Oh no, not again. The so called "memory" effect is mostly myth or misunderstanding. The true "memory" effect has only be documented in sattelites that were discharged precisely to the same point (by computer) every day. When they tried to reprogram the computer and use more of the batteries capacity they discovered that the batteries remembered the previous point and wouldn't work past it.
The "memory" effect that most people attribute to standard consumer type nicads (flashlight type batteries) is actually a depressed voltage caused by poor charging. All of the capacity is still available but it's at a lower voltage. Unfortunately most consumer items decide that the nicads are "dead" when they get below 1V per cell (which happens sooner on cells with depressed voltage) so they indicate that the batteries are dead even though they still have 1/2 their charge left.. You can correct this problem by discharging the cell all the way and recharging it a few times. Or you can avoid the problem by getting a good battery charger in the first place. Saft requires you to have a charger that meets certain criteria or they won't honor their warranty, so it should happen with their cells anyway. Besides I don't think flooded nicads have this problem (but I could be wrong). Patchem, Eric EM2 wrote: >What about loss of capacity due to "memory effect" in NiCd batteries? Would >allowing the batteries to sit partially charged affect capacity? > > >
