Charger reports excessive "mA charge"

The LaCrosse company makes a simple charger that reports additional information to whether a battery is fully charged.

The LaCrosse BC 9009 charger will report each cell's terminal voltage, the current rate of charge, the total mA during a charging session and time spent in a charging or discharging state.

Often my BC 9009 will appear to "over charge" - as in total mA my NiMH "AA" cells. For example it reports 2.82A for a 2600mA cell. Or maybe 2.34A for a 2100 mA cell.

What is going on here? Of course, if I recharge a half discharged cell the "total mA charge" is listed - perhaps 1400mA etc etc..

Hi burp.

That's normal with any NiMH/NiCd charger. Charging nickel based chemistry cells is not 100% efficient. Some of the energy is dissipated off as heat. Also, the older the cell, the less efficient charging becomes.

If you look around the forum, there is a lot of information here regarding charging all types of battery cells. The LaCrosse series of chargers are pretty well covered, as well as many others. Try the search function at the bottom of the forum page, or better yet, the "Google Search" at the top of each page. Also, the "sticky" contains a lot of threads bearing useful information.

Dave