I have a cheap solar powered light next to my driveway - just puts out a small light to show were my sidewalk starts. It has a single AA NiMH that doesn’t want to take a charge using my Tenergy charger (red light just blinks indicating bad cell). Can I replace this with another run of the mill AA NiMH? It is marked “Solar Rechargeable” making me wonder if it is a special type of rechargeable?
The solar one is rated at 400mAh, probably use an older Tenergy 2600mAh as a replacement…?
any will do.
you can even use alkalines and they will work fine too
don’t need the highest capacity. small ones are more than enough as most of the time the cells don’t charge enough anyway
my cheap dollar store solar only uses 200mah and it lasts whole night
its likely a nicad as they are more abuse tolerant.
i would just use any aa i had that had gone “soft” as in low capacity,showing high on my c9000,ect.
who cares if it abuses it the rest of the way to total death.
The few I’ve looked closely at when pulling the cell for replacement were NiCad. Dump in any NiMh and you’re good-to-go. Not enough charge current to hurt anything with these.
Phil
yep I just toss in a NIMH & I don’t even use a decent one but usually something I consider no longer up to snuff for flashlight use (i.e. other ppl overdischarging Eneloops in remotes which my hobby charger somewhat “saved/resurrected”.} These have worked great in the dozen or so solar lights which I plugged them in.
This also kinda reminds me not to be so lazy & maybe drag them all in for some upkeep (i.e. clean up the light housings, refresh the batteries w/ a cycling or 2)
AZ
EDIT - They were swapped for over 1-2 years ago
While our solar lights are a great place to use our old, fading nimh, the Eneloop lite seems to be the ultimate solar light cell if someone has a favorite solar light that they want to feed a new battery.