Battery Storage in Charger

[Brendo09]

I have the EN-EL15 battery, and my current practice is to pull the old one out of the camera, replace it with a fresh one, charge the dead one and then leave it in the charger (unplugged) which all goes back into my back pack.

IS storing a fully charged battery in the charger asking for trouble?

[Gazza]

Hope not...I do the same thing!

[tandeejay]

when I unplug my charger from the wall with the battery still in, the yellow light remains on until I pull the battery out. (never left it in long enough to find out how long it takes to go out...) But this suggests to me that the circuitry in the charger does receive power from the battery, which means that leaving the battery in the charger potentially drains it slowly. So you could be reducing the number of clicks you can get out of the battery.

DISCLAIMER: I have no scientific basis by which to validate the above claim...

[Brendo09]

It's the little light staying on that made me wonder...

[Morgo]

How long is the light staying on? Generally they take a few seconds to turn off as they use up the remaining charge in the capacitors inside the charger just after its turned off, regardless of whether a battery is connected or not.

It shouldn't drain the battery depending on how its built, it should prevent the battery feeding back into the charger.

Personally I don't leave any batteries connected when not being used.

[arthurking83]

I do that all the time for my crappy Nikon battery(EN-EL15).
This is the (replacement)original battery that camera with my D800E wayyy back when.

My original battery died after a month or two, so took it back for a replacement.
They confirmed my battery was one of the dodgy lots that Nikon sent out, so I got a replacement.
The replacement did the same death defying act as the original .. except that it hasn't defied death!
Basically what it does, it tells the camera that it's on it's last legs.
If you have a fairly recent Nikon, it indicates the life remaining that the battery has(0 - 4: with 0= new, 4= needs replacement) .. not just the level of charge.

So I leave it in the charger all the time to keep it charged.
When I leave it out, after a week or two it does self discharge.

Note that I haven't killed the battery in any way, this has been from new .. 4 years now.

After the original replacement 4 years ago and then the trouble with the replacement, I headed to ebay and got myself an aftermarket replacement, making sure the product said it had the necessary chip to work correctly(important in newer model Nikons!).
This cheapo $15 replacement is faultless! shows that it's still new(ie. 0 on the age indicator) and never really self discharges.


My understanding of LiIon batteries and chargers is that they simply 'float charge' or 'trickle charge' if the battery is left in the charger all the time. That is, the charger doesn't over charge it, and doesn't allow it to drop below optimum charge level.

if the charger was a dodgy no name cheapie of dubious quality .. I'd be suspicious of the charger and it's ability to maintain optimum battery charge.
But I'm confident that at the least, Nikon wouldn't supply dodgy low quality battery chargers with their cameras .. so keeping the battery in the charger is not something I worry about.

Note that I also got a non name cheapish looking mobile (ie. 12v) charger thingy with my aftermarket EN-EL15 too .. for those long trips where a charge may be needed.
This charger is something I'm definitely suspicious of, so I only leave the battery in this charger until the green light indicates battery is charged!
Battery is then removed, with the hope that the Nikon battery doesn't self discharge too much!

I'd be 99.9% confident in saying that you won't do your battery any harm by leaving it in the charger all the time until you need it in the camera.
But that you really shouldn't see too much self discharging of the battery if left in camera(with camera off).

I think I get about -10% discharge over more than a month with the aftermarket battery .. so a freshly charged(100%) battery will show 90% after more than 1 month of non use in the camera.
While I don't get much time to go out enough lately, I've never left the camera for more than 1-2 mths without at least a few shots fired.
But the dead Nikon battery self discharges more than 50% within about a month or so.

[ameerat42]

Since it's powering a light - though a weak drain - it should discharge.
If there had been no indicator light it should be OK, as circuitry is 1-way.

If unsure, take it out

[Brendo09]

If you take the battery out, the light goes off. Replace the battery in the cradle and the light dies not come back on

[spootz01]

Modern battery chargers should be wired to prevent backfeeding into the system from the battery. The light staying on would simply be residual current left in the circuit and capacitors in the charger itself.

[arthurking83]

I have two Nikon battery chargers.
1 for EN-EL15(newer batteries) and 1 for the EN-EL3/EN-EL3e.

With batteries both in their respective chargers and the chargers unpowered(uplugged or off at the wall switch) the light is definitely extinguished on the chargers.

I'm agreeing with Spootz, in that there should be no way for the battery to feed back into the charger.

