Under Performing SAFT Batteries

[tbone1004]

No, I'm not confused. I said lithium PRIMARY not LiPo. Lithium ion rechargeable chemistry is totally different from the "lithium" primary cells that have been used in emergency equipment for ages. Confuses the hazmat people as well, but they are totally different animals. SAFT are one of the few sources of lithium primary cells.

sorry, didn't see the breakdown from there. The advantage of the safts is idiotically high energy density and stability, and while they aren't good for high burst energy, I'm not sure that they wouldn't be fine on flashlights though since the initial voltage is still basically 3x what it would be with an alkaline/nimh/"normal" AA battery. Dim vs a lipo 14500 sure. Definitely not something I'd want to use in a flash though

 

[Rred]

SAFT has discharge curves in their online data sheets for the Lithium primaries, that show how much power they can put out in mA. They say up front that they don't compete with top-tier alkaline batteries, their lithium primary cells were always targeted to a different market. If you've seen the SteriPen water sterilizer? That's an example of a "simple" device using AA cells that originally wouldn't work on many, including SAFT primaries, because of power draw issues. (The current SteriPen generation3 is much less picky, greatly improved.)