another AAA. I only keep those bad AAA’s (Energizer, GP, AmazonBasics) around as a sort of experiment. “9V” hasn’t been great either, and I want to say those were Tenergy. The exception so far is Eneloop and Fujitsu AAA’s. The only AA’s that have experienced terrible capacity is the ones that came with my old Garmin. Most are nearly a decade old, some are over 15 years old. My conclusion is that nimh AAA’s really need to be high quality or they won’t last long.

NIMH in a remote is good, Lithium energizer is the best.

p.s. Since you are in israel you may have other brands of lithium AAA, besides energizer, Here in usa, only energizers are available in stores, somehow energizer created monopoly on lithium aa, and aaa in usa,

My vote would be lithium primary for anything with extended storage requirements (provided the voltage is compatible). Using alkaline cells in the piezo igniter in our gas grill caused contact corrosion in a matter of a days, and I’d constantly have to clean the internal contacts to make it work. Switching to Energizer Ultimate resolved the issue, and after several months without any maintenance, it fires every time.

This thread is reminding me that it is time to do my annual charge of the NiMH batteries in my thermostat. Have an old set of AA made in Japan Amazon Basics 2450s with way to high of IR to be satisfactory in a flashlight. Work great in the thermostat. Large capacity and work for a very long time. I always charge them when the weather starts getting really cold out and I don’t remember if I ever have to charge them until the following winter.

You think that only the adage “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” applies here? I think there’s collusion between batteries and electronics manufacturers involved to stimulate the need to replace batteries and electronics damaged by them. Planned obsolesce.

I have recently bought Panasonic BQ-CC17 charger and tried charging Sanyo XX 2450mAh in it. I am disappointed to some extent: Charger LEDs flashing with Ni-MH batteries - #13 by killswitch

We have Energizers, sure, as well as VARTA but 2 batts range in cost around $10-$15.

Internal resistance issue? I have Sanyos XX 2450mAh and Panasonic BQ-CC17 does not want to charge them. Camelion charger did and I thought it will “fix” them but Panasonic charger still refuses to charge them: Charger LEDs flashing with Ni-MH batteries - #13 by killswitch

It sounds like your Sanyos internal resistance has gone up too high to be accepted by the Panasonic.
Camelion has a LOT of chargers.
Which one do you have?

Some chargers will charge ANYTHING. Those can be useful for some circumstances. I have a very old Radio Shack (company out of business a good while ago) 4-cell/2-channel AA/AAA 6-hour/timed “dumb” charger. It will charge a PAIR of anything for 6 hours, even a dead battery.

Plus a Sanyo ‘sorta smart’ 2-cell/2-channel charger that will also charge a dead cell, but generally will terminate properly if the cell resistance isn’t too bad.
I mostly use both of these to boost dead cells so the smart charger will take them. If the smart charger starts having termination problems and the resistance is too high it’s recycle time.
Note - I consider the IR tests on slider-analyzing chargers to be very rough. I have a ZH-YU ZB106+ v1.3 that tests them far more accurately and reliably that I finally got, both for capacity and IR.

Had camelion aa nicads arrive with about half of the 24 pack leaking.
Sent back.
Seller couldnt understand why he couldnt just send replacements for the leakers.
Since they were backup power for a cnc control i wouldnt take the chance.
Seen some fuzz but no damage in all my years of using nicd/nimh.
The leakers i saw were junk noname stuff or very old.
My remotes all have lsd nimh in them.only way to go.

Here I had Camelions Ultra for almost 10 years sitting disconnected from each other in a cheap voltage detector. They did not have transparent plastic which I placed recently for not sure what since these don’t leak.

I can’t find Alkaleak brand online.

Model BTR-3013

Don’t seem to have that one anymore. Closest is BC-1012, which may not be close at all.
https://www.camelion.com/en/products/chargers/fast-chargers/bc-1012/

Looks ‘basic’ and should be OK if yours is similar.

