refresh aa eneloops

[crazyk4952]

It seems that most good nimh chargers have a refresh cycle that does a charge-discharge-charge. How often do you refresh your eneloops that don't see a lot of use?

 

[Verndog]

It seems that most good nimh chargers have a refresh cycle that does a charge-discharge-charge. How often do you refresh your eneloops that don't see a lot of use?

Never. I have 20 Eneloops idle that are waiting to change into the next device. So they are running prob, 30 days or so after charging. But personally if they sat 6 months then I'd cycle them but not refresh. IMO refresh is overkill for perfectly good Eneloops, and back to back charges is typically not all that good for NiMh cells.

 

[lwknight]

I have tried the refresh on eneloops and gained a little but mostly its not worth the hassle unless a battery starts under performing expectations. However , if I had partially discharged and/or intermittently used cells going to a situation where dead batteries would be inconvenient , I would cycle them rather than top off.

 

[Wrend]

Yeah, I agree, it can help improver their performance somewhat, but they have continued to perform well enough for me either way, so it has never been an issue.

When I first get my Eneloops, I'll do a slow discharge at 100mA on the C9000, then a break-in for 1900mAh for the AAs and 800mAh for the AAAs. This will help to refresh them somewhat out of the package and also tests their capacities to compare to later and helps me to arrange them in series cell sets which have similar capacities to use together.

So if they start seeming to under perform, I'll do another 100mA discharge followed by a break-in to help refresh them some more and to compare how they're holding up.

As I've mentioned in other threads, all my Eneloops are still performing like new, even my 4 year old first generation ones. They just keep on truckin'.