If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
|
#1
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
On 3/1/17 8:19 PM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: Let's say you run the powercfg command from the command line. The battery design is 60,000, but the last full charge is 40,000. Would it be accurate to say the battery has 66% or 2/3rds of it's life left? Or is some type of sliding scale more accurate, and maybe the battery has only 40% of it's life left? Is there an easy to understand web site for this? I'm not sure of what terms I should search for in this instance. The term you want is "battery fuel gauge". http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ery_fuel_gauge The connector on the laptop battery has room for serial connections, allowing the CPU to query the battery IC. The battery capacity declines with age. When Windows says "100% full", it means 100% of the remaining 60% or original capacity the old battery has. You check the "hours and minutes remaining", as a means of guesstimating the Watt-hours the battery actually holds. If you laptop used to say "three hours" when the battery had just finished charging, maybe now it says "two hours", under equivalent conditions. Of course, controlling the conditions on a laptop is notoriously difficult. Some fuel gauges, if they have not received a calibration cycle, they count the number of times the battery have been charged, and estimate the loss in capacity as a result. I'm sure the driver software in Windows, cleans up any "inconsistent" information so you won't get a scare like "105% full". The battery IC is supposed to be "counting coulombs" or some such. It does that, rather than using open circuit battery voltage as some sort of indicator. Coulombs should be a better method, than any voltage-based method. Hi, Paul, That's not the type of indicator I was referring to. I'm referring to the powercfg report available with Windows. Open a command window. Navigate to Windows\system32. Type powercfg -energy -output power.html It takes a minute or so for a report, power.html, to be created in the system32 folder. You can use the full pathnames as you desire to end up with the output file where you would like it as well as change the name of the report. Open the file in whatever, search for Battery Information. Those are the numbers I'm interested in. The above is for Windows 7. I've read online that for 8 and 10, you change energy to batteryinformation. I don't have access to an 8 or 10 laptop, so cannot confirm this. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.11.6 Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit) Thunderbird 45.7.1 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
Ken Springer wrote:
On 3/1/17 8:19 PM, Paul wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Let's say you run the powercfg command from the command line. The battery design is 60,000, but the last full charge is 40,000. Would it be accurate to say the battery has 66% or 2/3rds of it's life left? Or is some type of sliding scale more accurate, and maybe the battery has only 40% of it's life left? Is there an easy to understand web site for this? I'm not sure of what terms I should search for in this instance. The term you want is "battery fuel gauge". http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ery_fuel_gauge The connector on the laptop battery has room for serial connections, allowing the CPU to query the battery IC. The battery capacity declines with age. When Windows says "100% full", it means 100% of the remaining 60% or original capacity the old battery has. You check the "hours and minutes remaining", as a means of guesstimating the Watt-hours the battery actually holds. If you laptop used to say "three hours" when the battery had just finished charging, maybe now it says "two hours", under equivalent conditions. Of course, controlling the conditions on a laptop is notoriously difficult. Some fuel gauges, if they have not received a calibration cycle, they count the number of times the battery have been charged, and estimate the loss in capacity as a result. I'm sure the driver software in Windows, cleans up any "inconsistent" information so you won't get a scare like "105% full". The battery IC is supposed to be "counting coulombs" or some such. It does that, rather than using open circuit battery voltage as some sort of indicator. Coulombs should be a better method, than any voltage-based method. Hi, Paul, That's not the type of indicator I was referring to. I'm referring to the powercfg report available with Windows. Open a command window. Navigate to Windows\system32. Type powercfg -energy -output power.html It takes a minute or so for a report, power.html, to be created in the system32 folder. You can use the full pathnames as you desire to end up with the output file where you would like it as well as change the name of the report. Open the file in whatever, search for Battery Information. Those are the numbers I'm interested in. The above is for Windows 7. I've read online that for 8 and 10, you change energy to batteryinformation. I don't have access to an 8 or 10 laptop, so cannot confirm this. I ran the "battery" option and got the following: NAME DELL 7XFJJ4B MANUFACTURER Sanyo SERIAL NUMBER 8050 CHEMISTRY LION DESIGN CAPACITY 73,260 mWh FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 68,964 mWh CYCLE COUNT - Is that what you are looking for? |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
