The Alkaline batteries once again lasted about nine hours, and again the NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) rechargeable batteries were the clear winners by a minimum of four hours! But still I didn't act.Ī year after his first test Mike Sessler did another test to see how the rechargeable batteries were keeping up after a year of use. Well, I thought, this is great proof that rechargeable batteries are a great way to go. The results were surprising: ALL 5 rechargeable batteries he tested outlasted his Alkaline battery they lasted from one hour to four hours longer! I never again thought about going to rechargeable batteries, that is until 14 months ago when Mike Sessler (the Technical Arts Director at Coast Hills Community Church in Aliso Viejo, CA) ran a "Battery Shootout" on some Alkaline and rechargeable batteries. (We would put ours in a small tub with a "Free Used Batteries" sign and let people take them for use in toys, remotes, clocks, etc.) They are reliable but can be expensive and a waste because you are throwing them away with charge still on them. I don't know why I was so surprised when my little plan failed! The batteries would last 30 minutes and DIE! What a waste of money and time! (In retrospect, I shouldn't have bought the cheapest stuff, and I shouldn't have charged them and then let them sit six days, but that is beside the point.)īecause of this we have always used regular old AA Alkaline batteries. I would put the batteries in to charge Sunday after church and a week later would use them Sunday morning. I went out and bought the cheapest rechargeable batteries and the cheapest charger I could find. If my opinion changes on this I will certainly let you know, but for now: I am excited that we went rechargeable, and I think other churches should too!Ībout 6 years ago I tried to take our little 250 person church "green" by using rechargeable batteries for our wireless body packs. by more than four hours (almost a third longer)! His test ran just under 14 hours, my test ran over 18! This could be for several reasons, including (but not limited to):Ī) we may not have played music as loud as he did,ī) the transmitters were five feet away from the receivers,Ĭ) we are using different transmitters than he is.Īnywho, I am super excited about the results from this test! Even worst case scenario we know that our new rechargeable batteries will last 16 hours, well more than we will ever need them! This is good to know so that when we are running the batteries we know not to freak out when we see two bars, but we should freak out when we see one bar!ģ) My one surprise, and the one difference from Mike Sessler's tests, was that my test ran longer than his. Just like in his tests the NiMH batteries lasted about 15% longer than the Alkaline batteries.Ģ) Also just like in Mike Sessler's tests, the NiMH batteries dropped bars quicker than the Alkaline batteries but in the end outlasted them. There are three main things I took away from this:ġ) The NiMH batteries won! No surprise here as Mike Sessler's battery test which this test is emulating (read about it here: Part 1 and Part 2) shows almost exactly the same graph. Note that they are the two that stay at three bars the longest but they are also the first two to drop off. I made the two Alkaline battery lines a green color to help group them together. Note: The graph shows the length of time (in hours) along the bottom axis and the number of bars the battery indicator shows on each transmitter on the left axis ("-1" indicating that it fully lost power). Yesterday I posted The Background, The Numbers, and The Setup for a battery test I ran overnight last night where I paired some regular Alkaline AA batteries against some rechargeable NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) AA batteries.
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