Limiting the battery charge to less than 100%

[Anand_Nakat]

                              I wanted to ask if there is some way to limit charging of battery before it reaches 100%.Say limit it to 80% so that even if I leave my laptop unattended while charging, I don''t have to worry about overcharging and damaging to battery cells.

                            Other brands like ASUS, Lenovo have an option to limit battery charging. I tried to find it in my hp laptop but I could not.

                             I ran a battery checkup yesterday and found these results (I've attached screenshot below) and saw the full charge capacity is 84% of Design Capacity.Does this mean that charging limiter is inbuilt in my laptop??

 

[iomare · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It is not possible to overcharge as when the battery is left on ac adapter it will charge to 100% and stop charging and only start charging again once it falls below a certain threshold (about 5%).

The 84% you mention is the total capacity (once fully charged) compared to the total capacity the battery was designed to hold (when new). So your battery has lost about 16% of the charge it could hold when new.

Regards,

David

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[erico]

The newer notebooks, like the Spectre x360 13-0690d model I bought this year do have the charge limit options as part of the BIOS.

Your 15-bc406tx notebook is a generation or two behind the current models on the market.

I do suggest updating the BIOS to the latest version. That is the only way that the feature might become available to you.  The operative word there is might.

Otherwise the answer is no, it is not a part of the feature set of your notebook.

[Anand_Nakat]

Thanks for replying..So the full charging capacity has been dropped by 16%..Is it too much or is it normal??

[erico]

The mobile use of a Lithium-Ion battery lessens over time, even more so when the ambient temperature is high.

Looking at a time span of, say two years more or less, I would consider 84% not so bad.

I usually get about three to four years out of the battery in my personal notebooks. 

Now that the BIOS has the charge limit setting I will probably get more usable time.

I have my new ultrabook's charge limit in the BIOS set to 80%.  The best setting is universally considered to be between 40-80%, depending on just how much a notebook PC will be used.