Premature Battery Wear Clevo P150

I'm going to reference back to a thread that I had started a couple of months back about preserving battery life by running AC with no battery installed.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/755206-running-clevo-p150-without-battery.html

I took the advice and installed Battery Care and it showed 0% Wear on both of my batteries. I chose it over Battery Bar only because of toolbar icon since both seemed to offer the same information. I didn't note battery wear while Battery Bar was installed back then, but I'm observant enough that if I had seen anything of concern, I would have brought it up in that discussion, or with the techs at Pro Star.

I recently did a full reload of my OS and while I was reinstalling software, I ended up using Battery Bar this time around because the Battery Care download is now full of a bunch of additional unwanted apps. I was kind of disappointed to see 3.4% Wear on one of my 4-5 month old batteries already, so I decided to charge that one and swap it out with my second battery which I was sure wouldn't show anywhere near that amount of wear. I was right. It didn't show that amount of wear...it showed 9.4% Wear after 4-5 months with it being in regular rotation with my second battery. There's no chance what so ever that one battery would have been used or charged any differently than the other. That's nearly 10% wear which amounts to about 20 - 30 minutes run time. What's the likelihood of a brand new battery showing that great of a difference in wear/life ratio to an identical battery used in the exact same manner?

Thanks,

Walt

 

What conditions and charge level are you storing them in? How many charge/discharge cycles has each battery had?

 

Since my original post regarding concern for not limiting battery life due to constant charging after reaching 100% and removing the battery when running on AC power, each battery has gone through a complete calibration cycle. As much as it's been a pain in the backside, on the recommendation from Pro Star in my previous thread, I've done my best to keep the batteries charging/discharging within the 20% - 80% range. Previous to being made aware of this guideline both batteries were being charged and stored at 100%...both being handled identically, and stored at room temperature. I really had little concern over this based on feedback in my original thread regarding laptops remaining plugged in constantly and showing little battery wear even over time. Seeing 0% wear on both batteries at that time was encouraging, and reinforced what some had mentioned about the newer lithium ion batteries being more robust. Seeing the 3.4% wear on the battery which had just come back from Pro Star after replacing the keyboard (including the heat exposure experienced during shipping) was a little discouraging. 9.4% wear is much more discouraging for a 5 month old battery that has only been used half of that time, especially when there is an identical battery being used in the exact same manner showing 1/3 of the wear. Those statistics also follow each battery as they are swapped. One consistently indicates 3.4% and the other 9.4% wear, each after a full calibration since discovering what I consider to be a significant difference in battery life.

Thoughts?

Walt

 

What is your usage type? Are they partially drained or fully? How fast? How many cycles roughly have you put each through?

 

I'm going to estimate 4 full cycles (full drain/full charge) on each battery based on best recollection and typical daily use. I never let the battery fully drain unless I'm calibrating. The laptop will switch over to hibernate if left unattended and a battery reaches 15%. I hadn't considered usage effecting wear. While it's possible that the same battery was installed at different times of heavy use it's still a steep difference in wear given the length of time and regular rotation. While I wasn't charting daily use, and lacked the understanding that I have now, I've been aware of making any effort possible to maintain battery life since the battery in my previous laptop crapped out on me and I wasn't able to get a working replacement (see previous thread). I'm actually curious if there isn't some way of shutting down the charging at 80%, or am I completely over thinking this?

 

Battery life is mainly measured in charge/discharge cycles. Each battery should do about 500 of these. Draining down to 80% then charging back to 100% 5 times will cause much more wear than a single complete cycle.

 

I can say my battery fluctuated between as high as 11% and as low as 5% load over a couple months; with it being as little as 2 months old. So you'll have to see. But I think it's normal. Other people may have different ideas; maybe I have a bad battery. Who knows.

 

I'd just keep on an eye on how long it lasts.