So I bought an octet of Sanyo Eneloop NiMH cells from the usual Amazon source and ran a few charge / discharge tests, with the hope of powering my Sony DSC-H5 for more than a few dozen minutes at a time. It’s Marching Band season!
The cells bear a laser-etched 09-10-IF date code that I assume means October 2009, because they arrived in early September 2010. Rumor has it that Eneloop cells come off the manufacturing line factory-charged to 75% of their nominal 2.0 Ah; all eight arrived with the same charge: 1.43 Ah. Given the vagaries of measuring battery capacity, that’s 95% of what they started with, nearly a year ago.
The eight 500 mA constant current discharge curves are essentially identical:
The first charge after that test was individual cells in a 400 mA charger, the second as a complete 8-cell pack with a 900 mA charger. Those two discharge curves for the pack, again at 500 mA, also overlay nicely:
The pack voltage remains above 9.6 V for about 1.5 Ah, far better than the tired assortment of cells in my collection (albeit those were measured at 1 A, not 500 mA).
These should get me through an entire day of Marching Band travel, setup, practice, and competition!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
5 responses to “Sanyo Eneloop: First Charges”
As fate (?) would have it, I needed to find OEM quantities of Eneloops. http://www.tocad.com/oembatteries.html is the right place, which I tracked down today. I spent some time talking with George at that address on the phone, today.
Sanyo seems to go out of their way to make these *hard* to find in OEM quantities. Buy lower quantities direct from their store:
http://us.sanyo.com/Battery-Products
http://us.sanyo.com/SANYO-Store/eneloop-Batteries
http://www.eneloop.info/ run flash block unless you want to see the capacity, ah, stuff.
Have the even hard to find link to the data sheet at work, will get tomorrow.
I can’t imagine how you found those folks… certainly not through their website.
Thanks for the information!
http://www.eneloop.info/products/manuals-and-catalogue.html has the data sheets.
Thanks kindly!
The AA dimensions are right up against the maximum limits; I thought they were chubbier than other cells.
[…] flash set to Soft (whatever that is). The H5 has much better macro capability… and with the new Eneloop cells, it lasts long enough to make it usable in the […]