With the cost of rechargeable batteries it makes sense to get as much life out of yours as possible. There is a procedure that you can perform yourself to do this and it is worth a try. The procedure is called cycling and basically submits your battery to charge and discharge cycles.
Do not try this cycling on lead acid batteries like in cars or lithium-ion batteries as found in cell phones and laptop computers. Otherwise you can do this procedure on other household rechargeable batteries like power tools, cordless phones and such.
What cycling will do is erase the memory effect that occurs from normal use with NiCad and NiMH batteries. It increases the charge capacity and in turn gives you more life out of them. The best case is to do this when you realize your battery is not holding a charge like it used to.
When the battery is almost fully discharged, not completely discharged, fully recharge the battery. Again let it almost fully discharge then recharge again, repeating this 3 to 5 times. This will reverse the batteries memory effect and improve its performance.
If this does not restore your batteries performance there may be another issue such as a bad charger or bad cells in the battery. Cycling is a free and convenient way to get more use out of your rechargeable batteries. Think of the money you could be saving.
If you want to restore your car battery you can do a restoration procedure for those also. It takes a inexpensive tool and some simple instructions and can save you a lot of money in the long run.
