Bicycle Lighting - Batteries - Zinc Carbon
- Zinc Carbon (eg Ever Ready Blue) are cheap primary batteries. They do not perform well enough for any but the most undemanding of cycle lighting applications.
- They are included here only for the sake of completeness - Zinc Chloride or Alkaline cells do all cycle lighting jobs better.
- Here is a table of possible 4A-h configurations, to drive a 3V 2W bulb for about 6 hours. Value For Money (VFM) and Power For Money (PFM) figures below assume middle-of-the-road UK prices. D cells are much more cost-effective than the smaller packages, C cell or AA cell.
- For the best performance, power-to-weight, see the ED figures.
- For the best value, look at the VFM.
- For performance at a good price, check out the PFM column.
type weight(g) V A-h runtime ED price VFM PFM
+------------------+-------------------+----+------+--------+
ZnC (4 D-cells) 400 3 5 7.5 3.8 4.0 3.8 1.9
ZnCl (2 D-cells) 200 3 3.8 5.7 5.7 2.4 4.8 4.8
Alkaline(2 D-cells) 280 3 8 12.0 8.6 2.9 8.3 5.9
Alkaline(2 C-cells) 138 3 3.4 5.1 7.4 2.7 3.8 5.5
Alkaline(6 AA-cells)132 3 4 6.0 9.1 4.3 2.8 4.2
Lithium Sulph(4xAA) 60 3 3.4 5.1 17.0 10.0 1.0 3.4
Alkaline(2xD rechargd)280 3 6.5 9.7 7.0 2.9 9.1 6.5
+------------------+-------------------+---+-------+--------+