A little while ago I bought myself a pack of PowerOwl AA rechargeable batteries to charge all of my AA operated power devices from controllers to flashlights.
It quickly became one of my favourite brands as it was both cheap and reliable for long term use.
They worked great until one day when I tried charging it using the PowerOwl charger it gave me a blinking red light which didn’t seem to have a great meaning.
I also have a short video about this topic and you can watch it first before you go on reading the rest of this article. You can watch the video below.
On the video, I showed how to fix this problem by charging the PowerOwl battery using another slot, checking if the polarity is correct, using another charger to charge the battery, and freezing the problematic battery.
4 Simple Ways to Fix PowerOwl Battery Not Charging Blinking Red
Turns out the battery was not being charged and the charger was showing me an error, this is how I fixed it and made my PowerOwl AA batteries charge again.
1. Try charging it using another slot
The first thought that hit me when the charger started flashing the red light was that it might be a faulty slot.
The PowerOwl battery charger comes with 8 slots, I tried using other slots to try charging the battery thinking maybe the slot was not working but the results were the same.
Try charging the battery on each slot to see if it’s a problem with your battery or the charger itself.
2. Make sure the polarity is correct
It might seem common knowledge to many but even a DIY expert can get it wrong sometimes. The batteries in the charger are placed in reversed order, which means positive to positive and negative to negative to match the charger label.
Make sure you place the batteries in the correct orientation to charge them properly, inserting them in the wrong polarity will not charge them .
3. Try charging the battery using another charger
While I was blaming my charger all this time it could be the AA battery itself that was the problem.
I decided to put this to the test by taking another AA battery charger that I had bought earlier, but to my surprise the battery was still not charging.
If your AA battery starts charging on a new or different charger then it was the charger that was the problem not the PowerOwl battery.
4. Freeze the battery to get a better temperature to work with
While the batteries were still not ready to charge I decided to go rough and used an old trick that I learned from my dad.
Start by putting the battery inside the fridge for 2-3 hours, this freezes the battery and restores some of the voltage inside the battery, just make sure to wait until the battery reaches room temperature before using it again.
