New Charging station
- Thread starter Jtcrep
- Start date
koditten
Well-known member
Looks great.
Need to put a timer on the power strip. They don't need to be charging and wasting electricity 24/7.
I honestly don't know if it hurts or helps batteries to be charging 100%, I'm just too cheap to pay the electricity to light those little lights.
Later
KO
Need to put a timer on the power strip. They don't need to be charging and wasting electricity 24/7.
I honestly don't know if it hurts or helps batteries to be charging 100%, I'm just too cheap to pay the electricity to light those little lights.
Later
KO
ishiboo
Well-known member
Let's do some math
A single LED like on a charger is probably 6ma * 3 volts.... .018 watts.
.018 watts * 24 hours a day * 365 days a year = 158WH rounded up.
Divided by 1000 gives you .158 KW.
Multipled by your electricity rate, in my case .12 cents per kWh, gives me a total of 1.8 cents per year per LED bulb.
If you bought a $10 timer for this which used ZERO electricity itself, it would take you 555 bulb-years to account for the cost of the timer. If you had 8 battery chargers, you would break even on the timer in a mere 69 years.
Now, the charging circuitry itself probably does take some decent juice... at least MANY times what the LED does, and I have mine shut off with Insteon to keep it from burning the house down when a battery blows up or charger goes bad. Just found the explanation funny
ishiboo
Well-known member
Jtcrep... charging station is awesome and that's a nice HF box setup!
I need to figure out what to do with mine.
I need to figure out what to do with mine.
Strouty
Well-known member
OP that looks great, I second the timer.
The risk of fire would be the reason for the timer. Many garages and houses have burned due to lithium battery fires.
Let's do some math
A single LED like on a charger is probably 6ma * 3 volts.... .018 watts.
.018 watts * 24 hours a day * 365 days a year = 158WH rounded up.
Divided by 1000 gives you .158 KW.
Multipled by your electricity rate, in my case .12 cents per kWh, gives me a total of 1.8 cents per year per LED bulb.
If you bought a $10 timer for this which used ZERO electricity itself, it would take you 555 bulb-years to account for the cost of the timer. If you had 8 battery chargers, you would break even on the timer in a mere 69 years.
Now, the charging circuitry itself probably does take some decent juice... at least MANY times what the LED does, and I have mine shut off with Insteon to keep it from burning the house down when a battery blows up or charger goes bad. Just found the explanation funny
The risk of fire would be the reason for the timer. Many garages and houses have burned due to lithium battery fires.
As an insurance adjuster, I realize that I have dozens of things that *could* fail and start fire. My main concern isn't unattended charging but battery life. I am (probably wrongly) putting my faith in the Milwaukee engineers design of the charger to monitor the process and battery tempatures. I hope to get 5 years out of my cordless tool batteries - best case scenario is they last longer than that and I have something to sell when I upgrade. I have 8 panisonic drills, and 2 saws with 6 chargers and 10 useless batteries - can't sell, use em, or bring myself to throw them out. Really this was just a 15 minute project in the never ending battle to keep my garage organized and usable and wanted to share something back with my garage journal brothers as I lurk on the site for at least an hour every night.
rancherbill
Well-known member
Exactly, over the course of the years they use more than just the "light'. Depending on the style of power supply and how much electronics in them they can use a bunch.
I heard somewhere, that all the chargers in an average house add up to over 100 watts.
Moose364
Well-known member
Good looking set up on the charging station, and really like you HF box set up looks really good