I have a large supply of AA and AAA batteries for personal use and for trade. However, I have recently aquired a lot of rechargeable Lithiums and chargers. I've charged up all of the rechargeables and will use up my alkalines before using my rechargeables. I went with rechargeable Lithiums because I have the means to recharge them during a power grid down cituation. In the past, I have used NiCad and Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeables but they don't compare to Lithium rechargeables. The old time 9 volt batteries are hard to find in rechargeables but I bought a charger and pack of four 9 volt rechargeable Lithiums. I have those pain in ass CO and Smoke detectors and if I can't find 9 volt batteries for them, I can use the rechargeable Lithiums over and over again. My house is total electric and I don't really need the CO detector but if I ever need to heat the house with combustables, I'll have an early warning system in place. The BOUNCE TEST is cute but I don't think I'll be dropping any of my batteries on a hard surface. I'll just read the voltage from my multimeter. With all that said, if you don't have any rechareables but you do have a slow charger, you can bring ALCALINES partially back to life by rechargeing them. They will only last about half as long as a new one but you will be able to squeeze extra life out of them. I've also got a ton of those Button batteries of all sizes and they will become very hard to find in the future and I actually have been able to recharge some of them and get a bit of extra life out of them. I purposely mentioned SLOW CHARGERS for a reason. If you hit an Alcaline with high current to recharge it, you might get some unwanted battery explosions. I found a location to buy cards with all different sizes of Button batteries really cheap so I loaded up on them. Yep, they're Chinese and if I keep them for years they may be dead when I need them but I might get lucky and find them useful. OK, OK, OK, I know someone is going to ask if you can charge or partially recharge the old fashioned Carbon batteries. Yes, they will take a partial charge but don't last long and it isn't worth the effort. If that's all you have and you try to bring them back to life, you might have to add more batteries. That means that if a device took 4 Carbon Batteries in series to work and you recharged a bunch of 1.5 volt Carbon batteries, you might have to use 6 of the recharged ones in series to get even a decent amount of use out of them. When the SHTF, we will all be trying things that people say won't work. Some will work and others won't, but we will still try anyway, won't we?
