I have 71 flashlights and I have a battery in each light but I have manually locked out all of them but 4.
I know they say, that you shouldn’t store batteries in a flashlight for long periods of time. However, if I remove the batteries from the lights, it will take a longer time to get the batteries back in the light in case of a large emergency.
I have 12 people in my immediate area that I want to have a flashlight and backup ready for an emergency. I want to have 2 hand flashlights and a headband light for each of them. Would it be better to have those 36 lights ready to go and remove the batteries from the remaining lights.
My understanding for not storing batteries in lights is parasitic drain over discharging the cells. If they are properly manually locked out (backed off head or tail) then you shouldn’t have to worry about it. I’m no expert though, please take salt with my post.
Edit: Unless the cells are alkaline, those little leaky punks shouldn’t be store in anything.
Thanks. That was the same thing I thought and I thought they meant it mainly for alkaline cells as well. Mine are all liion batteries and they are all locked out, except for the 4 I mentioned.
They have been in most of the flashlights for 2 years and I would check them every 3 months and every 6 months I would check the charge. It took almost a year before they lost 1% - 3% of their charge. So I believe I had them properly locked out.
I’m asking because I want to make sure that I’m doing it right. 99% of my flashlights are budget lights, Sofirn , Wurkkos , Wuben, Convoy with a few thrunite and lumintop. When you add in the batteries that I have, I have a sizable investment app hence the need for precaution.
It’s commonly stated that Li Ions should not be stored at either full charge or near full discharge. Between 40-70% should be ok, or at their nominal voltage of ~3.7v.
That’s inconvenient for practicality, so another option is to use different lights with LSD NiMH cells.
At one point, I was going to stock up on 18650/16650 cells, but then thought…“what’s the point?” If I’m in a situation that requires that many 18650 cells, the power grid probably has already failed or will soon, and I might as well go for more efficient, lower draw lights that can sip juice with the OPTION of going momentary turbo.
My current complement of loose, non-proprietary cells is: 4×EVVA 18650, 1×Orb 18650, 1×keeppower 18650, 2×keeppower 16650, 1xOrb 16650, 3× Orb 16340, and a few vapcell 14500, f15 and h10, plus the odd wurkkos 14500. I easily have at least 3:1 light to cell ratio, but try to ensure as much interoperability and redundancy as possible.
Yup all good, no alkaleaks and lights have functioning tailcap lockout, not much else you can do really apart from perhaps print user manual “cheat sheets” to slide into the cell tube to help if the user needs instructions. At the very least put your name and phone number on it to try to ensure your light(s) get back to you if they get lost.
Do you have chargers you are also going to lend out? Or are you planning on a cell-swap deal where they bring you drained cells and you replace with a fresh one?
Sure, if you want to maximise longevity of the cells, but for emergency backup, I’d assume most users will want to maximise runtime so will store them charged and take the hit on longevity.
All my flashlights intended for quick access/usage have mechanical switches so I don’t have to worry about parasitic drain. I store them with fully charged batteries because if I need them in an emergency I don’t want a partial charge battery in them, or have to go hunt/charge up another battery.
Batteries aren’t all that expensive and they’ll still last many years even stored fully charged.
I have already distributed chargers and flashlights to anyone who lives further than 5 miles from me. Plus I have instructed them on how to charge their batteries.
I have plenty of wind and solar power to run chargers if I have to.
I thought that I would be ok with what I’m doing. All my back up batteries are at a lower charge and I have plenty of solar and wind to charge batteries if I need to. Solar and wind isn’t my only off grid power source but somethings will remain secret right now.
I have 13 lights and keep the batteries in each one of them. I’m a weirdo and turn each one on just about everyday for a few seconds and then lock them back out. Is that a “safe” way to keep my lights/batteries? Something I’ve never really thought of before, prior to seeing this post.
I use NiMH and store the batteries in plastic holders for each light, because that way it is easier to monitor and charge the batteries as the years go by without an emergency.
@ToddZiegler1024 Out of curiosity, where are you and what situation youre facing requires you to have quick access to numbers of flashlight ready to go?
For you; having portable lighting apparatus available for members of the community , is a generous contribution a member of flashlight universe can do to the people ‘in the dark’.
Big winds, approaching storm, snowapalooza, etc., I just charge everything to 100%. I can’t get arsed enough to care if I get 400 cycles vs 500. I got enough spares to not gaf.
That means charging phones, radios, powerbanks, rockpals, etc.
Worst case, top off from big honkin’ powerbanks, then charge those from a window solar panel. Or charge smaller ones in the car if needed.
Point being, unless it’s The Zombie Apocalypse™, and you’re.on the run with only what you can carry, you’ve got alternatives. And if not, well, you got bigger problems to worry about than if you got charged flashlights.
I keep a bunch of batteries fully charged because the most likely huge event I’m likely to experience is a major earthquake. They come with virtually no warning, and can happen today, tomorrow, or not for the next few centuries. I don’t want to have to look for fully charged batteries in case the quake happens in the middle of the night.
I see the cost of the batteries as just another part of my earthquake supplies. And a minor one at that since I probably have $5,000 in emergency supplies; that I hopefully will never make use of.
When I was bike commuting I could get somewhere between 1 and 2 trips for most of my lights so I changed batteries at the end of my trips. I knew this would theoretically shorten the life of the batteries, but with technology changing so rapidly and buying crappy Imren (sp?) and Ultrafire batteries longevity was a drawback then. And I’d rather change batteries inside in the light than during a ride.
I’ve got enough lights and batteries now that on the rare occasions the power goes off I have multiple choices of lights using different battery sizes and chemistries that I’m still using rechargeables when the power comes back.
I’m not facing any kind of imminent threat. The 12 people are family and we have 5 families around us and two of them have children and we have the only basement, in case of bad summer weather. I’m just making sure that everything is ready to go. I don’t want to just, make sure that my family is safe, I want to make my neighbors safe as well.
Most of the lights that I have are because I’m a flashlight freak! Lol
You can’t predict when an emergency will happen. My son wants to buy everything under the sky that he thinks he will need.
I keep telling him, it’s OK to be prepared but you have to do it sensibly. I told him an emergency can happen today, tomorrow or never and it could happen so slowly that you don’t even see it, until it’s too late. For example, they can’t see every space rock out there and one big enough to level a city could sneak right by and cause a lot of destruction for miles around. You can’t be ready completely for something that you don’t know is coming.
That’s a good list. We basically have the same thing.
We have heated and cooled tents that sleep 5 but only 4 comfortably. In case we can’t sleep in our house. We will also use it in case we need extra sleep areas for people who we were not expecting. We have the ability to protect ourselves and our stuff.
We also have a lot of very usable farm type antiques for processing different food stuffs, that don’t rely on electricity, the sun or wind.
The one thing we don’t have is a bunker or backups of backups. We basically have enough stuff to get us through a winter and summer, until harvest. We aren’t peppers we just follow the same thing my grandma did and there wasn’t much variety in her plan. We will basically be eating the same thing for a while.
We are thinking of getting a freeze dryer for all the fruit and vegetables, to cut back on the amount of fragile jars that we have. We have more fruit than we can jar and freeze dryer is easier and saves storage space.
