Expected Lifespan of BSF-8 batteries?

[Gord Hunter]

What are the most important factors in determining the lifespan of SportIdent BSF-8 batteries? The number of years? The number of times the stations are used in those years? How they are stored? Where they are stored?
Suncoast Orienteering went SI in 2014 or 2015. I'm pretty sure it was 2019 that we replaced all the BSF-8 batteries in our then 30 stations and now have about half of them out for battery replacement again. (Plan ahead folks. I'm told one supplier has the batteries on a six-month back order. Happily both SOAR and FLO have second sets of BSF 8s!)

Five to six years, an average of 10 events per year, turning off the units as they are being picked up in the forest, storage in 'climate-controlled environments, stored back to back: is there more I should be doing to eek out more life from those batteries? Or is a 5-6 year life as good as I can expect?

Please pass on to your SI person and thanks in advance for any advice.

Gord Hunter

Suncoast Orienteering

PS When I bought SOAR's second set I thought I was getting a very good deal from a school that was hardly ever using the set. Turns out EVERY battery needed replacement. Perhaps it was age but perhaps the set had been stored in an outdoor shed in the salt-enriched environment of Palm Beach County. I know the set had not been used a lot. Does inactivity breed decay? Using O-store services to replace the battery still made for a good deal.

[Bud Laird]

Disclaimer - I have not worked on SI units. My background includes certification as a repair technician for Roland, Yamaha, and Fender pro audio for musicians.
If the BSF-8 batteries are the 2/3 AA size 1 Ah ones with the solder ends, you might check out EEMB on Amazon for those. They run about $2.50 to $3.00 per unit, depending on quantity. I don't have an SI unit to do a visual comparison so this is just a suggestion.
Bud Laird

On Tuesday, January 20, 2026 at 04:01:44 AM PST, Gord Hunter <gor...@rogers.com> wrote:

What are the most important factors in determining thelifespan of SportIdent BSF-8 batteries? The number of years? The number oftimes the stations are used in those years? How they are stored? Where they arestored?
Suncoast Orienteering went SI in 2014 or 2015. I'm pretty sure it was 2019 thatwe replaced all the BSF-8 batteries in our then 30 stations and now have about half of them out forbattery replacement again. (Plan ahead folks. I'm told one supplier has thebatteries on a six-month back order. Happily both SOAR and FLO have second setsof BSF 8s!)

Five to six years, an average of 10 events per year, turning off the units asthey are being picked up in the forest, storage in 'climate-controlledenvironments, stored back to back: is there more I should be doing to eek outmore life from those batteries? Or is a 5-6 year life as good as I can expect?

Please pass on to your SI person and thanks in advance for any advice.

Gord Hunter

Suncoast Orienteering

PS When I bought SOAR's second set I thought I was getting a very good deal from a school that was hardly ever using the set. Turns out EVERY battery needed replacement. Perhaps it was age but perhaps the set had been stored in an outdoor shed in the salt-enriched environment of Palm Beach County. I know the set had not been used a lot. Does inactivity breed decay? Using O-store services to replace the battery still made for a good deal.

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[Blaik Mathews]

Bud, thanks for the tip on the EEMB batteries.  For those interested, here's the direct link to the axial lead variety of this battery on Amazon.  As stated, if bought in quantity, they are $2.50 or even less per battery, and they're eligible for "Prime" free shipping if you're an Amazon member.  That's 1/2 to 1/3 the cost or less compared to the SAFT version of the same battery, which of course makes me wary - are they really as reliable and long-lasting as the SAFTs?  Anybody have experience with these in SportIdent stations?

As to SI station battery life, I have some pretty decent data on this, pulled from 10+ years of careful record-keeping on FLO's inventory of ~70 SI stations.  In that period, I've replaced batteries 119 times (about twice per station).  Battery life data is as follows:

Count:	119	replacements
Min:	2.3	years
Max:	10.7	years
Mean:	5.8	years
Median:	5.5	years

The center of the distribution is 5.5-6 years.

One might think that battery life would be related to how much use the station gets, and I have data on that too.  Among our control stations, some get punched much more often than others.  I have a range from just a few hundred aggregate punches in 10+ years up to nearly 6,000 punches in the same window.  The scatter plot of battery life vs aggregate # of punches, with trendline:

There is an inverse correlation here, but it's pretty gentle.  Using a station none at all vs using it heavily adds only 15-20% to its battery life on average.  This isn't too much of a surprise, since SI stations spend 99% of their life in the box shut off in "standby" mode.  How they're stored and under what conditions may influence battery life more than anything else.

I have been told that the standby drain is minimized when stations are stored so that their punch sockets alternate rather than line up, so that's how we store ours (see pic below).  However, I have no data to support the claim that this makes any appreciable difference.

Blaik Mathews

President, Florida Orienteering

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/orienteeringusa.org/d/msgid/clubnet/833399486.350488.1768911903588%40mail.yahoo.com.