What is battery conditioning or exercising?
When you intentionally discharge a battery down to a certain minimum voltage and then recharge it this is known as battery conditioning or reconditioning . It is also sometimes referred to as battery exercise. This is particularly important to reduce what some call the memory effect experienced using NiCD batteries if you habitually do not fully discharge them each time you use them. For NiCD batteries this must be done periodically, approximately every 10 charge/discharge cycles or so, or the batteries will begin to lose capacity. For NiMH batteries conditioning is not really needed to reduce any memory effect because that is negligible in this type of battery. However, reconditioning is very convenient for both NiMH and NiCD batteries because brand new batteries are not charged when you receive them and they must be charged and discharged three to five times before they reach their full capacity. In addition, occasionally conditioning rechargeable batteries helps to ensure that they
