Re: Li-Ion Shelf Life: Outdated?

Actually, Lithium batteries of all kinds have the longest life of any battery chemical system.

As for Lithium ion rechargeable batteries in particular, they can last a decade with proper care (which, among other things, requires SOME use and charging). I service laptopns and have dozens that were made in 1995-1997 that are still nearly as good as new.

Lithium batteries have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles. The number varies, but it's in the mid hundreds (and I'm not sure how partial cycles figure into this).

Also, these batteries must not be discharged below a lower threshold, and deep discharges shorten their life.

Finally, they don't like overcharging and they don't like heat. Various laptops designs all impinge on these areas to give either long or short battery life; so a given charging circuit design might or might not prevent overcharging, a given power monitoring design might or might not prevent deep discharging, and a given overall laptop design might or might not minimize exposure to heat (heat generated not by the battery but by other components of the laptop).

The most conservative advice is to remove the battery when it's not in use, when the laptop is going to be plugged into the wall for days or longer. But however you do it, if you take care of the battery, and if your actual use (cycles) doesn't get into the mid hundreds, they can last for a very long time. Conversely, take a laptop that exposes the battery to heat, whose charging design overcharges the battery (which produces internal heat), and which allows the battery to become deeply discharged, and you cancreate a situation in which a battery is essentially destroyed in 6 months or so.


Daveman750 wrote:

My understanding from extensive reading that I have done on the subject
is that Li-Ion batteries have a finite, relatively short shelf life,
even when not in use. However, it seems from personal experience that
this is simply not true. I have purchased two separate CompUSA
Amerinote AN laptops from 1999 or 2000 on Ebay, and both came with
working Li-Ion batteries that held charges. I am not sure of the
history of these laptops, but I do know that most likely these were the
original batteries, as new replacements are almost impossible to find.
I also purchased a used Dell C600 laptop that was apparently 4 years
old, and it gets approximately 2 hours of battery life.

Does anyone else have similar experiences? Is it possible that, while
at one time Li-Ion batteries did have limited shelf life, the chemistry
was improved years ago and we are just starting to see the effects of
these improvements now that those batteries are starting to age?

.

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