Nest thermostat battery charging problem and solution

My NEST (Generation 1) had been working flawlessly for several months, both summer and winter (heating and cooling) until about January 23rd, 2013 or so. Then it began to struggle with recharging, had network dropouts, disconnects, and began to insert Delay Times (apparently randomly, and up to 2 minutes in duration) into the heating cycle. I recharged the NEST using the USB interface a couple of times, only to find that it would run down within 8 or 10 hours and never recharge. With -25c temperatures for days on end, the last thing you want are strange delays and the resultant furnace cycle down/up and an unreliable thermostat. In fact one day with -40c windchill, the furnace would run for about 10 minutes and then cycle off as NEST inserted a Delay Time for … Read More »