  Energy Harvesting allows the devices in a Wireless Sensor Network to recharge
their batteries through environmental energy sources. While in the literature
the main focus is on devices with ideal batteries, in reality several
inefficiencies have to be considered to correctly design the operating regimes
of an Energy Harvesting Device (EHD). In this work we describe how the
throughput optimization problem changes under \emph{real battery} constraints
in an EHD. In particular, we consider imperfect knowledge of the state of
charge of the battery and storage inefficiencies, \emph{i.e.}, part of the
harvested energy is wasted in the battery recharging process. We formulate the
problem as a Markov Decision Process, basing our model on some realistic
observations about transmission, consumption and harvesting power. We find the
performance upper bound with a real battery and numerically discuss the novelty
introduced by the real battery effects. We show that using the \emph{old}
policies obtained without considering the real battery effects is strongly
sub-optimal and may even result in zero throughput.
