Poor battery life

Question

I have relatively high discharge rate (about 14W, which results in ~3 hours of battery life) on my ThinkPad X230. I'm using TLP, intel_pstate's powersave governor. The following kernel arguments are in my /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_pstate=enable pcie_aspm=force acpi_osi=Linux acpi=force acpi_enforce_resources=lax i915.enable_rc6=1 i915.semaphores=1".

For comparison it lasts for 4-5 hours on Windows 10.

So, the question is: what else could I do to improve battery life?

UPD: Powertop report: http://pastebin.com/9hfBdKrm

I looked into your powertop stats, chrome is the top consumer and your idle status is arround 12%. — , Apr 23 '16 at 21:05
Far behind Chrome but still considerable, the wireless network driver is an important power consumer. You can likely configure it to use a power saving mode. Compiz is the next important consumer, which you can avoid by using a simpler desktop compositor like Unity 2D, MATE, LXDE or Xfce. Also, look at the last section of the Powertop report for recommended power savings in device driver configurations. How to achieve all of this would each be a question of its own, so I encourage you to open new questions and possibly link to them here. — David Foerster, Jul 11 '16 at 08:03
Mine is down to 6W with 9+ hours, here is what I did: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1078939/ubuntu-18-04-battery-life/1134726#1134726 — Pierre Pretorius, Apr 17 '19 at 20:20

score 0 · Answer 1 · 2016-07-12T22:01:22.637

0

SOME ANSWERS

YOUR LAPTOP IS 3 YEARS OLD OR LONGER

Replace the battery at some point.

Looking at your powertop stats Chrome is using your most battery and your cpu is really high,

SUGGESTION

Kill the background process and use something else for a browser.

Hope this helps.

edited Jul 12 '16 at 22:01

answered Apr 14 '16 at 05:25

CPU usage is usually low, Bluetooth is turned off. And I'm using powersave governor. – nightuser Apr 14 '16 at 05:41
Must be end of life battery? – Apr 14 '16 at 05:43
Battery's capacity is 50% of designed, but as I've stated, it lasts longer on Windows. – nightuser Apr 14 '16 at 05:47
Also, 14W discharge rate is very high. – nightuser Apr 14 '16 at 05:48
please send me your powertop stats – Apr 14 '16 at 05:49
It's been a while, but I've finally found some time. Powertop report: http://pastebin.com/9hfBdKrm – nightuser Apr 23 '16 at 13:32
1

I recommend [edit]ing this answer to expand it with specific details about how to do this. (See also How do I write a good answer? for general advice about what sorts of answers are considered most valuable on Ask Ubuntu.) – David Foerster Jul 11 '16 at 08:08
@DavidFoerster AFK for a few weeks, but yeah, i'l do that. – Jul 12 '16 at 21:57

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

First of: powertop is reporting a discharge rate of 11.3 W. While this is not spectacular, it can not possibly be considered high. On a Lenovo T420 I had discharge rates in excess of 30 W.

The first problem you have is a degraded battery. As new, this 9 cell model boasts 94 Wh of storage, which at a discharge rate of 11 W should last in excess of 8 hours. If now it lasts just over 3 hours, the battery capacity is down to something above 30 Wh. Yes, Lithium batteries can degrade that fast.

Your second problem is a less than optimal power management on Lenovo models by the Linux kernel shipped with 14.04. I reported this as a bug for the T420. You can follow the instructions there to try the mainline kernel and see if it helps. However, a different Linux kernel will never restore back the 60 Wh your battery has already lost.

Poor battery life

2 Answers2