You realize that [Alka-leak] is a jab at their tendency to……leak……not a brand? :person_facepalming:

I have recently been testing these batteries; I didn’t get them because of the capacity (real about 600mA) but because they are Lithium, but rechargeable with a normal charger for NiMh or NiCd; they have 1.2 volt output (1.4 when fully charged); they have a circuit to manage even the minimum and maximum voltage. I am putting them through some tests and we will see over time the result. They are inexpensive, so I don’t expect miracles; I only tell you because they exist.

[quote=The Last Katun]
I have recently been testing these batteries; I didn’t get them because of the capacity (real about 600mA) but because they are Lithium, but rechargeable with a normal charger for NiMh or NiCd; they have 1.2 volt output (1.4 when fully charged); they have a circuit to manage even the minimum and maximum voltage. I am putting them through some tests and we will see over time the result. They are inexpensive, so I don’t expect miracles; I only tell you because they exist./quote]

That’s an odd battery. Don’t understand how a lithium cell + charging electronics can be used in an ordinary NiXX charger. I’ve made numerous trials of various chargers to attempt that with the 1.5v lithium that is becoming more common in the USA. Some……appear……to charge, but they never do it properly. The battery electronics interfere with the charger’s electronics.

Use a [slow/dumb] charger since the battery is going to do the charging control anyway? I think the voltage output of NiXX charger is too low for the lithium component.

I tested these batteries on three types of rechargers; on two designed only to recharge NiMh and NiCd but with different management eletronics, the composites were that the first one completed charging two AAA-Lithium and the other gave the inconsistency message (intermittent LED); both charged two batteries at a time, single charging is not possible on these. The charging voltage was “pulsing.”

Instead, using a charger for Lithium and NiMh-NiCd, the batteries were recognized as NiMh-NiCd and fully charged. The voltage, in this case, was constant.
In no case was there any heating of the batteries.

You stated: [I didn’t get them because of the capacity (real about 600mA)]
The wrapper on the AA claims 2700mAh, and the AAA 2200mAh, I think. The photo reflection makes it nearly impossible to read for the AA.
The 600mAh was your personal test? If so, how did you test it?

Not sure about these, advertised as 1.2v, but I’d suspect that was a sloppy marketing error…probably should be mWh. Also assuming they may not be accurate/honest with the numbers. I recently got some of the Hixon 1.5v AAA from Li-ion Wholesale and didn’t catch that difference…but they’re actually proving to be great little cells and very useful in some 3S headlights (until they suddenly go black….).

I didn’t write 600mAh, but 600mA, and let me explain:
In battery acronyms there is, in my opinion, a great deal of confusion; and I will explain:
mAmp (or mA, or Amp or simply A) is a capacity.
mAh is a speed, in this case of discharging Amps, just as miles (mi) is a distance and mph (or mi/h) is a speed, in this case of travel; space divided by time.

A car battery is given its amperage (capacity) in A (example 80A) but it has come into common usage to also state how long it can discharge them, by convention: one hour (80Ah) and then it is necessary to say, they add it, also the maximum speed of discharge (say 740A to which the abbreviation EN is added, i.e., “starting” amperage) so an 80A battery will be able to hold its starting amperage (740A-EN) for about 6 minutes. 740A/6min is not stated because it is not easily understood nor can it be easily guaranteed, depending on various factors, temperature, state of use, etc.

So if it is indicated for a 2400mAh battery, actually a discharge speed is indicated, but the battery could also be 1200mA and discharge, discharging 1.2A at the speed of 2400mAh in about 30 minutes.

Now the Ah is used, i.e., the capacity of the battery is given in relation to how much it can discharge in an hour, and this is also fine if the manufacturer is honest, but this value is a velocity, not a capacity (or, we can say, that it is a capacity in relation to an hour of constant discharge at the stated Amps). The same difference as saying “I went 30 miles” and saying “I went 120mph,” are the same thing if the 30 miles you went 120mph took you 15 minutes.
Using this precariousness of information a contructor can put that his battery is 2700mAh (true figure, but it is a speed, not a capacity), but if it discharges at 1500mAh and after 25 minutes it is finished, then it has the real capacity of 625mA. Same thing if I discharge at 2700mAh and the battery is finished after 13 minutes.
The way the capacity is stated, a speed is stated, and it is not guaranteed that it can maintain it for an hour, it is only stated that for the time it discharges it will do so at a certain speed; at least the way it is written, then it is usually meant otherwise, but that is part of the semantics.
Like a car; if the Bugatti does 490kmh (kilometers per hour) you are not told it will do 490kmh in an hour, because with the tank (capacity) it has, it runs out of fuel after a few minutes. So to say that the Bugatti does 490Km in an hour is false, because every 8 minutes or so it has to stop to recharge (at the stated top speed. And, for the record, at top speed it has to change the tire set every 18 minutes); however it is true that for a few minutes, it will be able to go at a speed of 490Kmh.

