Garden Railway Forum

Not sure if this is the correct place for discussing batteries but I can't see any better.
I assume you have Aldi stores in UK, so this may be of interest to you.

I have been using used Hobbyking AA size rechargeable, NiMH cells – rated at 2550 mAh and designated Long Shelf Life, in my locos for years. They used to cost around 1.80 USD – say 2.70AUD. When I went to order some recently, they cost 2.92 AUD and only available from Hong Kong with costly postage. To buy eight cells, they would have cost me over 5AUD per cell incl postage!

A friend has been using rechargeable NiMH from Aldi. So I bought 2 packs of 4, at 6AUD/pack or 1.50 each cell. Branded “Active Energy”. They are only 2100 mAh capacity but are marked as “Low self discharge”. (you should be able to take half the AUD value to get GBP.)
WARNING: The red band is the NEGATIVE!

I soldered the 8 cells in series. As supplied, they were charged at 1.25V/cell. I tested their internal resistance at 0.4 ohms, which is pretty good for 8 cells.
I then fully charged them to 1.45V/cell. Then discharged them at 0.5A taking out 1800mAh. The end voltage was 1.20V/cell. That seemed to indicate the 2100mAh rating is correct.

My diesel loco #8 batteries have ‘had it’ (after 9 years) so I used the eight Aldi cells to replace them. (the old 8 cells test at 4.1 ohms internal resistance 10 times the new ones!)
There are 4 cells in each end of the loco. I soldered, cleaned with metho and vaselined the connections. (Note - they are nipple type, but I have never had problems soldering to the nipples or the flat neg ends.) After about a 1 hour run, they took 600mAh to recharge.


Time will tell how they last.

Interesting Greg, thanks.
FWIW, yes we do have hundreds of Aldi's here and they are multiplying fast! I've just done a quick on-line check and they don't appear to do rechargeables here although there are ordinary non-rechargeables listed. as"Activ energy". It does occur to me that they may possibly have them in-store but not online due to postal restrictions?

However for anyone interested, I do have rechargeables from Lidl ( another German discounter) which I bought a couple of years ago following a "Which" survey of the best brands. They've been fine although I've never done any scientific testing. They are "Tronic Eco Rechargeable Batteries Mignon Ni-Mh" and I've got 2400mAh AA's and 950mAh AAA's

Thanks Greg. Anne is going to Aldi later so I will ask her to keep an eye out for them.

I should have mentioned that I found mine in among all the other non-rechargeable batteries, at just one of the checkouts.

I can heartily recommend the Lidl Tronic LSD cells.
I use them in most of my steamers and several battery diesels.

They do, of course, come under the "specials" category, just a couple of times a year.

I've never seen rechargeables in Aldi, although I think their alkalines are a good buy.

I have some old Aldi batteries labelled "Ultracell" rated at 2500mAHr (AA) and 900mAHr (AAA), I bought then when I first started battery R/C and G scale around 2009.
I have not treated them real well and they still perform.
Every Aldi I have been in has the rechargables and the alkalines next to the checkouts.
I have seen the new rechargeables at Aldi for about 3 years now but I have had no need to buy any.
Thanks for the warning about the Hobbyking price hike, I use their LSD batteries in all my transmitters so maybe its time for a change when they Hobbyking ones need replacing.