Leibson's Law

I was drawn to the battery section of Fry’s last Friday because I’d chanced on a package of rechargeable alkaline batteries that had been left on top of a pile of disk drives. I’d not seen rechargeable alkalines since Rayovac marketed its Renewal line of rechargeable alkaline batteries and chargers in the mid 1990s. In fact, I’ve still got two Renewal chargers taking up drawer space even though Rayovac stopped marketing Renewal batteries a few years ago. From the Web references, I gathered that Rayovac had stopped marketing the Renewal batteries because they had two big liabilities: they couldn’t be recharged very many times compared to NiCd or NiMH batteries (tens rather than hundreds of times) and they lost capacity with each charge. (There’s a history of rechargeable alkaline batteries in a paper here.)

It looks like the rechargeable alkaline battery idea has returned. Lenmar, my favorite battery company (because they sell inexpensive NiMH cells that seem to work fine) now has a line of rechargeable alkaline cells it calls Chargeables, with a special new charger (naturally). Lenmar claims that if Chargeables are recharged early and often, they don’t lose capacity. They’re rated for 10-50 charges, so they won’t last as long as NiMH batteries but they last longer than normal alkaline cells. Some quick Googling reveals that Lenmar is not the only battery vendor with rechargeable alkaline cells these days. I wonder how long the idea will last this time?