On 3/2/17 10:01 AM, Arnie Goetchius wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: On 3/1/17 8:19 PM, Paul wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Let's say you run the powercfg command from the command line. The battery design is 60,000, but the last full charge is 40,000. Would it be accurate to say the battery has 66% or 2/3rds of it's life left? Or is some type of sliding scale more accurate, and maybe the battery has only 40% of it's life left? Is there an easy to understand web site for this? I'm not sure of what terms I should search for in this instance. The term you want is "battery fuel gauge". http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ery_fuel_gauge The connector on the laptop battery has room for serial connections, allowing the CPU to query the battery IC. The battery capacity declines with age. When Windows says "100% full", it means 100% of the remaining 60% or original capacity the old battery has. You check the "hours and minutes remaining", as a means of guesstimating the Watt-hours the battery actually holds. If you laptop used to say "three hours" when the battery had just finished charging, maybe now it says "two hours", under equivalent conditions. Of course, controlling the conditions on a laptop is notoriously difficult. Some fuel gauges, if they have not received a calibration cycle, they count the number of times the battery have been charged, and estimate the loss in capacity as a result. I'm sure the driver software in Windows, cleans up any "inconsistent" information so you won't get a scare like "105% full". The battery IC is supposed to be "counting coulombs" or some such. It does that, rather than using open circuit battery voltage as some sort of indicator. Coulombs should be a better method, than any voltage-based method. Hi, Paul, That's not the type of indicator I was referring to. I'm referring to the powercfg report available with Windows. Open a command window. Navigate to Windows\system32. Type powercfg -energy -output power.html It takes a minute or so for a report, power.html, to be created in the system32 folder. You can use the full pathnames as you desire to end up with the output file where you would like it as well as change the name of the report. Open the file in whatever, search for Battery Information. Those are the numbers I'm interested in. The above is for Windows 7. I've read online that for 8 and 10, you change energy to batteryinformation. I don't have access to an 8 or 10 laptop, so cannot confirm this. I ran the "battery" option and got the following: NAME DELL 7XFJJ4B MANUFACTURER Sanyo SERIAL NUMBER 8050 CHEMISTRY LION DESIGN CAPACITY 73,260 mWh FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 68,964 mWh CYCLE COUNT - Is that what you are looking for? Looking for it? Nah, I found it. LOL I'm looking for a way to interpret those numbers in "layman's terms". How do I explain how much battery "life" is left when the battery is used, such as in a used laptop I want to sell. Can I say something like the battery has 94% of its expected life left? Some kind of description/explanation the average person on the street would understand. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.11.6 Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit) Thunderbird 45.7.1 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
Ken Springer wrote:
On 3/2/17 10:01 AM, Arnie Goetchius wrote: Ken Springer wrote: On 3/1/17 8:19 PM, Paul wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Let's say you run the powercfg command from the command line. The battery design is 60,000, but the last full charge is 40,000. Would it be accurate to say the battery has 66% or 2/3rds of it's life left? Or is some type of sliding scale more accurate, and maybe the battery has only 40% of it's life left? Is there an easy to understand web site for this? I'm not sure of what terms I should search for in this instance. The term you want is "battery fuel gauge". http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ery_fuel_gauge The connector on the laptop battery has room for serial connections, allowing the CPU to query the battery IC. The battery capacity declines with age. When Windows says "100% full", it means 100% of the remaining 60% or original capacity the old battery has. You check the "hours and minutes remaining", as a means of guesstimating the Watt-hours the battery actually holds. If you laptop used to say "three hours" when the battery had just finished charging, maybe now it says "two hours", under equivalent conditions. Of course, controlling the conditions on a laptop is notoriously difficult. Some fuel gauges, if they have not received a calibration cycle, they count the number of times the battery have been charged, and estimate the loss in capacity as a result. I'm sure the driver software in Windows, cleans up any "inconsistent" information so you won't get a scare like "105% full". The battery IC is supposed to be "counting coulombs" or some such. It does that, rather than using open circuit battery voltage as some sort of indicator. Coulombs should be a better method, than any voltage-based method. Hi, Paul, That's not the type of indicator I was referring to. I'm referring to the powercfg report available with Windows. Open a command window. Navigate to Windows\system32. Type powercfg -energy -output power.html It takes a minute or so for a report, power.html, to be created in the system32 folder. You can use the full pathnames as you desire to end up with the output file where you would like it as well as change the name of the report. Open the file in whatever, search for Battery Information. Those are the numbers I'm interested in. The above is for Windows 7. I've read online that for 8 and 10, you change energy to batteryinformation. I don't have access to an 8 or 10 laptop, so cannot confirm this. I ran the "battery" option and got the following: NAME DELL 7XFJJ4B MANUFACTURER Sanyo SERIAL NUMBER 8050 CHEMISTRY LION DESIGN CAPACITY 73,260 mWh FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 68,964 mWh CYCLE COUNT - Is that what you are looking for? Looking for it? Nah, I found it. LOL I'm looking for a way to interpret those numbers in "layman's terms". How do I explain how much battery "life" is left when the battery is used, such as in a used laptop I want to sell. Can I say something like the battery has 94% of its expected life left? Some kind of description/explanation the average person on the street would understand. