Laptop battery charge control using Peak Shift in BIOS

Byambaa · 24 Jan 2022

Hello friends,
I use a laptop as an office PC, so it is always plugged in and tops to 100%.
Recently, I got concerned about the state of my laptop battery health and found that it decreased from 75% to 50% within a year. So I did my research and found some interesting solutions that could be useful, thus sharing with you.
According to the information that I found from this forum and the all-around internet is that continuous charging is not good for the battery due to overheating which leads to fast degradation. Keeping the level of charge 65%-75% is suggested in a recent paper (2018). Therefore I searched for software that can control battery level and switch on and off the charger. Unfortunately, I did not find any.
Instead, I found that Peak Shift in Bios can be utilized as a controller for the above purpose. You can set times for only using wall power, not charging, and charging the battery. Here is how you do it:
From PSS to PSE -- Battery power is used but not charged if the battery level is lower than the threshold you set, AC will be used. In my case, 75% means it will be kept around it for longer life. My laptop is in sleeping mode during this interval.
From PSE to PSCS -- AC is the main power source, the battery won't be charged. I set my working/active hours.
From PSCS to PSS (all other times) -- Charging time. It can be its min since AC is used most of the time and the battery's min level is kept by the threshold.

Laptop battery charge control using Peak Shift in BIOS-20220118_173224.jpg

Try3 · 24 Jan 2022

Not all Bioses have the settings yours has.

I have not seen any degradation in a battery that I've kept at 100% since it was new over three years ago.
I saw degradation to about 80% in a battery that had been on battery power for an hour or two every day for a year and it has degraded to about 60% during the five years since then during which it has been mainly on AC power and charged to 100%.

Dell have dropped the ability to limit charging to given levels [such as 80%] in recent versions of their battery utilities from at least some of their computers.
Dell support now say that keeping it at 100% charge does not cause any degradation.
my ditty - Dell Tech support video about battery use [post #8] - TenForums

My electric shaver has a lithium ion battery. They say that the way to preserve battery life it to discharge it fully every six months.

You could spend your whole life reading articles on this subject yet never see any proof of any of the claims made. And you'll probably see several examples of people becoming abusive when asked for evidence.

I normally keep my batteries at 100% whenever I can but I'm conducting an experiment on one computer for which I'd been keeping very detailed battery notes. I only allow that to charge to 80-90% and intend to keep doing so until at least mid-2023 by which time I hope to be able to see whether its degradation pattern has altered at all.

Denis

Byambaa · 25 Jan 2022

Thank you for sharing your experience on the topic. Let us know the result of your experiment when the time comes. I will also report an observation after a year while using the above feature. Then I will continue with a new battery replacement. And comment here again.