Please advise!

neil4374 · Feb 25, 2023

Hello guys. Somebody please clear up this confusion in my head. I have read up about battery storage and understand in general circumstances batteries are best stored at about 65% if I am correct. I understand if they are low on charge they should be charged up to this level for storage.
But what I don't understand is why they cant be stored at 100% when they are set up to auto discharge to the correct storage after 1 day! I can understand why storing them at 100% continuously is a bad idea but surely if they are put away at 100% and they discharge to the correct storage after 1 day where lies the problem?!
Is the heat given off whilst discharging over 1 day a serious danger?
Thanks for any help!

Dronecation · Feb 25, 2023

Have a read about batteries here:

Proper Drone Battery Storage & Care to Maximize Life & Performance

Proper drone battery storage and care will maximize their life and performance. Here are some tips for charging and storing them.

www.jmpeltier.com

neil4374 · Feb 25, 2023

Thank you

philztoy · Feb 26, 2023

Some of the DJI batteries do a good job at self storage. Some maybe not so much.

I sort of left a bunch of drones and batteries laying around for a couple of years. They were probably all fully charged and left for between 2-3 or more years (due to a couple moves and pandemic etc.) So the tally of the batteries after this was:

2 out of 6 inspire 2 batteries were dead the other 4 seem good.
6 out of 6 mavic 1 batteries were dead (probably ok since the drone fell after it's flight got interrupted by a tall pine tree)
2 out of 3 mavic 2pro batteries were dead (that was surprising since this was a newer drone) The other was ok for some reason.
all inspire 1 batteries seem to have made it.
2 batteries attached to crystal sky monitors were flat dead but the remainder seemed to be ok.

With respect to the "dead" ones. I probably tried charging them on a charger overnight for about 3 times and if they didn't charge I tossed them in the recycling bin at home depot.

msinger · Feb 26, 2023

neil4374 said:
But what I don't understand is why they cant be stored at 100% when they are set up to auto discharge to the correct storage after 1 day!

They can be stored at 100% -- and that's likely what most people are doing. There's no need to manually discharge the batteries down to the storage level. That's why the auto discharge feature exists and it'll handle that work for you.

neil4374 said:
I can understand why storing them at 100% continuously is a bad idea but surely if they are put away at 100% and they discharge to the correct storage after 1 day where lies the problem?!

While the auto discharge process might start after 1 day, it could take a few days to discharge the batteries down to the storage level. But, that's fine. As I mentioned above, it's okay to store your batteries at 100%. And it's more important to charge them up to the storage level (if below that) when putting them into storage.