The Lifespan of a 18650 Battery

A conventional Li ion 18650 battery can last in between 300-500 cycles before seeing a large performance decrease. That is a rather good range and we will talk about some points you can do to prolong the lifespan of a 18650 battery to 500 or perhaps a lot more cycles.

When we talk about the charge cycle, this suggests charging the battery to 4.1-4.2 V and discharging to 2.5-3.0 V. When a battery starts to age, you will see reduced capacity slowly with time. When a cell is coming to the end of its life cycle, you can see a quick and sudden drop in performance.

A few things that can modify the lifespan of a battery:

Charge Rate of 18650 Battery:

A few battery chargers now in the marketplace are rated to charge at 4 A or even 6 A. Remember this fast charging can be hassle-free yet can additionally severely lower the lifespan of a battery. To charge the batteries, a healthy range is anywhere in between 0.5 A and 2 A.

Charge prior to usage:

When you charge a 18650 cell to 4.2 V as well as maintain it on standby for numerous days, this places stress on a battery. If you do not prepare on utilizing them right away, it is best to keep the 18650 batteries in a discharged state.

Battery charger:

Ensure your charging device shuts off when a 18650 battery has actually ended up charging and remove the batteries from your device when charging is done. The reason for removing 18650 batteries from the charger is that the batteries naturally lose energy with time and the battery charger will certainly notice this drop and turn itself on again to charge the battery. This consistent on/off charging can actually diminish the lifespan of the 18650 battery.

Charging/Discharging:

If you can prevent discharging the 18650 batteries lower than 3.0 V and not all the way down to 2.5 V, this can actually assist to extend the lifespan of the battery. The same is the case while charging a battery. Prevent charging the battery above 4.1 V. Maintaining your battery in this range minimizes the stress on a battery causing its lifespan to almost double. So, try to keep the battery within 3-4.1 V.

Temperature:

Your 18650 batteries can age at a faster rate if they are kept above 45 degrees Celsius or below 0 degrees Celsius. You ought to never ever charge or utilize the 18650 batteries when the temperature level is outside this range as it can badly damage the lifespan of the battery.

Once the battery life cycle has finished, we recommend you recycle it to assist in safeguarding the environment.