Battery Life Extender (was check this out)

[Sunna]

give your batterys 800percent more life


http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/personalf...id=U219DHP

hi blackthorn , shopping again ...

[Geordie_Rob]

Very interesting. I'll be looking out for these in the future.

[Sunna]

me too , but it just seem too good to be true , cant wait to test them out.

[Geordie_Rob]

It sounds similar to what a mppt charge controller does on solar setup (if I've understood charge controllers right anyway). It takes a voltage from solar output (about 18v), converts it to mains 240 then converts it back to the 12v charge leisure batteries. This sounds like it'll be something similar, but on a tiny scale

[iaaems]

The comments that followed on from the article were somewhat interesting.
If you can find the time - try a google on 'joule thief' this might lead you to some info on how to get more from dry cells.

[Straight Shooter]

A must have ...when they come out !....

[Devonian]

The problem with these kind of things is that Duracell or one of the other big battery manufacturers will simply buy out the company and it's patents and then shelve the whole idea so it never goes into production as it would cost them too much in lost revenue if it did.

The best solution for consumers however, would be for the battery manufacturers to actually take this on and integrate into the battery design in the first place, which wouldn't be too difficult to do?

[Skvez]

There are a couple of big caveats with this technology.
Yes the battery drops fairly quickly from 1.5V to 1.4V
But only a few things stop working at 1.4V, most products keep going down to 1.2V or lower.
If this were not the case rechargeables wouldn't be useable in any of these products.
So you can expect to see big life improvements on only a few very-voltage-fussy items.

It would make much more sense if this technology was integrated into the power supply of the device itself instead of the battery, and in many cases this is in fact the case.

So useful, perhaps for a few items.
But imagining your batteries are all going to last 8 times longer ... alas no.
Typical battery discharge Voltage curves tell me you might get an extra 10 or 20% out of your batteries, but an extra 800% is just not rational.