intermittent Battery messages Good, Normal, Service, Replace

I am not sure if someone is know with this topic.

My battery has 390 load cycles, 2008 later Macbook 5,1 13"
I never had a noticeable decline in performance, until suddenly a month or 2 ago,
Service battery appeared and battery started to drop my PC off without a even a sleep warning.
Since, I have done several tests with battery expert, battery health and coconut battery.
My battery is according to that most of the time 98% compared to new, the 3 cells give equal voltage so it doesn't look like a broken cell.
The one day my battery (via those tools and via the mac system profiler) is good or normal, the other day it is replace now, then it is service now and it is definitely not consistant.
I have tried calibrations and so on but no avail.

It seems to me buying a new battery with the risk it isn't solved would be a waste of 129 euro's (and imitation batteries have inconsistant reviews;-)

does anyone recognise this issue?


Model Information:
Serial Number: 6N84701TH13C
Manufacturer: SMP
Device name: bq20z951
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 002a
Hardware Revision: 000a
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 4051
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4051
Health Information:
Cycle count: 394
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 138
Voltage (mV): 12563

System Power Settings:

AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: No
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On LAN: No
Current Power Source: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Battery Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 2
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Reduce Brightness: Yes

Hardware Configuration:

UPS Installed: No

AC Charger Information:

Connected: Yes
ID: 0x0100
Wattage (W): 60
Revision: 0x0000
Family: 0x00ba
Serial Number: 0x00d03d47
Charging: No

screenshot

battery health

Voltage in all 3 cells 419
394 cycles
99% of charge capacity still effectively 4051 compared to new 4100

weird is that it says it is designed for 65535 cycles ;-)
power average is 1.73 watts
Power now is 1.51 watts
voltage is 12.56

bartinl said:

I am not sure if someone is know with this topic.

My battery has 390 load cycles, 2008 later Macbook 5,1 13"

It seems to me buying a new battery with the risk it isn't solved would be a waste of 129 euro's (and imitation batteries have inconsistant reviews;-)

does anyone recognise this issue?

Click to expand...

The battery in this model MacBook was is designed for 300 charge/discharge cycles. Since you have 390 cycles…battery performance/life will start to decline.

- Nick

bartinl said:

...weird is that it says it is designed for 65535 cycles ;-)

Click to expand...

The computer (Coconut Battery) is probably receiving bad information from the battery…which wouldn't necessarily be surprising…since you are also getting the "Good, Normal, Service, Replace" messages as well.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

The battery in this model MacBook was is designed for 300 charge/discharge cycles. Since you have 390 cycles…battery performance/life will start to decline.

- Nick

Click to expand...

exactly ........The battery cycle gods have been good to him lol.

I am actually surprised OSX didn't start howling at him to service battery soon 100 cycles ago lol.

@bartinl….before running out and buying a new battery…first try doing an "SMC Reset":

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

- Nick

For anyone interested where this 300 & 1000 battery cycle info comes from:

- 300 cycle (user replaceable batteries)
- 1000 cycle (non-user replaceable batteries)

…here is the Apple document that explains it:

Mac notebooks: Determining battery cycle count

- Nick

p.s. There actually seems to be a few 500's as well.

Other good Apple battery info documents:

Apple - Lithium Ion Batteries
Apple - Batteries - Notebooks
Mac notebooks: Determining battery cycle count
Tips for maximizing battery charge
About battery storage life
Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance
Mac notebooks: Battery may not show a full charge in Mac OS X

- Nick

The best advice I can give someone to keep there batteries as long as possible in good condition is to never short cycle them . A lot of the time pple will charge the battery to 100 or 95 % then take the charger off and use it till it hits 40 or 50% . If your gonna use the unit on the battery then let it charge to 100% and use it till it gives you a warning to plug in the charger or at least let it go down to 15 or 20 %. And once a month apple recommends you completely discharge the battery by letting go to sleep from a low battery and allow it to sleep for 5 hrs or more before you plug it back in. Then let it charge to 100% and leave it plugged in for a few hrs after it reaches 100%.

Remember each time you plug in your charger and it starts charging, the battery considers this a cycle. regardless of weather or not it was 80% or 10% when it started charging.

dawson1112 said:

The best advice I can give someone to keep there batteries as long as possible in good condition is to never short cycle them.

Click to expand...

I can kind of see the logic in this…unfortunately Apple doesn't seem to have a specific recommendation (ok, good, or bad) regarding "short-cycling".

dawson1112 said:

Remember each time you plug in your charger and it starts charging, the battery considers this a cycle. regardless of weather or not it was 80% or 10% when it started charging.

Click to expand...

Not exactly. Yes…each time the charger is plugged in, it starts recharging the battery…but this does not mean a full battery cycle (according to this Apple document):

Mac notebooks: Determining battery cycle count

"About Battery Cycles: A charge cycle means using all of the battery’s power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a single charge. For instance, you could use your notebook for an hour or more one day, using half its power, and then recharge it fully. If you did the same thing the next day, it would count as one charge cycle, not two, so it may take several days to complete a cycle."


