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DPM, what happens when the battery reaches the desired "stop charging" level?
Hello,
Recently, I asked a question regarding DPM (Dell Power Manager) and got an answer. However, when I tested the answer, it was not correct.
I was told that if, on DPM, you set the setting to start charging at, say, 50% and stop charging at 60% (for example), then when the battery reaches 60%, the computer will use power directly from the battery until it reaches 50%, and then starts charging again.
So, when I tested it and set the custom setting to stop charging at 60%, it was supposed to use power from the battery until the "start charging" level was reached (in my case 50%). However, when the battery reached 60%, it did not use power directly from the battery and remained at 60% for the duration of my test - 1 hour (and yes, there was a program running).
Therefore, I realized that one of the following must be happening:
- The power is used directly from the power source,
- The rate at which power is used from the battery is the rate at which the charger charges the battery.
Please tell me what exactly happens, since the last answer was wrong.
Thank you.
U2CAMEB4ME
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February 3rd, 2021 09:00
Welcome to the Dell Community @RamAgent007
Your laptop has a S.M.A.R.T. power system. "Both your battery and AC adapter are S.M.A.R.T. "
Your AC adapter uses the center pin to communicate with the laptop over the SMbus to charge the battery.
When it reaches your upper preset limit it should stop charging and only use the AC adapter power.
At times it may charge just enough to keep the battery at that limit.
When you disconnect the AC adapter and it reaches the lower limit it should warn you of that fact.
Best regards,
U2
lmacri
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February 3rd, 2021 09:00
Hi RamAgent007:
Have you found a definitive answer on what the Stop Charging and Start Charging settings do if you create a Custom battery charging plan in Dell Power Manager?
I found an 09-Sep-2020 post by jphughan in the thread Is Any Possibility to Stop Charging the Laptop Through the Monitor USB-C Cable? that might provide some context, although I'm still not clear how the Start Charging setting works when you unplug your laptop.
If I understood jphughan's post, if you have Stop Charging set to 80% and Start Charging set to the minimum 50% and leave your laptop plugged in all the time, your battery should charge up to 80% capacity and then stop charging, and your computer should switch exclusively to using AC power. Your battery will slowly self-discharge over time (this could take several days or weeks, depending on the condition of your battery), and when it eventually self-discharges down to 50% the battery will charge back to 80% and the cycle will begin again.
This makes sense, assuming your laptop model doesn't have some sort of trickle charger that tries to safely keep your battery constantly topped up at 80% while your laptop is plugged in (i.e., so that your battery doesn't slowly self-discharge over time). I'm guessing that constantly charging to 80% and then automatically switching to battery power, discharging to 50%, and then charging back up to 80%, and repeating that cycle multiple times a day would be even harder on your battery than keeping it at 95% capacity.
I'm less clear on what happens if your battery is charged to 80% and you unplug from AC power and switch to battery power. If you use your computer on battery power until runs down to 65% capacity and then plug in again, does is stay at 65% and switch back to using AC power exclusively while your battery goes back to it's slow self-discharge towards 50%, or does it immediately charge back to 80% (i.e., regardless of whether your battery was above or below 50% when you plugged back in)?
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If you want to experiment with your Stop Charging and Start Charging settings, there's a handy tool built in to Windows 10 that you can use to monitor your battery status. Open a open a command prompt and type in powercfg /batteryreport, and Windows 10 will generate a .html file with a detailed report on your battery condition and even creates a graph showing your battery levels over the past 3 days. And just an aside, but if you don't like the idea of leaving your laptop plugged in 24/7 Shawn Brink's TenForums tutorial How to Optimize Battery Life on Windows 10 PC has some good hints on settings you can change to extend your battery life (I'm guessing some of these settings can also be managed in Dell Power Manager using the Battery Extender feature).
