Hi all
Just wondering if anyone knows if i can use a NI-MH AA Battery Charger to charge AA NI-CD Solar Light Batteries
And also if i fit Ni-MH Batteries in the Light (My anchor light) will the Solar Panel charge them
Any help would be appreciated
Regards Don
Quick answer to both question is yes you can. Longer answer is that it may not work as well as you would hope, reason being that most NiMH batteries have a higher capacity than what NiCd batteries have. So it could be that your NiMH charger will overcharge your NiCd batteries and render them useless.
Your anchor light batteries will be charged by the solar panel charger, but, once again it may overcharge them unless regulated, as NiMH batteries do not like getting hot as they would if you were to recharge them to quickly with too much current.
Lastly get rid of your NiCd batteries, but please dispose of the nasty toxic things safely and not just overboard.
Just to clarify the solar panel is just the little 2 inch square one on the top of the light
Regards Don
In that case it may not charge them as it will probably not have the capacity especially in the winter months with reduced sunlight hours. When you said solar panel charger I was thinking the somewhat larger panels used for charging house batteries.
Harry
Thanks for the information so far
What i have is a HPM 2 led Garden Light on my Spacesailer 20 that is on a mooring outside our house at Port Huon (a bit low tech here in Tassie 
)
I know that on the Mooring i dont have to show a anchor light but i leave it on all the time just incase someone hits it on a dark night (the boat has a dark green hull) and so when i get home at night (it is dark here now at 5pm) i can see that it hasn't floated away or sunk
When the light was new it would stay on all night (in summer) but now in winter it goes off around midnight
It is powered by 2 AA NI Cd and i thought i would get a charger and 2 more batteries and give the batteries a occasional run on the charger to fully charge them but the only charger i can find locally is a NI MH one
Also there is lots of NI MH batteries available and this is why i asked the question
One the mooring at night it isn't critical that it runs all night but if we overnight down the river at anchor i would like it to run all night long so if i had another set of fully charged batteries i could take them with us for the night
Regards Don
Suck it and see...
That panel won't have enough energy to damage anything, so you should be fine.
I'd imagine that the NiMH batteries would last longer for a given state of charge, but anything's possible.
(btw I would think that the NiCad batteries are also fine, but they're not getting enough charge during the winter days, which would mean that putting NiMH batteries in won't help the cause... in that case you need bigger solar panels)
Hi D107, I did the same, and it works very well...how long?
Well, little solar is hopeless and bat. dies very quickly,
simply because they are discharged continuously below 1 volt.
No more money for NI-MH and
I use clear plastic tube, fitted with hi - brightness led
through resistor from house bat. Current 0.03 A, use any bat. decent size not AA.
Now I often go overboard, I
fitted about 15 hi- brightness leds in little COKE bottle.
You get lighthouse in middle of the bay. Just make sure They can see me.