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...will-tell-you/ DESIGN CAPACITY mWh when it was new FULL CHARGE CAPACITY mWh it holds when 100% now That article has a bit more info. Paul |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
On 3/2/2017 7:12 PM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: On 3/2/17 10:01 AM, Arnie Goetchius wrote: Ken Springer wrote: On 3/1/17 8:19 PM, Paul wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Let's say you run the powercfg command from the command line. The battery design is 60,000, but the last full charge is 40,000. Would it be accurate to say the battery has 66% or 2/3rds of it's life left? Or is some type of sliding scale more accurate, and maybe the battery has only 40% of it's life left? Is there an easy to understand web site for this? I'm not sure of what terms I should search for in this instance. The term you want is "battery fuel gauge". http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ery_fuel_gauge The connector on the laptop battery has room for serial connections, allowing the CPU to query the battery IC. The battery capacity declines with age. When Windows says "100% full", it means 100% of the remaining 60% or original capacity the old battery has. You check the "hours and minutes remaining", as a means of guesstimating the Watt-hours the battery actually holds. If you laptop used to say "three hours" when the battery had just finished charging, maybe now it says "two hours", under equivalent conditions. Of course, controlling the conditions on a laptop is notoriously difficult. Some fuel gauges, if they have not received a calibration cycle, they count the number of times the battery have been charged, and estimate the loss in capacity as a result. I'm sure the driver software in Windows, cleans up any "inconsistent" information so you won't get a scare like "105% full". The battery IC is supposed to be "counting coulombs" or some such. It does that, rather than using open circuit battery voltage as some sort of indicator. Coulombs should be a better method, than any voltage-based method. Hi, Paul, That's not the type of indicator I was referring to. I'm referring to the powercfg report available with Windows. Open a command window. Navigate to Windows\system32. Type powercfg -energy -output power.html It takes a minute or so for a report, power.html, to be created in the system32 folder. You can use the full pathnames as you desire to end up with the output file where you would like it as well as change the name of the report. Open the file in whatever, search for Battery Information. Those are the numbers I'm interested in. The above is for Windows 7. I've read online that for 8 and 10, you change energy to batteryinformation. I don't have access to an 8 or 10 laptop, so cannot confirm this. I ran the "battery" option and got the following: NAME DELL 7XFJJ4B MANUFACTURER Sanyo SERIAL NUMBER 8050 CHEMISTRY LION DESIGN CAPACITY 73,260 mWh FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 68,964 mWh CYCLE COUNT - Is that what you are looking for? Looking for it? Nah, I found it. LOL I'm looking for a way to interpret those numbers in "layman's terms". How do I explain how much battery "life" is left when the battery is used, such as in a used laptop I want to sell. Can I say something like the battery has 94% of its expected life left? Some kind of description/explanation the average person on the street would understand. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...will-tell-you/ DESIGN CAPACITY mWh when it was new FULL CHARGE CAPACITY mWh it holds when 100% now That article has a bit more info. Paul That was a very interesting and informative article Paul, I applied it to my Win 8.1 10 inch D2 tablet and the results where very enlightening. The design figure was 29,600 MWH , but the 100 % full charge capacity was 34,800 MWH, the battery must be better than specs tend to show, much better than expected on about 18 month old tablet, Although I have to admit it is hardly used very often. Rene |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
On 3/2/17 6:12 PM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: On 3/2/17 10:01 AM, Arnie Goetchius wrote: Ken Springer wrote: On 3/1/17 8:19 PM, Paul wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Let's say you run the powercfg command from the command line. The battery design is 60,000, but the last full charge is 40,000. Would it be accurate to say the battery has 66% or 2/3rds of it's life left? Or is some type of sliding scale more accurate, and maybe the battery has only 40% of it's life left? Is there an easy to understand web site for this? I'm not sure of what terms I should search for in this instance. The term you want is "battery fuel gauge". http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ery_fuel_gauge The connector on the laptop battery has room for serial connections, allowing the CPU to query the battery IC. The battery capacity declines with age. When