Checking stored battery

[AlanDB]

Until the weather warms up next spring, I am storing my four bike batteries in the house in a closet that has a temperature between 65 and 70. One of my owner's manuals says you should top off the stored battery once a month to prevent the battery from draining down while stored. To me that advice seems a little over cautious, especially since I am not storing the batteries in cold temperatures. But since I put my bikes away in mid October, I figured after almost 3 months I should check on them. To perform the check, all I did is turn each battery on and check the LED indicators on the battery itself. All LED's lit which to me indicates the battery still has at least a 75% charge. Do you think this type of checking is sufficient, or should I actually install each battery on the bike and check the battery status on the display? Or should I plug them in to the chargers and top them off like the owner's manual says? Unless someone has better advice, my leaning is to just store them away as is and check them again in a few weeks.

I also turned on my two Nyons and the Intuvia to make sure their internal batteries weren't dead. The Nyon batteries were both down one bar so I plugged them into a USB charger to top them off. The Intuvia powers up, but doesn't show the status of the internal battery. Is the Intuvia battery also rechargeable thru USB?

 

[J.R.]

I have several batteries as well and I typically only need one for use during the coldest months of January and February. I store the others at 60%, as that is what I've read and been told by respected sources. I try to never let a pack sit at full charge for more than a couple days. I personally don't think you need to add a charge for batteries currently at 75%. And it's not good for a pack to sit fully charged. If I had a pack in storage drop from 60% to 40%, I'd add a charge to get it up to 60%. Like you I use the LED's to check, rather than the bike display.

 

[6zfshdb]

I store my batteries the same way Alan. The manual says to charge occasionally during long storage periods. This isn't very specific so I do what you're doing. I use the battery bar indicator and keep them above 50% but below 80%. The bar indicator isn't very accurate but it's good enough to indicate the relative state of charge.