Also…many Apple notebooks are programmed to avoid very short charge/discharge cycles. Meaning that if the battery has only been discharged 1-7% (93-99% of total charge remaining)...depends on computer model…then if the notebook is plugged in via the charger…it will not begin charging until the battery charge dips below this threshold:

Mac notebooks: Battery may not show a full charge in Mac OS X

- Nick

hi pigoo3, many thanks for reply. ok.... So it is normal that the messages can shift forward and backward and that battery checks are actually not measuring the health (even if they are called " Battery health" ;-)

I expected the battery to first show loss in performance rather than completely unreliable from one day to another :-(

bartinl said:

hi pigoo3, many thanks for reply. ok.... So it is normal that the messages can shift forward and backward and that battery checks are actually not measuring the health (even if they are called " Battery health" ;-)

I expected the battery to first show loss in performance rather than completely unreliable from one day to another :-(

Click to expand...

Did you try the "SMC" reset as suggested?

- Nick

dawson1112 said:

The best advice I can give someone to keep there batteries as long as possible in good condition is to never short cycle them . A lot of the time pple will charge the battery to 100 or 95 % then take the charger off and use it till it hits 40 or 50% . If your gonna use the unit on the battery then let it charge to 100% and use it till it gives you a warning to plug in the charger or at least let it go down to 15 or 20 %. And once a month apple recommends you completely discharge the battery by letting go to sleep from a low battery and allow it to sleep for 5 hrs or more before you plug it back in. Then let it charge to 100% and leave it plugged in for a few hrs after it reaches 100%.

Remember each time you plug in your charger and it starts charging, the battery considers this a cycle. regardless of weather or not it was 80% or 10% when it started charging.

Click to expand...

Hello,
Sorry I came to this thread late. There are some very common misunderstandings about recharging batteries. It is generally accepted within the battery industry that Lithium Ion (and/or Polymer) batteries benefit from shorter charging periods and do not need to be fully charged.

The crude rule of thumb is that a charge/discharge cycle is the sum of all those partial charges from depths of discharge which add up to the notional 100% full charge..so a charge from 90% is only 10% and one from 60 % is 40% and so on.

The shorter the Depth of Discharge (DoD) the longer the battery will last because it is less stressful and exhibits a lightness of use rather than maxxing out the cells out and whacking them with a hefty charge. Partial discharge on Li-ion is no problem as there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life, other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery(e.g. MBP) occasionally.

So the interesting thing is that the number of discharge cycles achievable when charging frequently from, for example, a 10 % DoD is approximately 10 times that of charging from 100% DoD.

This just isn't practical for most people but if you could charge from 50% DoD on a regular basis you could expect 3 times (1200 to 1500) the number of discharge/charge cycles from your battery as opposed to charging from 100% DoD (300 to 500).

Hi Nick, i will now, many thanks for pointing out, I'll do that and give the results back first ;-)

Pendlewitch, superd info, very appreciated. Any chance your work related in this field?

I read the SMC article< yes I actually did that reset, not the response that I hoped for (it seemed temporary) I did that SMC reset abt a month ago. Detail; Over the last 3 days or so my battery has been working fine with excellent performance and long duration.... have you ever the loss in performance is either drastic to non- excistant and that is the main reason why I don't want to waste 129 euro's if I am not sure on the results on a 4year book (with 8GB ddr3 and 2,4 GH) actually still performing grand. btw the 8GB DDR3 I installed only 2 weeks ago, so the higher than advised DDR is not causing it

bartinl said:

Pendlewitch, superd info, very appreciated. Any chance your work related in this field?

Click to expand...

Hi,

It's an interest really, although I have had work related experience over the years designing emergency lighting layouts for buildings (self contained rechargeable Ni batteries) and specifying battery sizes for fire alarm control panels (Sealed Lead Acid).

I inadvertently appeared to contradict Nick earlier, I'm not up to speed with how notebooks monitor charging but it looks like they are looking at the end of the saturation charge which is the second stage and some batteries then just sit there occasionally accepting a topping up charge if their voltage falls below a certain level. LI batteries don't like being over-charged and they are rarely fully charged to capacity (85% typically at cut-off) because there are longer-life benefits associated with setting a voltage threshold.

My assumption would be that the charge protection circuit is seeing the battery's voltage at peak and won't want to apply a charge because it will stress the battery and reduce it's life over time.

I was wondering: if you leave it on charge, does it damage the battery if it's already fully charged?

ursus262 said:

I was wondering: if you leave it on charge, does it damage the battery if it's already fully charged?

Click to expand...

Well,
You should, in theory,remove the charger and let the battery's voltage level get back to a more natural level..a bit like warming down after exercise. Most chargers should terminate the charge when the battery is full, and some will apply a topping up charge when the voltage drops to a specified level. I wouldn't get too hung up on it though.

pigoo3 said:

For anyone interested where this 300 & 1000 battery cycle info comes from:

- 300 cycle (user replaceable batteries)
- 1000 cycle (non-user replaceable batteries)

…here is the Apple document that explains it:

Mac notebooks: Determining battery cycle count

- Nick

p.s. There actually seems to be a few 500's as well.

Click to expand...

hiya Nick,

Over the last 8 days the battery has worked fantastically, long periods without charging, no sudden deaths or anything. This really makes me think it must be something with hardware or so. I was under the impression it is either worn down or broken down. But sometimes being fabulous, sometimes useless seems a bit hard to follow