G5 5590 thunderbolt charging

From a quick check on Dell's ordering page, it seems even the lowest-end configuration of the G5 5590 comes with a 130W AC adapter.  It's possible higher-end configurations come with higher wattage adapters, although I didn't check.  The USB Power Delivery spec used for USB-C and TB3 officially maxes out at 100W.  Dell has done something proprietary on some of their own docks to stretch that to 130W, and certain XPS and Precision systems that are designed for a 130W power source support pulling that much wattage from those types of Dell docks, but you won't find that implemented on third-party docks, and Dell might not have implemented 130W USB-C/TB3 charging support on that system.  The product page for the G5 5590 says this for the USB-C port: "1x USB-C DisplayPort Alt-Mode only", i.e. no mention of system charging or even USB Power Delivery (the latter of which could mean that it supports providing USB PD to peripherals even if it doesn't support being charged via USB PD.)

In terms of whether you bought the wrong laptop, if USB PD charging support is important to you, then yes.  But you're also unlikely to find mid-range gaming laptops that support USB PD charging.  The closest you can come is probably the XPS 15, which is also designed for a 130W source but which supports pulling that over USB-C/TB3.  That could be charged over USB-C/TB3 by any of the following Dell docks that can deliver 130W over USB-C/TB3:

- WD15 or WD19, in either case with the 180W power supply (not the 130W they can also be ordered with)
- TB16 with 240W power supply (not the 180W it can also be ordered with)
- WD19TB (only available with 180W power supply, but that's enough for this dock to pass 130W to the attached system.)

If you don't want to go that route, your only option would be to keep both the dock and the system's AC adapter connected.  And even if that system DID support 130W charging, if the dock you're using provides something less than that, e.g. 60W or 87W, then if your system doesn't also have its own AC adapter connected, it will take measures to try to operate within the reduced power budget, such as slower battery charging and even CPU and GPU performance throttling.  Under very heavy load cases, the system can even continue draining the battery while connected to the undersized power source in order to make up for the shortfall, but that's a last resort because obviously in that case your system will eventually end up dying even while connected to power.

Is there a definite short answer to this initial question?

I find myself having bought a WD19TB through my company, thinking it will provide peripherals and charging
via a single plugin of the thunderbolt to the dock, as is the case for my colleagues, who have newer latitude machines.
Also I found the recommendations of the dell sales suggestive about this possibility.

As the dock is able to provide 130W via TB, and the laptop obviously charges fine at 130W with direct connection to an older DELL AC adapter,
I request an explanation why it seems not possible to charge at least at 130W over TB with my current config.
- To me this kind of reads like a BIOS upgrade issue.

Since this is for my work environment and my company has been a regular customer of DELL, I absolutely would not mind getting another docking station, but the status per se is "disappointing" ...

Thanks & regards,
G.

@gericht  From what I've seen reported on this forums, although the WD19TB supports 130W charging and some Dell systems support receiving 130W over USB-C/TB3 (like the XPS 15 models), Dell has at least thus far chosen not to implement 130W charging support on Inspiron G Series systems.  It might be because certain models require either 130W or 180W depending on the GPU you purchase, but whatever the reason, the capability isn't there, which means you can't have a single cable connection for everything.

Another irritation is that Dell thus far hasn't implemented the firmware-level support for the dock's Power button across their product line.  With Latitude, XPS, and Precision systems, you can use the Power button on the dock to power up a system from sleep or full shutdown, or even perform a force shutdown, just as you can with the Power button built into the system.  But that isn't available with the Inspiron systems, or Alienware systems.  There's no industry-wide standard for an external Power button, so I could understand that function not working with non-Dell systems (or Dell systems not being able to do this from non-Dell docks), but it baffles me as to why Dell hasn't at least deployed this support across their own models.  There have been a lot of threads here basically saying, "Why can't I power up my Inspiron/Alienware system with the lid closed using the Power button on my Dell dock?"  Excellent question.

The bottom line seems to be Dell continues to see docking stations as business-oriented products and therefore focuses on deploying these capabilities with their business-oriented product lines.  The Inspiron and Alienware lines are consumer-oriented, and that seems to be causing them to get the short end of the stick in certain areas.

I use a thunderbolt dock with my G5 5590 and the power delivery doesn't work.

Also, keep in mind that you'll want to use the hdmi and displayport to connect monitors, otherwise the dock operates on the CPU's integrated graphics only and you don't get any use from the graphics processor.