How Overcharging Can Destroy Electrical Devices While caring for your electrical devices, among the top considerations are the battery. Everyone wants to extend their devices’ battery life. Nonetheless, caring for your battery isn’t always easy, especially with the conflicting information available. Can you overcharge your electrical device? What happens if you do, and how can you avoid it? Here is a quick look at how overcharging can destroy electrical devices and the easiest way to prevent such concerns.
Overcharging The basic of overcharging is that too much current flows into the battery. After reaching full capacity, such flow leads to the decomposition of water in the electrolytes, causing premature aging. This means that the battery progressively heats up. As more current flows in, it creates an unstable condition and increases pressure. This leads to thermal runaway, which destroys the battery. With the advancing technology, Lithium-ion batteries are designed with a protection circuit. This prevents the battery from excessive pressure
build-up by cutting ions’ flow as the temperature gets higher. For instance, some Smartphone batteries slow the charging speed after hitting 80% capacity. This slow charging limits the current flow and allows the device to cool down as it fills the battery. Modern devices such as Smartphones hardly overcharge. Nonetheless, you’ve seen those warnings, such as unplugging when at 100% capacity and not leaving your phone to charge overnight. If the device can hardly overcharge, why should you follow such guidelines? The bottom line is, if you leave it plugged in at 100% capacity, it is exposed to a high-stress, high-tension state. This accelerates battery damage as such exposure wears down the chemistry. It causes lasting damage, which lowers the battery’s life expectancy.
Protecting the battery As you consider simple ways to protect your electrical devices’ battery, understanding the charge cycle helps. The charge cycle is when you discharge the battery and recharge it. Draining the battery to 0% and recharging it counts as a charge cycle. This is among the top concerns you should avoid as you strive to keep the battery at its best for an extended period. Most consumers think that discharging the battery to zero capacity and recharging it to 100% is the best way to use a battery. Nonetheless, this only lowers the charge cycles and does more damage to the battery. With each charge cycle, the battery capacity slightly diminishes. This means that it eats into your device’s battery lifespan.
This is not to mention the possibility of overcharging as such an approach usually means leaving your device plugged in longer. Overcharging and charge cycle are among the biggest threats to your electrical devices’ battery health. A straightforward fix is charging the devices whenever you get a chance and not leaving them plugged in for an extended period. Keep in mind that, after charging to 100% capacity, trickle charging kicks in. This means that a charging rate equal to the self-discharge rate takes place, keeping the battery at full capacity. Such stress gradually destroys the battery, not to mention that you are deteriorating the charge. You don’t have to keep the battery at full capacity; shorter charge periods and ensuring that it doesn’t discharge to 0% keeps it healthier longer.