Originally Posted by
prathmann
The per cell cost is certainly higher with NiMH, but I find the life-cycle cost to be far less. I pay about $2/cell for NiMH, but they've been giving me well over 500 full charge cycles before starting to drop in capacity. So the cost per charge is less than 0.4 cents (plus about 0.1 cents for the electric power per charge). In comparison, you indicate a cost per alkaline cell of $0.50 and in my experience you'll get fewer than 10 charge cycles - and only that many if you are careful to never let the charge state get much below 50%. So on average maybe about 5 effective full charge cycles. That makes the cost per full charge cycle about 10 cents or about 20 times as high as for NiMH. [And that's before considering the possible costs due to damaged electronics from an alkaline cell that wasn't meant to be recharged and ends up leaking as a result.]
I have yet to have a alkaline cell leak on me. Can't say the same for the NiMH I've bought in the past. Granted they're probably not the same manufacturer as yours, but I just am finding this setup far more economical. I'm seeing NiMH cells for about $4 each.
These have a one year guarantee. I seriously doubt they would last for 500 charges. From my experience the alkaline batteries have been a far more economical setup. Granted I was paying about $2 per cell, but even at that, I've been far happier with what I have now.
I did take stock of things that are being powered by AA and AAA batteries around my pad and I have a really hard time grasping that someone needs to charge any of the batteries I'm using on my stuff 500 times. What the heck are you powering? Even my bike lights are no longer powered by AA or AAA batteries. OK I still have my Plant Bike lights, but the new lights are powered by Li-ion batteries.