It was about an hour before dark, there was a large 'Bang' and our electricity went south. We declined to order out pizza and feasted on gourmet sandwiches and salad with mood lighting offered in our darkening dining room by Luci solar powered lights - on hand and ready to go.

I found out to my surprise that my wife had more lights in the bedroom than I did - eight to my three! Three of these were small AA battery powered lanterns. One had rechargeable eneloops (worked right away), another had the never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed alkaline batteries which fortunately worked and yet another with alkalines, which had discolored terminals. I replaced them with charged eneloops and the light still wouldn't work. There was mild corrosion on the terminals, which I will fix today.

I have been on a crusade to replace all the alkalines in the hikermor domain with rechargeables, but I had not detected these. This incident is exhibit A in my preference for cheaper (in the long run) NiMH over unreliable alkaleaks.

Not really an emergency, but just a dress rehearsal incident for a more significant event. My Zebralight headlamp performed flawlessly - the lowest light level was superb in providing enough light to navigate in the dark without blinding others.

Can you tell that I don't care for alkaline batteries? (and why)

I will trust the members of this forum to do their own research, but in my research, I recently realized Ikea probably has the best deal(s) on batteries and chargers going. I need to make it over there to stock up. I especially love the USB charger, which, while slow, should play nice with a cell phone battery pack, car USB charger, or a solar panel. I suppose a "power pot" or similar as well!

An excerpt from an email I recently shared with family and friends:

Hey all,

Over the last few years I've started using rechargeable batteries at home almost exclusively. Unlike rechargeable batteries from my childhood, these things can sit around in a remote control for six months or a year and still work when you need them. They're really great.

The only downside has been their somewhat high price and finding suitable chargers. If you'd asked me, I would have directed you to use Eneloops and found you a suitable charger, but it would have been a bit expensive and random.

As of now, Ikea seems to sell Eneloop batteries re-branded as their own. As such, it seemed appropriate to share the wonderful world of rechargeable batteries with you.

Consider picking up the following:

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70303876/
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90303880/
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40241309/
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70303635/ <--You can charge batteries from your cell phone charger, or any other USB port. Wow!

The above should total around $20, unless you really stock up on batteries.

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Eneloop-...ery+adapter+C+D (sorry, still expensive) (these are adapters which take the batteries above)

Extras you probably don't need:

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Eneloop-...ery+adapter+C+D <--this is actually pretty cool

Rechargeable batteries are a great bargain when you compute their cost over their service life. Example:

24 eneloops are $33.00 (current price at Battery Junction) or $2.75 apiece. 2100 recharge cycles are claimed. Let's say that is exaggerated and you can only achieve 1000 cycles. That's less than 3 cents per cycle!

You can buy a charger made of solid gold with those savings, but my favorite is a Nitecore Intellicharger i4 - 4 independent channels, charges Nimh, NiCad, or lithium ion in a variety of sizes - C, AAA, AA, 18650, etc. It comes with cords for either 12V or 120 AC and is small enough to pack and carry on trips. Other comparable chargers are available.

These capabilities really came in handy for me last summer. Doing a paleontology dig, I began supplying about 4/5 lights for weird situations where shadows obscured visibility. At the end of each day, I would collect the lights, recharge the batts overnight, and repeat, for about three weeks - a lot less trouble, and cheaper, too.

I ventured into the 18650 world with the purchase of a SolarForce L2M and a low voltage (.8-4.2v)XP-G module...and at the same time purchased a Nitecore D2 (two slot) charger... as Hikermore commented, it works well with my AAA and AA Eneloops as well as the 18650...in hind site, I should have purchased the 4 slot version....I attempted to standardize my batteries to AA Eneloops after the 9 day outage in 2004...while I still have a 12vdc trolling motor battery for my TV, and a few Ds for the ceiling fan and larger MagLights, the AA Eneloops are working in most all of my non weapon lights which are still primary 123s

I'm a big lithium fan (for batteries) but I will admit I finally got a package of Eneloops and a charger last month. So far all I've done is try one to verify they're charged and functional but I do anticipate using them to displace the last few alkalines still in the house (in remotes and a couple computer peripherals).