How do Lithium Batteries Wear Out?

How do Lithium Batteries Wear Out? Is it because of old age or the number of cycles of use? Also, do they have the memory effect of NiCad batteries?

I'm think of getting some extra lithium batteries - but I think they won't get to many cycles of use per year. So I don't want them to go bad just because of old age. I need the extra batteries because my laptop at 29% CPU usuage gets 1:33 hrs per battery.

 

No memory.
Deterioration is usually a function of cycles. And batteries are rated for expected cycles before significant deterioration starts to appear (although that is not listed in the specs)

You can store Li batteries without them going bad. Just make sure they never go empty. And someone once mentioned here having them at half charge in a cold environment, or fridge.

 

Most Lithium batteries like qwester said start to wear down after a cretin number of cycles. Most laptop Lithium batteries last about 200-300 cycles before the charge that they hold starts to rapidly decrease. With a battery that I had in a laptop, the battery life decreased from 2 hours to only about 30 minutes. Now It doesn't really hold a charge, and I have replaced the battery. Batteries that are in hot environments won't last as long. Its important to keep your battery out of the sun and in a dry, cool place to prevent corrosion.

 

Check this post for some details and links

http://forums.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1250564&postcount=6

 

the original battery for my old thinkpad 600E simply stopped working, had not been used much at all. However, those batteries apparently had issues.

 

On my old Satellite 5005, it had a Lithium-Ion battery, but after about a year and a half, it would go from full charge to drained in about 10-15 minutes.

Matt

 

Li-ion n Li-po s have a one year shelf life that means that if you plan on having your computer work for considerable time you need to get new ones every year... on DR notebooks that time will be significantly shorter due to extreme heat and way over 100W current draws... if you have a crappy laptopp with decent batterypack you could use it for 2 to 3 years if youre lucky and very kind to your battery pack, also the cells cannot drop below certain level else they become explosive upon charging, the circuit killswitch is incorporated into the pack so if you say discharge your battery to "safe" minimum and leave it on the table for a month or two it will NEVER charge again due to falling below critical charge... nothing else can be done since all of this is due to the battery chemistry that so far is not the best in life...

fun fact, when buying cells check for date, any decent cell will have a built and expiration date with a one year warranty

 

If I knew about that 1 yr shelf life maybe I wouldn't have gotten my 3rd & 4th 9 cell batteries. But I only paid $71 each shipped straight from Dell through an ebay seller. Genuine Dell batteries on ebay - $54 vs $179 Dell.

Is it best practice to use each battery say at least 1 full cycle to 6% discharge each 2 weeks rather than leave them charged or partially charged and stored not being used per month? In essence, better to use them a bit then to not use them at all?

 

its about the same wither way, personally id keep all of them in very light use like 1 for every day of the week, should last you 2 years since you got enough of them to cycle through 30min powercycles later on

btw keep it at closer to mid charge in case you forget about them since they leak power on a daily basis