Am I overcharging my batteries?

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Z-Lee

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  • Apr 17, 2021
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    I have 18650 batteries. My charger is a Nightcore Q2. Sometimes I put batteries in the charger for the day and forget (hey I'm 60) and they also sit overnight. The last time, they were in the charger for 24 hours. I'm sure it has some protection (reduces charging rate) but not sure it actually stops charging. It's a simple charger (no screen... just LED lights) so I can't check actual voltage. I also remember a video by Mooch saying it's better to only charge them to 80% (in fact, it also mentioned only letting them get down to 20%) Any thoughts on this?
    For optimum battery health and life span, it's actually better to only charge or store them up to 60%. I believe that's around 3.9V, but you're losing almost half of your battery discharge. Also why laptops using "battery health" mode will only charge to 60% and keep it there. The reason they say 80% is because it's a decent middle ground between 100 and 60. You can expect about 3x the recharge cycles if continuously charged to 80%, and about 8x the recharge cycles if only charged to 60%.

    In regards to the discharge limit, it's likely best not to bottom the battery out unless you're OCD and recharge them asap. That 20% or even 10% will give you a little buffer if you forget to recharge them or let them sit a while, it won't ruin the battery. There are also some batteries that have a lower end discharge range down to 2.5 to help maintain that buffer.

    Here, I dug this up because I wasn't positive if what I remembered was completely accurate. It's close:

    upload_2021-8-21_8-18-49.png


    Continuous full discharges will also gradually increase the internal resistance of the battery. I missed this on the first read through.
    upload_2021-8-21_8-33-35.png




    This is a really good read if you wanna know more.
    BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries
     
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