Cold Weather Battery Drain

Whenever the weather gets below freezing my truck s battery begins to drain rapidly.

Cold weather battery drain.

It slows the reactions that cause it to discharge. The north batteries emphasize cold cranking amps a measure of how well the battery starts an engine during extreme cold weather whereas the south batteries have higher electrolyte to lead. In warm weather the battery is fine. The exact mechanisms leading to poor performance of lithium ion batteries at cold temperatures are still not well understood a team of battery engineers wrote in a paper in the journal of the.

Battery drain in cold weather 4 answers. A runaway effect can occur potentially leading to a fire or explosion. Though batteries can function under myriad conditions the cold weather tends to degrade high quality batteries and may render subpar batteries useless. There are various ways to protect a battery.

So ideally you d store batteries in cool places but use them in warm ones. Your phone is powered as the individual ions travel in solution from one pole to the other but a cold temperature doesn t drain your battery per se. Cold weather slows everything down especially the chemical reaction happening inside your car battery. Unfortunately that also means it can t start a car as well when it s cold.

The colder it gets the faster it drains. And at 0 f it loses up to 60 of its strength but your engine requires nearly twice as much power to start. If it were drained the ions would have to. Some types of batteries are adversely affected by high temperatures.

But heat does the opposite it drains the battery but makes it better at starting the car. Cold batteries discharge faster than warmer batteries so if you re using a cold battery keep a warm one in reserve. If batteries are small keeping them in a jacket pocket is usually good enough.