DC9096 XRP Battery - Can genuine imported ones from US be recharged in Australia

[Bunghoolio777]

Hi, picked up a new DCD985 18V slide from local tool shop today. Asked the tool salesman if he had any deals going on the olde xrp 18v pod style batteries. He gave me a price that didn't seem all that special, so i commented that i could almost get two for that price on ebay in US. Then he advised me that the battery cell setup from a import battery is different to an Australian battery. He said that the au ones are tuned for 50Hz mains and the US ones tuned for 60Hz mains? WTF? I thought that if you have Au charger and any genuine battery it would be ok. The salesman thinks that you will get premature fail on the import battery if you use au charger??? Any comments?

[jamesp]

Complete and utter crap, they will work fine. 

(AS LONG AS you have the appropriate charger for your country, which you say that you do.)

Batteries are DC devices, they get charged with DC power.  Very simply the charger converts your local AC to DC for the battery to be charged with. (the charger does much more, but beyond the scope here).  Keeping it simple, DC doesn't have frequency (hz) like mains AC.

Be careful with ebay batteries, can be just as easy to get fakes as "real" batteries. 

amazon.com should ship most items to australia, they may be worth a look.

[Bunghoolio777]

Thanks for that info, I had a feeling that the sales guy just wanted to scare me into buying his super cheap genuine xrp battery for $99.00 AU. Each.