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v2004 build 19041.746 * Firefox v85.0 * Windows Defender v4.18.2011.6 * Malwarebytes Free v4.3.0-1.0.1157
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620
lmacri
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January 28th, 2021 08:00
Hi RamAgent007:
What is the make and model of your Dell laptop, your current BIOS version, and Dell Power Manager version? Does the Battery Health indicator in Dell Power Manager show that your battery condition is rated Excellent or Good?
I've never used the Dell Power Manager for setting custom battery charging levels on my Inspiron 5584, but according to the section titled "Create Custom Battery Setting" on page 7 of the Dell Power Manager User Guide at https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/power-manager_users-guide_en-us.pdf :
"The Custom battery setting enables users to define when a battery starts and stops charging. This setting is recommended for advanced users who are familiar with battery charging cycles. (NOTE: There should be a minimum difference between the Start Charging and Stop Charging values specified in your system's BIOS)
If you have Start Charging set to 50 and Stop Charging set to 60 that might be too small a difference in charge levels for your BIOS. I don't know how accurate this is but the Alvarez Technology Group article Laptop Battery Charging Tips from the Pros recommends that you "try to keep the battery level between 40 percent to 80 percent". What do you observe when you test with Start Charging set at 40 and Stop Charging set at 80?
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v2004 build 19041.746 * Firefox v85.0 * Windows Defender v4.18.2011.6 * Malwarebytes Free v4.3.0-1.0.1146
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620
RamAgent007
12 Posts
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January 29th, 2021 03:00
Hi Imacri,
Thank you for the reply. I have an Inspiron 3585.
My point is that once the battery reached 80%, what was supposed to happen was that it was supposed to stop charging and use power DIRECTLY from the battery, until it reaches 40% (in my case, 50% because the minimum "start charging" level is 50%).
But what happened was that the battery remained at 80% for the whole hour, which is what confuses me.
Thanks again for the answer.
lmacri
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February 3rd, 2021 13:00
Hi U2CAMEB4ME:
Does that refer to the "regular" low battery warning that's set in the advanced settings of the user's power plan (shown in the image below), or do you mean that the Start Charging setting of a Custom battery plan created with Dell Power Manager doesn't do anything except display a low battery warning when your battery hits that lower level?
Dell Power Manager doesn't allow users to set the Start Charging option in a Custom battery plan below 50%. If all this option does is set the level at which a low battery notification is displayed (i.e., and it doesn't actually trigger the battery to start charging back up to the Stop Charging level) it seems odd that Dell wouldn't allow users to choose a lower Start Charging threshold like 30% or 40%.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v2004 build 19041.746 * Firefox v85.0 * Windows Defender v4.18.2011.6 * Malwarebytes Free v4.3.0-1.0.1157
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620
RamAgent007
12 Posts
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February 4th, 2021 04:00
Hi Imacri,
Thank you very much for your response. I appreciate the time and energy you spend to find the right answer and posted it here.
Also, thanks for clearing my misconceptions about this battery settings. Now I finally understand how this battery works. Hopefully your response will help other like me too.
Once again, thank you very much for all of your responses. It is very appreciated.
RamAgent007
RamAgent007
12 Posts
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February 4th, 2021 04:00
Hi U2CAMEB4ME,
Thank you for your response. You have now cleared my misunderstandings. Hopefully, your post will help others like me too.
Once again, I appreciate it very much.
RamAgent007
Peter1000
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June 7th, 2021 02:00
Hello, I have a somewhat connected question:
I have a Dell Inspiron 15, and I recently replaced the battery. Now when I have the computer turned on and the AC adapter plugged in, the battery charges to 80% and then stops charging, disabling the AC adapter at the same time, and staying only on battery power. I first thought it was part of the battery saving plans, and that it would enable the AC adapter again when the battery charge level fell to a certain percentage, but it doesn't do that. I have to put the computer into hibernation mode or restart for it to enable AC adapter charging again; if I don't do that, the battery just drains all the way.
The desktop mode and longevity mode menus of the battery meter are grayed out, I can't use them.
Any help would me much appreciated!
Peter