I hope I translated my thinking well, sorry for any errors

Actually you have it backwards. mAh is a unit of capacity. mA is a unit of rate/speed of charge/discharge.

Quite true. Amps or fractions of an amp is the rate (or speed) of flow in use. Or the “speed” referenced above. AH or fractions is the capacity available over time. Or the amount of total energy available measured over time. So, if specs are accurate, a 1000 mAh (1 Amp hour) cell could deliver 1 amp of current for one hour before being drained.

So yes, @ the last katun has it just exactly backwards.

How can an A be a speed if it lacks the time factor?
How can Ah be a static capacity if the expression is A/h? (Ampere divided by hour).

I can hold a battery of 80A capacity “still,” it cannot give me a ” speed of flow in use.”

the “amount of total energy available (A) measured over time (h)” is a velocity, just as distance measured over time is a velocity (mi/h), it is the energy flowing in a given amount of time.

However, let’s do a small elementary problem: If I have a 12-volt battery and apply a “load” of 4A to it for one hour (4Ah load) or let’s say even 48 watts; what capacity does my battery have? If, as you say, Ah indicates the capacity of the battery (i.e., the capacity from when it is charged to when it is discharged), the solution will be simple and will be one.

AMPS is current at an instant in time. So it is electrical flow at one instant. Not over a given time. Let’s call it volume at an instant. So maybe “speed” is not a perfect label. But certainly Ah is not speed in any sense. Again, current is an instantaneous thing. So lets throw out “speed” entirely. But this would match better to your original statement. But still, I agree, it is wrong. I was trying to simplify things relative to your OP.

Amp Hours is the number of amps over a specified time. In batteries this is often equal to rated capacity.

Amp Hour (Ah) = Current (I) x Discharge Time (T)

The only way to associate “speed” to Ah is by using it relative to the length of time to discharge a source. I guess for this discussion we are talking about batteries, yes?
So if we are talking “speed, it will only be relative to the ”speed” that it takes (X amount of time) to discharge a specific battery at a given flow rate (Amps). So speed in this case is not the volume of electron flow (Amps). But rather the speed it takes to discharge a source (battery) at a given flow rate.

So, to recap, current is instantaneous flow. Ah is current for a given amount of time.

BTW Ah is also used, when converted to Watt hours to calculate energy use over time. Like most meters for electrical use billing.

Thank you for continuing this dialogue.
I think I have found the “crux” of the matter; we have, we refer to, two different models of battery evaluation; the view you propose is Ampere X hour (A*h or Ah) whereas I see it as Ampere/hour (Ampere divided by hour). as, for example, at this link: .

I consider the unit of measurement of current to be solely the Ampere (A), and not the set Ah, and for me it is easier to determine the capacity of a battery (which then are the consumption capacities) by dividing its rated capacity over a time, rather than multiplying it by the same.
I think it’s just the way of looking at things.
That it is a way of looking at things is also proffered on the same page, where, further down, Wh is described (specifying: “watt-hours” and not watts X hours) and where it is described as, “The amount of electrical energy consumed by a circuit over a period of time.” and consumption is a subtraction, subdivision and transformation of resources and not their multiplication.
The same formula you propose to me [Amp Hour (Ah) = Current (I) x Discharge Time (T)] has “Discharge Time” as its term, that is, a subtraction, a splitting of resources over a period of time, going from being “power” to being heat, motive power, light, usually even simultaneously, etc., and separating from the energy left to the battery; certainly not their multiplication.

But as I repeat, it is just a way of understanding, and expressing differently, the same thing