I note that many other charger devices(mainly laptop chargers), with the charger device removed from the wall before the laptop(or other device) is unplugged, the light does stay on for a long time.
I'm thinking residual capacitor charge too, rather than battery feeding back into the charger.

[Dougt]

I have an EL-EN15 in my D810 and so far no problems. What one needs to be aware of when looking at after market batteries appear to be cheaper but are they. Al the Nikon copies I have seen are only around the 1200 - 1500mA/hr where as the Nikon is 1700mA/hr. the cheapies will not give you the same number of exposures or the burst rate of the 1700mA/hr batteries.

Does it harm the battery to leave them in the charger? Depends on the manufacturer, some chargers have temperature sensors to stop any overheating while charging. I have seen a number of Li-on chargers for battery drills will discharge the battery if left in the charger. They discharge via the temperature sensor in the charger. As far as I can tell Nikon chargers do not have this problem.

[Brian500au]

Interesting I did a fire safety course today and the amount of fires started by people leaving batteries in battery chargers unattended is very much a hiddens statistic. I never left batteries unattended in a battery charger before, and now never will.

[arthurking83]

.... What one needs to be aware of when looking at after market batteries appear to be cheaper but are they. Al the Nikon copies I have seen are only around the 1200 - 1500mA/hr where as the Nikon is 1700mA/hr. the cheapies will not give you the same number of exposures or the burst rate of the 1700mA/hr batteries.

.....

I haven't come across that type, all of the one's I watched were of the 1900mA type. Now this was 4 years ago and I haven't revisited batteries since, so things may have changed.
But, back then the important issue of the day wasn't so much the battery capacity but the point that the battery needed to be 'chipped' for it to work at all.
Non chipped batteries simply don't work. Nikon uses a system of encoding on their batteries to minimise the impact of third party batteries.
For a while a few years back, Nikon issued a series of new firmwares for certain current and slightly discontinued cameras. Not mentioned in the firmware updates details was the fact that those new firmwares all contained some code to preclude non chipped batteries from working in those newly updated cameras now!
That left a lot of Nikon geeks out in the cold if they relied on thirdparty batteries.
The good folks in the Nikon hacking arena patched their firmware hacks to eliminate the issue.
And so it seems that all this duplicity from Nikon just so they can rip off a few more $'s from as many customers as possible .. has backfired a bit on them.
Seems that they have some new anti thirdparty battery software in the D500 that seems to be stopping even genuine Nikon EN-EL15's from working in them!

Thom Hogan has a 'works in progress' site up and running contain a bit of info on all this, where many users(including himself!) have complained that (as an example) a D810 battery doesn't work in his D500 .. even tho they are supposedly the exact same battery!

Like I said earlier I had to get myself a proper new battery after two fails from Nikon's supposedly genuine crap! I wasn't going to risk a third strike(from Nikon) so an aftermarket battery was acquired.
At about a quarter of the price plus a mobile charger thrown in for good measure .. I guess it's no wonder Nikon's current financial dilemma is where it is!

It's been a couple of weeks now since this thread and I have my (crappy) Nikon EN-EL15 in the charger all this time as well as the EN-EL3e for the D300. Just took them out yesterday to see how much charge they each hold whilst out of the camera. 3rd party was also charged up as well.
I'm curious as to how much charge they each lose(ie. self discharge) over the next couple of weeks.


@ Brian. I reckon another hidden statistic within that set of hidden statistic would be the cost of those chargers(and or batteries) those fire causing people purchased.
While I may simply be lucky .. and now need to find a nice piece of high quality wood to knock on .... but for the past 8 or so years I've had a set of about 6-8 NiMH batteries on charge in a bulk charger all that time(in a manner of speaking).
I used to use them mainly for my SB800(speedlight), but now use them for whatever(is needed).
The charger is always on, and some batteries are always in it(that's why the charger is on!).
Never gets hot, never kills the batteries .. never had any issue to consider ever removing it.
I reckon that's most likely due to the higher quality nature of the charger. Not the highest quality name brand charger .. just a well managed charger that keeps the batteries in top condition.
So much so, that my (so called) name brand charger(waste of money that was too!) can't charge them at all, claiming that they're open circuit(ie. dead and unchargeable).
Rubbish! the bulk charger charges them, and I use them all the time in something without issue. They hold charge properly and recharge properly in that charger.


.. bloody Powerex crap!

[GourmetSaint]

I had a lot of issues with the geniune Nikon batteries and charger that came with my D800E. I bought an aftermarket charger and a few batteries and had no problems since.

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