Battery Technology

["VanDerWal, Peter" <vanderwp@fhu.disa.mil>]

> NiCd is too tempermental and has a
>serious memory effect last I heard, and I don't know much about NiMh. 

Old myth.  First of all the memory effect only applied to dry cell NiCads
not the wet cell ones that are commonly used in EV's, secondly modern dry
cell NiCads aren't effected by it much any more, and thirdly the "memory
effect" never really existed (at least not in the form most people thought
of)

What happened was that NiCads (dry cell) that weren't cycled properly (fully
discharged) developed a depressed voltage, but they still stored a full
charge.  However, most electronics devices determined that the batteries
were dead by their voltage level.  A depress voltage NiCad might only show
1.1 Volts(per cell) instead of 1.2 volts when fully charged.  If you put
this in a device designed to say the batteries were dead when they reached
1.09V per cell, it thinks the battery is dead after only a few minutes.

Anyway, it's irrelevant.  Flooded cell NiCads don't act like this (as far as
I know).