All batteries will fail at some time, when they've been in use for longer intervals. But premature battery failure is among the main frustrations people face.
Common thinking is that turning devices off extends battery life, but what happens is the opposite. Devices consume more power when they're starting up, so turning them off is not such advisable if they will be switched on frequently.
Cars and Other Automobiles
You should protect the car battery from high under the hood temperatures if you use a case or a heat shield. The battery life can be extended by keeping the battery charged all the time. Electrolyte levels must be checked frequently during the hot months. Research conducted recently revealed that relocating the battery outside the engine compartment has increased its life by almost eight months. Car manufacturers are relocating the starting battery to the passenger compartment or the trunk to avoid under the hood temperatures. It assists to to use wet batteries vented to the outside or cells that don't produce gas when recharged. Based on the driving of each individual, some batteries are undercharged and this can lead to sulfation, where lead sulfate gets accumulated, reducing the battery capacity. An external battery may be used for charging.
For any battery, the main factor to consider is the temperature. Ensuring they aren't exposed to too much heat can extend the life of a battery. It's sensible that high temperatures lead to faster chemical reactions. They should be watered more often with only deionized or demineralized water. However, rain water is a great substitute to pull up quickly. As well as the temperature, a decrease in the amount of discharge/charge cycles significantly improves battery service life. In extremely cold climates, the car battery must be continuously kept fully charged when not being used.
Portable Electronic Devices
Battery life can be increased for iPods, cell phones, laptops etc. by lowering the brightness when not necessary. For example, when using these devices in a dark room, it's not necessary to set the brightness to 100%. The brightness can be lowered enough so the screen is visible without exerting any strain on the eyes can be achieved. The quantity of time the backlight stays on may also be decreased. For iPods it doesn’t have to stay on for 10 seconds, 2 seconds should be good enough. Laptops can be set in hibernate mode when not being used.
One most important point that not many people know about is that turning down the volume increases battery life. Use headphones that are louder and leave the volume at 50%.
Background applications are power hungry monsters. Stop everything that isn't being used. Defragmenting the hard drive every now and then helps decrease file scatter on the hard drive and uses up less power. Send the computer into standby mode after a certain period of inactivity as it conserves battery. Although, standby resume also uses some power but less than starting up. Interestingly, leaving a CD or DVD in the drive can decrease battery life, as it hogs power whenever the drive spins up.
In Wi-Fi Applications
Battery life in Wi-Fi apps can be prolonged by either increasing battery capacity or reducing Wi-Fi product power consumption and through control methods. It is possible to increase battery capacity; however, due to technological limits, it can lead to an increase in cost and size of the battery. That brings us to the option of reducing power consumption, which can be achieved by prolonging the standby time and shortening the time of the active cycle. You may also turn off the WiFi on the iPod when not being used as it consumes a lot of life.
These techniques of low power consumption can improve battery life dramatically. Many of them are common sense usage techniques and may be easily made part of our daily lives. Eventually however battery efficiency decreases, luckily this process can be reversed, using the easy techniques in this Recondition Old Batteries guide you can restore your batteries to the condition they were originally in.
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