Windows says "100% full", it means 100% of the remaining 60% or original capacity the old battery has. You check the "hours and minutes remaining", as a means of guesstimating the Watt-hours the battery actually holds. If you laptop used to say "three hours" when the battery had just finished charging, maybe now it says "two hours", under equivalent conditions. Of course, controlling the conditions on a laptop is notoriously difficult. Some fuel gauges, if they have not received a calibration cycle, they count the number of times the battery have been charged, and estimate the loss in capacity as a result. I'm sure the driver software in Windows, cleans up any "inconsistent" information so you won't get a scare like "105% full". The battery IC is supposed to be "counting coulombs" or some such. It does that, rather than using open circuit battery voltage as some sort of indicator. Coulombs should be a better method, than any voltage-based method. Hi, Paul, That's not the type of indicator I was referring to. I'm referring to the powercfg report available with Windows. Open a command window. Navigate to Windows\system32. Type powercfg -energy -output power.html It takes a minute or so for a report, power.html, to be created in the system32 folder. You can use the full pathnames as you desire to end up with the output file where you would like it as well as change the name of the report. Open the file in whatever, search for Battery Information. Those are the numbers I'm interested in. The above is for Windows 7. I've read online that for 8 and 10, you change energy to batteryinformation. I don't have access to an 8 or 10 laptop, so cannot confirm this. I ran the "battery" option and got the following: NAME DELL 7XFJJ4B MANUFACTURER Sanyo SERIAL NUMBER 8050 CHEMISTRY LION DESIGN CAPACITY 73,260 mWh FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 68,964 mWh CYCLE COUNT - Is that what you are looking for? Looking for it? Nah, I found it. LOL I'm looking for a way to interpret those numbers in "layman's terms". How do I explain how much battery "life" is left when the battery is used, such as in a used laptop I want to sell. Can I say something like the battery has 94% of its expected life left? Some kind of description/explanation the average person on the street would understand. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...will-tell-you/ DESIGN CAPACITY mWh when it was new FULL CHARGE CAPACITY mWh it holds when 100% now That article has a bit more info. It looks like batteryreport provides more info that the version in W7. I'll have to compare the reports when I get a chance. I do the command line to put the report on my desktop, so it's easy to drag and drop to where it will be permanently stored in a cloud application. But I'm still a bit perplexed as to how to accurately, and simply, explain to someone the current status of a used battery. Maybe I could say something like "The battery has X% of it's design life left." A couple months ago I did some research on how to maximize the life of your battery. I created a single page doc on taking care of your laptop battery. Main points are as follows: Simple ways to make your battery last longer... 1. Do not charge your battery to 100%. Heat is the enemy of battery life, and charging to full charge creates internal heat in the battery, which shortens the life of the battery. 2. Do not fully discharge your battery by letting it die. 3. Try to keep your battery charged to between 40%-70%. 4. Try to keep your battery at room temperature. So don’t leave your computer in a hot or cold car, for example. 5. If your AC adapter (charger) fails, ensure the replacement charger matches or exceeds the specifications of the original charger. Also see if you can determine if the charger you are buying includes some safety circuits, such as a temperature sensor that shuts the charger down in case the charger gets too hot. That will prevent the charger itself from failing. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.11.6 Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit) Thunderbird 45.7.1 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
Ken Springer wrote:
A couple months ago I did some research on how to maximize the life of your battery. I created a single page doc on taking care of your laptop battery. Main points are as follows: Simple ways to make your battery last longer... 1. Do not charge your battery to 100%. Heat is the enemy of battery life, and charging to full charge creates internal heat in the battery, which shortens the life of the battery. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a..._ion_batteries "Some Li-ion packs may experience a temperature rise of about 5ºC (9ºF) when reaching full charge. This could be due to the protection circuit and/or elevated internal resistance. Discontinue using the battery or charger if the temperature rises more than 10ºC (18ºF) under moderate charging speeds." "Li-ion cannot absorb overcharge. When fully charged, the charge current must be cut off. A continuous trickle charge would cause plating of metallic lithium and compromise safety. To minimize stress, keep the lithium-ion battery at the peak cut-off as short as possible. Once the charge is terminated, the battery voltage begins to drop. This eases the voltage stress. Over time, the open circuit voltage will settle to between 3.70V and 3.90V/cell. Note that a Li-ion battery that has received a fully saturated charge will keep the voltage elevated for a longer than one that has not received a saturation charge." The necessary behaviors are handled by the internal chip in the laptop in charge of doing the charging. A