Li-Ion Batteries. Does the cold affect them?

will

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My laptop uses a Li-Ion 14.8, 5200mAh battery. I should get around 2 hours run time on a full charge. I had been getting that when the house was warm. This battery is only a few months old. Last night I used it for less than an hour and it was completely depleted. I was also charging my cell phone battery through the USB port. I had done that over the last few days, and it seemed that the charging had little effect on the run time. The only difference is that the house is much colder now.

Are Li-Ion batteries affected by the cold?

( Hurricane Sandy - no heat, no hot water, no power )
 

tam17

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Are Li-Ion batteries affected by the cold?

Ever noticed how your cellphone's battery status meter drops one or two bars "for no reason" when you take it out of your warm pocket in cold weather? Well, that's the answer.

Cheers
 

Yoda4561

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Yes, there are chemistries which are less sensitive to it though. Lithium ion cordless power tools went through that phase a while back, early batteries tended to loose power when it dropped below 40F or so. Most tool brands have switched to more cold resistant chemistries as of today, which function fine down to most temperatures that people would work in.
 

shadowjk

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With the screen off, and the computer otherwise idle, USB charging from my netbook has a 50-75% increase in power use.

On my Samsung, I can use "Performance monitor", and add "DIschargeRate" from category "BatteryStatus", to get a somewhat realtime graph of power use. (I set it to 10s refresh)

I'd imagine a normal laptop when idle still produces enough heat itself, that unless it has a particulary silly cooling profile, would heat itself up sufficiently in anything above freezing temps atleast.
 
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will

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Thanks for the replies - we just got power back and 'The Heat is On'
 

BobLight

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Thanks for the replies - we just got power back and 'The Heat is On'

It's good to hear you got power back. Your area really got hit hard. I hope things continue to improve.
 

moldyoldy

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My laptop uses a Li-Ion 14.8, 5200mAh battery. I should get around 2 hours run time on a full charge. I had been getting that when the house was warm. This battery is only a few months old. Last night I used it for less than an hour and it was completely depleted. I was also charging my cell phone battery through the USB port. I had done that over the last few days, and it seemed that the charging had little effect on the run time. The only difference is that the house is much colder now.

Are Li-Ion batteries affected by the cold?

( Hurricane Sandy - no heat, no hot water, no power )

Good that you have AC power back! life sort of will return to normal after a week or so.

However, back to a question which was implied but not asked: your laptop consumes noticeably more power when the USB port is enabled to charge an external device when the laptop is powered down, "totally" turned off, even w/o plugging in any device to be charged. That is the same problem with leaving the Ethernet port alive when the laptop is turned off - just to "wake up" the laptop if the appropriate signal is received on the Ethernet line. Very few consumers use those features, but they do consume power during what consumers think is a powered-down condition.
 

will

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I know when I power down the laptop, the charge indicator on the cell phone stops, so I am reasonably sure the USB port is dead as well. BUT not 100%
 

czAtlantis

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It differs model to model - some models have power only when on standby/sleep (suspended to RAM) and with device connected before sleep (if you connect mouse etc it will remain powered), with no device connected it will disconnect USBs from power.
Some have power on standby/sleep even with no device connected.
Some models have power even completely shut down but only when connected to AC.
Some models (Lenovo) have option in BIOS if you want powered USBs when laptop is off.
You should really try it on your laptop
 
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