I've read your links, but I don't see much from reputable sources. By your stated logic, any charger that takes more than a little over 2 hrs to do a full charge is too slow and potentially damages the battery?

I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.

TakeTheActive said:Mawashi said:peas said:Mawashi said:I've tried the Full Refresh but after more than 36 hours the display wasn't showing FUll yet, is it supposed to take that long to refresh 4 AA 2300mah?...Yes it can take a long time to refresh a poorly conditioned battery. It will run the charge/discharge cycle up to 20 times, or until the charge capacity of the battery levels out. It sounds like your batteries are increasing their capacity enough with each cycle that the Lacrosse continues to run the refresh cycle. At a slow-charge 200mA rate, figure it takes 10 hours to fully charge a battery, plus another hour or two to discharge. If each cycle takes about 12 hours, that's 10 days for 20 refresh cycles (most batts don't need nearly that many).
Thank you for the explanation peas!
Mawashi,

At such a SLOW charge rate (2300mah @ 200ma = 0.087C), it going to take MUCH longer than peas stated. Figure on:

Charge:    (2300 / 200) * 1.2 = 13.8hrs (some charge turns into heat)
Discharge: (2300 / 100) * 0.8 = 18.4hrs (not all capacity can be retrieved)
 1 Cycle :  32.2hrs ( 1.34 days)
20 Cycles: 644.0hrs (26.83 days)

Charge:    (2300 / 1150) * 1.2 =  2.4hrs (some charge turns into heat)
 - but, the closest BC-900 rate is 1000ma, thus
Charge:    (2300 / 1000) * 1.2 =  2.8hrs (some charge turns into heat)
Discharge: (2300 /  500) * 0.8 =  3.7hrs (not all capacity can be retrieved)
 1 Cycle :   6.5hrs ( 0.27 days)
20 Cycles: 130.0hrs (5.42 days)

Charge:    (2300 / 2300) * 1.2 =  1.2hrs (some charge turns into heat)
 - but, the closest BC-900 rate is 1800ma, thus
Charge:    (2300 / 1800) * 1.2 =  1.5hrs (some charge turns into heat)
Discharge: (2300 /  900) * 0.8 =  2.0hrs (not all capacity can be retrieved)
 1 Cycle :  3.5hrs ( 0.15 days)
20 Cycles: 70.0hrs ( 2.92 days)

Piedone said:This is the first time I ever heard a statement praising fast-charge technique or chargers...0.5C - 1.0C is NOT fast-charge; 15 - 30 minutes is.

Piedone said:...All the articles and research that proved batteries charged above 900mAh shorten their charge/discharge cycle should be thrown out the window?Do you have LINKs to these 900mAh articles and research?

900mAh by itself is meaningless - the key is 'C' / Charge Rate (relative to battery capacity). I immersed myself in reading the CandlePower Forums over the past few weeks and there are several highly-technical folks / engineers over there that have personally done (and published) a great deal of research on rechargeable batteries and chargers going back several years.

If you go to the individual battery manufacturer pages and read their technical 'White Pages', you'll find the '0.5C - 1.0C terminating (automatically) at -Dv' as their top recommendation. Their other recommendation is 0.1C terminating (manually) at 16 hours.

Piedone said:...Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the chart but would like to know more, who knows, probably there are newer batteries out there that require an improved tech to go along.This is not 'new'.

So the "optimum" charging rate is half the rating of the battery (0.5c)? So 2600 mah rated batteries should be charged at 1300 ma? While I would love this personally (saves time) it goes against everything I've read on charging batteries for optimal usage and longevity. I've charged everything at 200 ma on my BC-900.

To others following this discussion, FYI...

Bobo04 said:

• So the "optimum" charging rate is half the rating of the battery (0.5c)?
  
• So 2600 mah rated batteries should be charged at 1300 ma?

NOTE: BOLD formatting added by me for emphasis on CR discussion.

BTW, I've also gone and pulled my 'stash' of DUMB Chargers (Timed and Untimed @ 80ma, 100ma, 140ma and 150ma) out of storage in order to perform STANDARD (sometimes referred to as "Forming" or "Break-In") Charges on some old <2000mAh AA cells (1300mAh, 1600mAh) that have been sitting for 'too long' to see if it can actually reduce crystallization and redistribute electrolyte as I read on the CPF.

Note that both La Crosse chargers are NOT timed and cannot be used for this purpose.

why did the bc900 drop the dc power adapter or cla (cigarette lighter adapter)
does anyone have experience using solar energy to power the 700

mdyoung said:I have a question about rechargeable batteries and chargers that I hope someone could answer. I have a Powerex MH-C240W charger and the Sanyo charger that came with the Eneloops. I have some older Energizer batteries that will not charger in the Powerex charger (the charge indicator lights start blinking), but the Sanyo charger charges them and the batteries seems to work fine otherwise. Is there a possible reason for this? Something wrong with the Powerex charger or with the batteries?

I would suspect it is because the Eneloop charger does its charging on a pair of batteries and the Powerex does its charging on single batteries. In other words, one of the batteries is defective and the Powerex senses this, whereas the Eneloop cannot sense this because it is examining a pair of batteries and the good one is masking the problems that the bad one has.

MISURICK said:$26.99
A good, intelligent charger is a must have for anyone relying on rechargables. This one is all that and under $30 it's a great deal.
Regarding the never-ending debate about the BC-700 vs BC-900, my opinion is: if the difference is only $5 - go for 900, if it's $10 or more - get the 700. Between $5 and $10, is harder to say but I'd stick with the 700 and use the savings to buy more Eneloops.

Has anyone hooked up an adapter to use this on c and d size batteries?

yes,but i have run it twice and the second time i get a little more charge after it is done. it takes forever

beethovengirl said:$24.99

Finally pulled the trigger, though I have to say I would've preferred it had cost $25 since it took me a half hour to come up with something else to buy to get free shipping.

$25.16