As the subject says, am curious if it is economical to buy rechargeable batteries, keep charging and re-using "or" just buy from costco or Aldi?
Most of the battery uses are for clocks, torch, night light kind of small appliances which use AA or AAA batteries. May be I replace two to four batteries once in 2 months.
Rechargeables would be more economical over the long run.
While each rechargeable battery is about 5x-10x the price of an equivalent quality disposable battery, if the batteries are looked after, they should last hundreds of cycles and the cost of recharging would be almost negligible.
The downside is the upfront investment of buying the charger and batteries as well as being less convenient than normal batteries.
When disposables die, chuck the old ones out and replace with fresh.
When rechargeables die, you'll have to take them and wait a few hours for them to recharge or have some other rechargeables on standby (which is quite pricey)
The power to recharge a battery is less than 1/10th of a cent.
You can decide what your time is worth, but I can't imagine many circumstances where a rechargeable battery isn't more cost effective.
Wow when did we reach a point where .1cents is not much. Sorry big shot.
main problem i find with rechargables is that some toy/gagets don't work well.
It depends.
You're replacing 2 to 4 batteries once in 2 months. If that's 2 to 4 batteries for each device every month, they yes, it's worth it. If you're talking 2 to 4 batteries over 100 devices, then no. The reality for people is usually somewhere in the middle.
It also depends on what kind of battery using devices you have, if you have a good smart charger, lifespan of the batteries etc.
I use batteries fairly often for power hungry devices, so it's cost efficient to use high quality rechargables. If I only used batteries for clocks, emergency torches, keyboard, mouse etc, it probably wouldn't if I didn't already have the charger and batteries for other uses.