What is trickle charge?
Theoretically a trickle charge is a charge rate that is high enough to keep a battery fully charged, but low enough to avoid overcharging. Maintenance charge is another way to describe trickle charge. Determining the optimum trickle charge rate for a particular battery is a bit tricky to describe but is generally accepted to be around ten percent of the battery capacity – i. e. Sanyo 2500 mAh AA NiMH optimum trickle charge rate is at or below 250mA. One of the reasons it is important for you to understand the optimum trickle charge rate for your charger and batteries is to compensate for the self discharge of NiCD and NiMH batteries. Another reason is because overcharging a battery will definitely reduce its useful life. Although most manufacturers do not recommend that you leave a battery in the charger for long periods of time, many people leave their batteries in the charger on trickle charge for days or weeks to keep their batteries “ready to use”. If you know the rate of trickle c
