ESP32 Deep-Sleep Battery Life

Project lifetime for an ESP32 (or any duty-cycled MCU) running on battery. Computes average current and lifetime from sleep current, wake current, wake duration, cycle period, and battery derating.

DomainIoT / ArduinoVersionv1.0.0Added2026-05-16

Inputs

Battery CapacitymAh

Sleep CurrentµA

ESP32 deep-sleep is ~10 µA with RTC retention; deep-sleep + ULP can hit ~150 µA.

Wake CurrentmA

Typical Wi-Fi TX ~160 mA, modem-sleep ~80 mA, light-sleep ~0.8 mA.

Wake Durationms

Cycle Periods

How often the device wakes up. 60 s = once a minute, 3600 s = once an hour.

Usable Capacity%

Self-discharge, voltage cut-off, regulator efficiency — 80% is realistic for Li-ion + boost.

Result

version1.0.0

POST /v1/iot-arduino/esp32-deep-sleep-battery

curl -X POST https://api.toolsamurai.com/v1/iot-arduino/esp32-deep-sleep-battery \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_•••••••••••••••" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
     "battery_capacity_mah": 2000,
     "sleep_current_ua": 10,
     "wake_current_ma": 80,
     "wake_duration_ms": 250,
     "cycle_period_s": 60,
     "battery_efficiency_pct": 80
  }'

esp32deep-sleepbattery-lifeiotlow-power