Hello,
I just found out about TLP - a module to download with apt, which is a good utility for maintaining the laptop battery. You can set a minimum charge value, and a maximum charge value. But it is not sufficient for my use case. My question is - is there any utility I can use to discharge the battery WHILE connected to AC?
The reason behind this is: I want to use the solar power during the day to charge up the battery to 80 or 90% and then discharge the battery in the evening to 15-20%. Afterwards use AC power again. The solar energy during mid-day is cheaper and available in abundance.
On a big level with many computers this could make a good impact on the energy network, or am I wrong?
Some laptop battery firmware allows you to force discharge even when connected to AC, and if your laptop can use the
tlp recalibrateortlp dischargecommands then yours is supported.I use this to power my thinkpad servers off of their own batteries during a power outage, to reduce load on my UPS. Great feature.
Interesting setup. How would you tell your Thinkpads if there’s a power outage?
The ups has data output to my firewall/router via usb, which the baremetal servers all connect to via apcupsd. When the ups loses or regains AC power, it broadcasts a message to all of them and they’re each scripted to act accordingly: laptops run on their own batteries, vms migrate over to laptops, non-vital hardware shuts down, etc.