Panasonic Eneloop AAA NiMH: Four Years of Blinking

Having replaced the Planet Bike Superflash on Mary’s Tour Easy with a 1 W red LED, testing the eight Panasonic Eneloop AAA cells that have been powering it (and the one on my bike) for the last four years seemed useful:

The sheaf of curves over on the right came from the first full charge, with the untidy collection below them show the current state after a full charge. This is at an unreasonably high 500 mA discharge.

The overall capacity has dropped by 10%, which isn’t all that bad, but the 10% voltage reduction toward the end of the curves is a Bad Thing for an LED flasher intended to run from 1.5 V alkaline cells. In practice, I recharge the batteries once a week while they are still going strong, but the difference between alkalines and NiMH cells is obvious even at full charge.

Now I can run four pairs through the aging Superflash on my bike …