The Native Iowan

A glorious, sunny, cool, sound filled morning here. It got very cool last night. It’s 830am and Im still wrapped in a blanket. Very nice.

I have been looking to buy new batteries for my cordless tools… or I need to buy new tools. Both are costly.

I am loath to retire (throw away) the older tools. They still work. I haven’t killed them yet. But my batteries are failing. Im not sure how old these tools are. In the past 8 years (since I bought this farm) I have purchased two “kits”. Kits normally give you a selection of cordless tools with batteries and charging station. Here’s the 2 kits I have:

Plus, Ive bought stand alone tools with battery, and a few “skins”… tools without batteries. Ive got two charging stations, one in my garage and one in my workshop. Right now I’d say I have 8 batteries on charge. Its a rare day I dont use a cordless tool… And my batteries are failing.

I keep a drill/ driver around all the time. I use the impact driver a lot. The reciprocating “saws-all” unit is always in use. The cordless grinder busy, busy. The skil-saw is used less. The hammer drill used even less. I have a mini compressor/ tire gauge that gets a lot of use. There are other tools… the leaf blower, a decent work-light. Others… I tend to manage my batteries well. I know batteries have a memory and if we dont manage that memory well we can lose the battery pretty quickly.

All rechargeable batteries have a finite lifespan and will slowly lose storage capacity as they age due to secondary chemical reactions within the battery whether it is used or not. Some cells may fail sooner than others, but the effect is to reduce the voltage of the battery. Lithium-based batteries have one of the longest idle lives of any construction. Unfortunately the number of operational cycles is still quite low at approximately 400–1200 complete charge/discharge cycles. The lifetime of lithium batteries decreases at higher temperature and states of charge(SoC), whether used or not; maximum life of lithium cells when not in use(storage) is achieved by refrigerating (without freezing) charged to 30%–50% SoC. To prevent overdischarge, battery should be brought back to room temperature and recharged to 50% SoC once every six months or once per year.

Replacement batteries are very costly:

The batteries alone represent one-third of the cost of the kits I noted.

My tools are worthless without the batteries.

We know the batteries are “disposable”. And, very luckily, these tools offer replaceable batteries. I note some items (like my cordless vac, and other things) dont offer an easily changed battery. They appear to be completely disposable.

I note well that there is little or no market for used cordless tools. Pawn shops are about the only place one can trade-in used battery operated tools.

Which leads me to ponder the future of Electric/ rechargeable vehicles.

I had not really looked at it all from this point of view, but…

Are EVs disposable automobiles?

Time to get some work done.

more later

Smiles