well-matched battery chemistry, along with the right settings on the charger chip, ensures carefree operation. On the other hand, the article here talks of "thermal runaway". http://www.batteryuniversity.com/lea...of_lithium_ion The article here, has a graphic. It's when the charger goes "out of bounds" that the trouble begins. The charger (a chip inside the laptop), has to be matched to the battery chemistry. Buying a cheap replacement battery, which happened to have the wrong chemistry, could promote this kind of failure. You're relying on the guy in China, putting the right cells in your cheap replacement. And with Cobalt, there can be some slight differences. For the guy building the packs, he should have datasheets for both products in front of him, to verify they're correct. http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm So under normal circumstances, the battery experiences negligible self-heating at full charge, and the charging stops after the topping up phase. You may feel a warm spot in the laptop, but that should be in the power management area, not the battery. 2. Do not fully discharge your battery by letting it die. The laptop will shutdown at 0% charge, so the battery is not immediately un-chargeable. However, if you leave a pack that is at zero percent in that state for too long, the self-discharge of the pack (not the load from the laptop), will take it below the safe charging voltage level. And then the charging chip will simply refuse to charge it, for safety reasons. The pack must then be replaced. (And if you're an idiot, you drill into the pack and apply a charge to the cells, you could start a fire.) In summary, running the battery to 0% is perfectly safe... as long as you recharge it in a reasonable time after it happened. And this is not always under your control. The computer can do this on its own, while you would assume there is "fuel left in it". This happened to me just recently - the puzzle was, how did the laptop discharge the battery ? It was maybe 50-60% full when shut down, and it read 0% when I tried to use it two weeks later. (I always check for the flashing sleep LED - it wasn't sleeping.) The OS was Windows 10... I suspect the computer came on, with the lid closed. Task scheduler. My new policy from now on (like right now as I type), is to pull the pack from that thing. It's self discharge properties are still pretty good. 3. Try to keep your battery charged to between 40%-70%. Sounds good. Promotes longer battery life in years. 4. Try to keep your battery at room temperature. So don’t leave your computer in a hot or cold car, for example. In particular, a well-designed charger chip, will refuse to charge Li at low temperature. If your laptop comes in from a -20C car, let it warm up to room temp before plugging it in for charging. There is a limited temperature range for proper charging, and it's up to that charger chip to enforce the rules. 5. If your AC adapter (charger) fails, ensure the replacement charger matches or exceeds the specifications of the original charger. Also see if you can determine if the charger you are buying includes some safety circuits, such as a temperature sensor that shuts the charger down in case the charger gets too hot. That will prevent the charger itself from failing. At the very least, it should match on DC voltage. Replace an 18.5V adapter with an 18.5V adapter. Typical rules are +/- 0.5V. Use a multimeter if you suspect the "universal" replacement you got isn't right for the job. If a universal adapter only has a "low/high" switch, you'd better check the output voltage. Paul |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
In message , Ken Springer
writes: [] Can I say something like the battery has 94% of its expected life left? Some kind of description/explanation the average person on the street would understand. Do you mean it holds 94% of the charge it held when new, or it's got 94% of its projected life left (not likely to both be the case)? If the latter, are you measuring that projected life in years (or months), or in actual operating hours? (And how would you define end of life - when capacity has dropped to 50%? 10%?) I suspect, for any given sample of average people in the street, some would assume you meant one of those things, some would assume you meant another. So there probably isn't an easy answer. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf A closed mouth gathers no foot. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
How to interpret laptop battery results.
On 3/2/17 5:29 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ken Springer writes: [] Can I say something like the battery has 94% of its expected life left? Some kind of description/explanation the average person on the street would understand. Do you mean it holds 94% of the charge it held when new, or it's got 94% of its projected life left (not likely to both be the case)? If the latter, are you measuring that projected life in years (or months), or in actual operating hours? (And how would you define end of life - when capacity has dropped to 50%? 10%?) I suspect, for any given sample of average people in the street, some would assume you meant one of those things, some would assume you meant another. So there probably isn't an easy answer. I don't think the average person would know the difference. The average computer user is not that knowledgeable in my experience. I do suspect that most would go with the projected life left in actual operating hours. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.11.6 Firefox 51.0.1 (64 bit) Thunderbird 45.7.1 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|