Best practice: recharging Li-ion batteries?

[MikeW]

My daily commute is 8.5 miles each way. I can do the round trip on a single, full charge, with a little left in the tank by the time I get home. Because the charger weighs next to nothing I tend to take it with me and charge the battery in the office most days and repeat the process at home overnight. Whenever I charge it, I leave it to charge fully.

What is the consensus on best practice to prolong the effective life of the battery? Let it run down before charging, charge it at every opportunity, or doesn't it matter? Any other tips?

Thanks
Mike

 

[flecc]

Charge at every opportunity with lithium batteries, and avoid fully discharging as much as possible. Like SLA and unlike NiCad and NiMh, they prefer cyclic charging for long life.
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[tillson]

My daily commute is 8.5 miles each way. I can do the round trip on a single, full charge, with a little left in the tank by the time I get home. Because the charger weighs next to nothing I tend to take it with me and charge the battery in the office most days and repeat the process at home overnight. Whenever I charge it, I leave it to charge fully.

What is the consensus on best practice to prolong the effective life of the battery? Let it run down before charging, charge it at every opportunity, or doesn't it matter? Any other tips?

Thanks
Mike

For the last couple of months, I have been trying to keep the charge level in my battery between 20 and 80%. I do this using a time clock to switch the charger on for a set amount of time. Because I only use the bike for travelling to and from work, it is possible to fine tune the charge time at each end of the trip to maintain the desired level of charge.

Its too early to tell if this has made any difference to the battery life, but from what I understand, keeping the charge level away from the two extremes of 100 and 0% should reduce the stress on the cells. Of course there us still the cell ageing factor to consider.

My battery is suffering the effects of age and use. My experience is that battery life is exaggerated by Manufacturers and they don't live up to their claims by some considerable margin.