Thank you Anubis. Based on what you wrote, i will again do a test-use of daily hibernation, when i get a new pc working.
Thank you Random User, for the creative idea: you’re saying that i could keep the battery in the pc, but disconnect it.
To Random User or anyone:
Am i correct in inferring that thus keeping the battery in the pc but disconnected would keep the battery in good condition for years longer than otherwise?
(Yes, i could easily take the risk of loss of recent-unbackedup-data due to the tiny risk of power failure at the premises.)
I am not a battery chemistry expert, but I think this:
A disconnected (stored) battery at 50% charge will have a long life.
A connected battery with a 50% threshold charging system setting is hardly being used because when the battery drops a little, the charger kicks in and is essentially providing the current to run the circuitry at the same time it’s charging the battery. So the battery level fluctuates very little and looses almost no charge to run the computer. This is about the same scenario as an unconnected battery in storage.
With other systems (like Lenovo), two thresholds can be set: the upper and lower, so the fluctuation in charge and battery drain can be set by the user. I don’t what Framework uses for the lower threshold for a given setting. That determines what the fluctuation would be.
Just want to be sure: does the scenario you described amount to setting both the upper and lower limit around 50 (with the upper slightly higher than the lower, like 51 and 49)?
The thresholds are user controllable, but I’ve never set them that close and can’t confirm that the Lenovo system allows it. I’ll try it and report back. But that’s the general idea, set them close and the battery never charges or discharges much.
@James_C It looks like Framework has the lower threshold already set very close to the charge limit (upper) threshold. When using the computer, the battery charge level does not vary, which means as soon as it drops slightly below the threshold set in the bios, charge is added to the battery to keep it at the correct level.
That’s what I noticed, too. Using ectool fwchargelimit 60 at full battery state, it will start discharing the battery (ignores the connected wall plug) until it reaches 60% and keep it there as near as possible. But I found out that you can use ectool chargecontrol idle afterwards to avoid this discharging and just keep the battery at full state. I’m not sure why we need this step, but with this all used energy will be sourced from your wall plug and the battery will be ignored as far as I can say.
You can check the battery/charging state using ectool battery, “Present current” should be “0 mAh”.
Maybe DHowett got an idea what’s happing behind the scenes? It’s quite hard to get some information about the supported (and undocumented?) commands sometimes
Interesting - I noticed another thing - I have mine set to 50% generally and when travelling I set it to 90% as I’m not always near a socket - it was down to about 60% and I reset the threshold to 50% but plugging in it made it charge to 100% - so if (on Windows at least) if it is already above the threshold, the threshold is ignored. Pretty niche situation but I thought I would mention it.
One thing to keep in mind is that, the warmer the battery, the quicker it will discharge on its own even when not being used and/or disconnected. Therefore, if you leave it disconnected but in your laptop for a long time, it could very well be at 0% charge the next time you re-connect the battery (and leaving a battery at 0% is probably the second worst thing to do outside of leaving it constantly charging at 100%). Colder and drier environments are better for battery storage but must be above freezing (and beware of using a fridge if you don’t live in a dry environment as the dew point of the ambient air is usually higher than the temperature in the fridge and therefore every time you open the fridge door the outside air entering the fridge pretty much immediately condenses).
Also it’s my impression that doing lots of little charges (e.g. 45% to 55%) can result in the battery’s charge level becoming inaccurate over time, thereby requiring the user to manually re-calibrate every once in a while simply by draining the battery to 0% and then fully charging it to 100% before using the battery like normal - otherwise you may end up with funny situations like the battery claiming a charge level of 0% while the laptop is powered on yet unplugged, and remaining at 0% for something like 30 minutes until the battery finally runs out (this did indeed happen to me once on an older laptop).
Yes my prior Lenovo laptop had a feature where you set a minimum % before starting to charge. In other words, don’t charge until the battery drops to X%, like 50%. For those of us who unplug and plug in multiple times a day, its not good to always charge up to say 80%. When it drops to 79% it will charge again to reach 80%. So a top charge limit does not prevent multiple charges over and over again. I would like to set a minimum and maximum charge level.
this actually doesn’t work on 12th gen, not sure if I am doing something wrong but the chargecontrol doesn’t work at all, maybe 3.0.6 on 12th gen doesn’t support this yet
