Wii Energy

july 15, 2007

The Wii-mote really does suck down a lot of power. Of course, that is a given since it is a wireless device (Bluetooth anyone?) with all sorts of internal gadgetry. Anyways, being environmentally conscious (thanks Al Gore), Eileen and I went out and got some rechargeable batteries for the Wii-motes today. I had a recommendation from a co-worker to get eneloop batteries from Sanyo. There was one particular benefit of these new style NiMH batteries that intrigued me: They have a long shelf life with a very low loss in power. This means that I can charge up four of these and leave them on the coffee table. When the ones in my Wii-motes die, there will be no wait for recharging. According to Sanyo, a fully charged battery will lose 10% of its power sitting on a shelf for six months. After a year, the drain will only be 15%. That is not bad at all considering that my old NiMH batteries lost all their energy within a few weeks of being charged. Eileen and I got an eneloop smart charger which came with four AA batteries. We also picked up a pack of four extra eneloop AA batteries. Sanyo pre-charges the batteries at the factory and they promise, because of the low loss in power of the eneloops, that the batteries are ready to use out of the package. They didn't lie. I popped the four into the Wii-motes and they were fully charged and ready to go. Anyways, since the batteries can be recharged 1000 times, this should save me from dumping 4000 batteries (two AAs per Wii-mote and I have two Wii-motes) into landfills.  Yay!


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