How can I make my adaptor to not charge my battery over 95%?

Is there a way I can set up my laptop (by using hardware or software) so that my AC adaptor won't charge over 95% and maybe turn the laptop into hibernation mode when the battery has reached 5%?

 

Some specific brands of laptops come with programs that can handle this. What brand and type of laptop are you using?

Also, are you using Windows XP? I'm not sure if you can directly use the power manager in Control Panel to do this.

 

I do not think it is possible to make the battery stop charging at 95%.
The battery will charge as long as their is a voltage gradient between the onboard charging circuit and the battery. The battery is fully charged when this potential becomes 0. You cannot control the rate at which the battery charges to, it defies electrical engineering.

K-TRON

 

I read somewhere on these forums that it is possible, there's a utility for it. I forgot what it's called though. The utility let's you choose until what level you want to charge your battery.

 

Sony provide the recharge limit capability on some of their notebooks, but I think it works at the BIOS level (it needs to be able to work when the computer is switched off). Dell also provides a manual control on my E6400 to stop charging.

The hibernate at 5% is settable in the Alarms section of the power properties. There is a low battery action and a critical action and you can select what happens.

John

 

Does Lenovo/IBM offer something similar to this?

 

Hi.

I found one on the INTEL website, It can do a full charge, balanced or midway, It installs and runs without an error, It puts an icon on you taskbar, but whether it does anything is another question.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=2794&DwnldID=13829&lang=eng

 

That software is notebook specific and works only for compal brand. Believe me, I've installed that software on hy hp notebook and it doesn't work. Other people in these forums tried that also but no luck. Those softwares work hand in hand with the bios.

 

Why would you want to? The charger will turn off when the laptop thinks the battery has hit 100%. If it didn't it would damage the battery. LiIon cells won't be harmed by charging them to 100% and leaving them there.

Having said that, it can be done manually. All the laptops I have checked will not charge the battery if the current charge is 95% or above. So, if you watch the charge level and unplug the power for a few moments when the level hits 95% (don't let it drop below this), the laptop won't start charging again.

The battery level for sleep/standby or hibernation is set in the power options. In Vista, go to the Power Options in the Control Panel. Select your power plan and click on "Change plan settings" and then "Change advanced power settings". In the tree of power options, expand the "Battery" node. Then you need to set the "Critical battery action" is set to "Hibernate" and the "Critical battery level" to 5%. From memory, XP has similar options but I don't remember how to get to them.

David

 

Yes. The power manager utility allows you to specify a specific percentage to charge by going to the battery maintenance window and checking custom charging preferences.