Battery Guide Battery FAQs Battery Handling Battery

Battery Guide Battery FAQs Battery Handling Battery

This guide can help you understand rechargeable batteries and proper handling that will maximize battery life.

The information contained in this document is for general purposes. It only represents technical opinions at the time of publishing. It does not guarantee any item or effect any product warranties given.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why are rechargeable AA batteries 1.2V instead of 1.5V like alkaline batteries?

·         The chemistry of the battery. Everything chemical has a certain electric potential. The battery voltage is the difference between these two potentials. The classical chemicals for batteries was carbon and zinc, which produce 1.5V. Rechargeables, which are based on nickel and cadmium or nickel and hydrogen, produce 1.2V. The lead acid cells in your car battery, on the other hand, produce 2V, and lithium chemistries produce 3V while most Lithium Ion chemistries produce 3.6V.

Some Li-Ion or LiPo batteries have different voltage ratings, what is the difference between them?

·         All batteries have a nominal voltage rating: the typical voltage of a battery as it is discharged. Lithium-Ion and LiPo cells typically have a nominal voltage rating of 3.6V or 3.7V, and a few have 3.85V ratings. All else being equal, the higher voltage cells will store slightly more energy. In practice, differences in capacity rating and discharge curves can have much larger effects than the slight voltage difference. Since some of the best cells on the market are 3.6V, it is better to consider both voltages and narrow your search via other qualities first. The voltage difference gets larger when building battery packs with multiple cells in series, so you will often see packs labeled 7.2V or 7.4V, 10.8V or 11.1V, 14.4 or 14.8V, and so on. The difference is still slight regardless of whether it is a single cell or a large pack