Many people are familiar with maintaining lead based batteries like those found in your car. However, lithium batteries are a completely different chemistry and need to be maintained differently in order to prolong the life of the battery.

In this article, we’ll give a list of what needs to be done to get a normal life span out of a lithium battery (any lithium battery of any brand or chemistry). Then we’ll share a more comprehensive list on how to get the very longest life out of your battery. *Note: Most people don’t need to, or even want to, do all we’ve listed here. However, we get this question quite often with customers and it’s important to know so we’ll address it here.

Normal maintenance:
1- Discharge (down to 50-75%) and charge your battery once per year (if in storage).
2- If in storage, don’t keep a charger on it, just do step one each year (preferably drain it down to about 80%).
3- Don’t use your battery in temperatures over 130 degF
4- Don’t store our battery at over 100 degF

Longest life maintenance
1- Don’t float charge your battery: Simply charge it and then leave it alone. Or use it, but don’t keep it 100% full all the time.
2- Cycle it from time to time: For the longest life you should use at least 25% (discharge to 50-75% capacity) of your battery and charge it back up every 6 months.
3- If you’re storing your battery for a while, store it at 50-80% charged.
4- Use the middle range of your battery (25%-85%).
5- Don’t charge at higher rates than 0.5c (this means at a rate that will fully charge and empty battery in less than 2 hours)
5- Don’t drain your battery at rates faster than 1C (this means don’t drain it from full to empty in less than an hour.
6- Don’t use extreme temperatures (below freezing or over 100 deg F). And don’t store your battery at over 100 degF