Ryobi Battery Pack Tip

[Pete Staehling]

Despite the apparent lack of love for the Ryobi Plus One battery tools I actually like them pretty well except for one thing. They have a problem where the batteries easily get to a discharged state and won't take a charge. The "smart" electronics prevent it from charging despite the battery actually being fine. I wasted a few expensive batteries before i learned that there is a work around.

I find they will take a charge if I directly charge the cells even for a few seconds bypassing the electronics. Once I do that they will charge normally again in the regular charger. To do that I just open the case of the battery and connect the main plus and minus on the cells to another ryobi battery pack for 10 seconds or so. It is a fairly minor annoyance to do that once in a while and IMO worth it given the cost of new batteries.

Google will provide lots of details and probably better more detailed directions.

Bottom Line:
Don't throw away those Plus One batteries when the charger shows them as bad they can probably be revived. I have not noticed that the revived ones have been any the worse than the others in my rotation.

[David Buchhauser]

Hi Pete,
Thanks for the tip! I have 7 or 8 Ryobi 18V tools: drills, angle grinder, hedge trimmer, pole saw, etc. So far all the batteries have held up fine. But your method is a good thing to know just in case I do have a problem.
Thanks,
David

[Jon Endres]

Well, this post came about five days too late.

[John K Jordan]

That's a "problem" with lithium ion / lithium polymer batteries - the protection circuitry prevents charging with the voltage gets too low. The charging circuitry may a bit overcautious or not properly calibrated. Some people "jump start" a lithium ion battery by feeding a small voltage from another source to the battery while starting the charging. You can probably find info on the web. If it works for your batteries it might save having to open them.

[Pete Staehling]

That's a "problem" with lithium ion / lithium polymer batteries - the protection circuitry prevents charging with the voltage gets too low. The charging circuitry may a bit overcautious or not properly calibrated. Some people "jump start" a lithium ion battery by feeding a small voltage from another source to the battery while starting the charging. You can probably find info on the web. If it works for your batteries it might save having to open them.
Never tried that. Interesting that there is another solution. Maybe I'll try that next time. Opening them is easy enough though. For sure I'd have wasted a lot of money if I had pitched all the batteries that failed to charge over the years I've used the Plus One system. This seems to be a flaw in the Ryobi system in particular where perfectly good batteries get pitched pretty often. They are quite expensive to replace too.