Save money in the long run

Over time, rechargeable batteries save so much money that they are virtually free power. Thrifty living blog The Simple Dollar, which pulls no punches, tested whether rechargeables would really save money in the long term. Blogger Trent switched from Energizer e2 Titanium alkaline AAs to SONY PCGA-BP71 Replacement Laptop batteries.

You can read Trent's whole analysis at his site, but briefly, Trent spent $100.80 for 36 AAs and $47.94 for the charger, so his startup cost was $147.94. Note that Trent bought extra batteries so that he would always have some charged and ready to go. All too frequently, new users of rechargeables buy the bare minimum. Plan ahead or be left holding a dead gizmo.

He also figured that he would have to charge each battery seven times before his investment had paid for itself. With Trent's usage pattern, that meant that it took two years before he broke even, but after that, he was coming out far ahead Trent calculated the cost of charging the batteries 120 times over the course of a year. His local electricity costs .10 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and the charger used .02 kWh to charge each battery. With these numbers, recharging the batteries cost less than 25 cents a year! You'd pay anywhere from $75 to $150 to for120 disposable AAs.

Here's a real life example. If you play Nintendo Wii, you may have noticed the short battery life of the Wii controller. Nintendo says that the Wii remotes should last 30 to 60 hours, but complaints abound on the net. If an average pack of four AA alkaline batteries costs $5, that's $2.50 into the trash after every gaming marathon. Or you can pay $.004 cents to recharge your rechargeables. That's four tenths of a cent! (By the way, Nintendo recommends only NiMHs for the Wii motes.)

If you want to get really nerdy and find out much you'd pay to charge your batteries, check out the formula here, then consult your electricity bill to find out how much you pay per kWh. From a financial standpoint, buying rechargeables may have a large start-up cost, but you'll save money in the long run.

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