Battery Station Lithium AA: Sudden Death - AGAIN!

Phaserburn

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 30, 2003
Messages
4,755
Location
Connecticut, USA
I use 3 of Battery Station lithium AA primaries in my EliteMax (with "blaster pack" leds), which draws around 450ma on high.

Suddenly, the light was putting out only a trickle of it's usual power. When I checked the cells with a DMM, one of them was reading zero volts. The other two were right around 1.7V.

All 3 cells were new together from the same package. Anyone else have this happen with these cells?
 
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Re: Battery Station Lithium AA: Sudden Death

Phaserburn said:
I use 3 of Battery Station lithium AA primaries in my EliteMax (with "blaster pack" leds), which draws around 450ma on high.

Suddenly, the light was putting out only a trickle of it's usual power. When I checked the cells with a DMM, one of them was reading zero volts. The other two were right around 1.7V.

All 3 cells were new together from the same package. Anyone else have this happen with these cells?
Somewhere there's a thread where I got a hugh amount of runtime using BS AA lithium cells in a Fluke 189 DMM compared to alkaline cells. I kept these cells and sometime later I checked them and one was bone dead too! I was going by when the low battery icon came on and the total voltage of fours cells.

If I read my notes here, I got 231 hours compared to Fluke specs of around 80 hours.
 
Re: Battery Station Lithium AA: Sudden Death

Hey Phaserburn, thank for the info and please make sure to report this to Kevin.
 
Re: Battery Station Lithium AA: Sudden Death

Ok, it happened again. I loaded my EliteMax with fresh BS lithium AAs. It worked for a little while, and then... it died.

I checked each cell for voltage and got 1.7V, 1.69V, and... 0.2V. What gives? Is there something about a PWM led light that is bringing these cells to their knees, or what? The current load is under 500ma.

For now, I've reloaded the EliteMax with Energizer lithiums. We'll see how they do in comparison.
 
Re: Battery Station Lithium AA: Sudden Death

I tested flash amps of the batch i had gotten not that long ago. One was substantially lower than the rest.
 
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This has happened to me three times with Energizer AA lithiums. I used them in my modded minimag with slightly increased battery spring tension. I noticed that the center of the negative end of each dead cell had collapsed some 0,5 mm - something that I could not see in the cells that were ok. I guess that this little collapse of the cell case had caused an internal short.

-Nereus
 
what the heck? That sucks that it happend with you energizer lithiums...

lithiums are my backup batteries and that makes me very worried... i've heard 123 lithiums that loose their juice all of a sudden... yikes.. i'll have to keep an eye on this...

Thanks for the info!
 
I had a BS lithium AA that wouldn't power a single cell light even though it read 1.7V on the meter. It was only that one though.

-LT
 
Actually, when i bought my Fenix L1P from 4sevens, it shipped with a Batterystation AA lithium. So the torch is riding on my belt at work, i pull it out to play with it and notice the torch was really warm, yet it wasn't on :shrug: . Lithum dangers flashing through my head, quickly took battery out and it was hot =/. Instantly measured it with a DMM (i work in an electronics store) and it read 0 volts :wtf: I'm hoping the Batterystation CR123s are better QC'd, as i'm planning to change to those...
 
This is most curious...and coincidental. A colleague of mine bought a pair of BatteryStation AA lithium cells from me for his cassettte tepe recorder. After more than a month, he reported that the speed seemed slow and asked me to test the cells. One cell was dead; the other was practically at full strength.
 
Paul_in_Maryland said:
This is most curious...and coincidental. A colleague of mine bought a pair of BatteryStation AA lithium cells from me for his cassettte tepe recorder. After more than a month, he reported that the speed seemed slow and asked me to test the cells. One cell was dead; the other was practically at full strength.

Perhaps something strange is happening when the cells are used in series.
 
A very fortunate read for me (this post). I was about to order 40 BS lithium AA to feed my Fenix L2p. I'll pass now!!!!
 
There's a related thread running right now (are 123's unreliable).

I'm starting to have some concern about lithium batteries in general. As I say in the other thread I've had no issues with 123A batts until this year when suddenly I had 2 (of a package of 12) surefire batts DOA and then not too long after I had 5 (of a package of 24) Pentagonlight batts misbehaving. Three were DOA and two more provided very inconsistant power.

So these events (and the threads here on CPF) caused me to also go looking at the Energizer Lithium AA batts I use.
The new set of two in the headlamp I keep in the car were fine.
The 1 month old set of two in the flashlight I keep in the car had one fine and one a -little- low but not bad enough for concern.
The brand new set of 4 I keep in my camera bag as backup for my flash (I normally run NiMH's in my flash) had two fine, one stone dead and one very low ?!?

What the flipping frak is going on here?!?

As you may imagine, I'm composing letters to both Pentagon Lights and to Energizer to try and alert them to possible issues.
 
I've seen this happen three times in the last few weeks. Loading 8 lithiums in series results in 1 or 2 dead batteries after less than an hour of runtime with current not exceeding 500ma...
 
Well I got a very nice customer service reply from PentagonLights regarding my battery findings...and then I slagged my computer to make way for a new one so I've gotta go back into my archives and find the email again.
 
I noticed a similar thing with my MiniHID.

Loaded it with batts (it uses a Modamag 4x123 carrier) and used it for about an hour or so before it started to dim noticably.

When I checked the batts (meter packed away, used a single cell LED light) two were flat. Wouldn't even light the test light, while the other two cells performed as thought hey had a full charge.

Do 123s somehow drain sequentially when placed in series? I always assumed the power draw was across all the cells in a series...simultaneously.

I'm confused...:eek:oo:
 
The factory has been reading this but has no explanation. After doing
some
searches, I see quite a few problems with Energizers too. Of course
they
sell many millions of them so there would be more issues just due to
numbers.
We keep 100 out of every lot number here for future testing. Thus far
we
have not experienced this trouble with them here. I have no clue what
has
caused this.
We have sold tens of thousands of them to Hollywood with only one
similar
failure and it was in very cold conditions filming in the arctic.
Should
not have failed there either.

Kevin Falkner
www.batterystation.com

The Battery Station
303 Washington Ave.
West Plains MO 65775
417-257-7799

I just sent him a email real fast.
 
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