Aspire A515-51g, battery light blinking, computer not charging when on.

NYB

Hi all,

I have a Aspire A515-51g laptop. It's a few years old (purchased mid 2018). Recently it started to have intermittent charging (orange light blinks instead of solid) when it was on or off. Thought it was the battery and replaced it. After replacing, (and wearing down to 5% and then fully charging the laptop while off) it now charges normally when off, but still the charging turns on and off during usage (particularly heavy usage). It's really annoying because not only the battery runs out while working, you also get the changes in power behavior between plugged in and on battery (keyboard lights turn on and off, fan turns on and off, screen brightness goes up and down). 

Things I've already tried:
- removing and re-adding battery drivers in Win10
- battery reset (turn off, push battery reset button for 60 seconds, charge while off until fully charged). 
- replacing the battery (this fixed the "charging while off" issue but not the "intermittent charging while on"

Any ideas on what else to try?

Thread was edited to add model name to the title

JackE

Sure. Just set the screen brightness the same on battery alone or plugged in in the power plan. 50% should be fine on both.

JackE

Go to the elevated command prompt.  Enter 'powercfg /batteryreport'. Then return to the desktop. Open file explorer. Then search for' battery-report.html' in the c:\windows\system32\ sub-folder. Double-click to open it in the browser. Post screenshot of the first part of the report if possible that compares design full charge capacity of the new replacement battery with its remaining full charge capacity.

NYB

Hi JackE, thanks for your response.

Report says:
Design capacity: 48944 mWh

Full charge capacity: 52440 mWh

(I also found an old report I ran before replacing the battery, the old one said full charge capacity 38426 mWh - it doesn't seem too depleted, but the charging intermittency started with that battery).

Maybe interesting, the report also shows the intermittency:

2022-01-30 07:10:01	Active	Battery	98 %	51,650 mWh
07:10:38	Suspended		99 %	51,726 mWh
07:11:13	Active	AC	99 %	51,771 mWh
07:11:49	Active	Battery	99 %	51,847 mWh
07:11:50	Active	AC	99 %	51,847 mWh
07:13:04	Active	Battery	99 %	51,908 mWh
07:50:21	Active	AC	88 %	45,904 mWh
07:50:24	Active	Battery	88 %	45,889 mWh
07:50:26	Active	AC	88 %	45,904 mWh
07:51:18	Active	Battery	88 %	46,010 mWh
07:55:33	Active	AC	86 %	45,296 mWh
07:55:36	Active	Battery	86 %	45,281 mWh
07:55:38	Active	AC	86 %	45,281 mWh
07:56:35	Active	Battery	87 %	45,524 mWh
19:40:04	Suspended		100 %	52,303 mWh
19:40:39	Active	Battery	99 %	52,166 mWh
20:20:01	Suspended		99 %	51,832 mWh
20:20:36	Active	Battery	99 %	51,756 mWh
20:21:51	Report generated	Battery	99 %	51,756 mWh

JackE

>>> Recently it started to have intermittent charging (orange light blinks instead of solid) when it was on or off>>>

Battery & charging look good.

Intermittency while plugged in is normal but only under heavy power demand between about 50-100% charge level. Few people notice it happening. At those heavy load times, the battery often has  to complement charger output to meet the power demand and thus is not charging even though it is plugged. When the battery drops below the 50% charge level, charging takes precedent over any other power demands by CPU, GPU etc and the intermittency stops and battery charging is full on. Performance usually drops off when this happens.

So the question is what was the computer doing between about 7:50 and 8:00 am yesterday? Possibly an update? Looks like it may have been under a heavy load

NYB

Most likely playing StarCraft 2 - kid is an early riser :-)

Is there a way to configure power options so that it doesn't do this intermittent stuff? Even if it's draining battery, the whole screen brightness jumping between "battery saver dark" and "full blast" is really annoying.

JackE

Sure. Just set the screen brightness the same on battery alone or plugged in in the power plan. 50% should be fine on both.

Bogdan320

I had the same issue, and after i got 135w Acer power adapter, it works perfectly without any issues in full load, gaming for hours. I know the adapter seems a bit too much for this laptop...but it is needed to keep charging and maintain a full load on the system at the same time. Temps are 85 C max.