Ubuntu – Battery is drained too quickly

power-managementpowertop

I'm getting really low battery life under ubuntu, not even close to windows. I tried powertop, and I saw that my laptop is consuming in idle nearly 20 watts (a bit more).

I tried to install laptop-mode-tools, change "good" into "bad" in powertop, but nothing changes. I see that I have the the HD audio output device which is running at 100% every time. Could this be the problem?

This is a report from powertop.

The battery reports a discharge rate of 22.8 W
The estimated remaining time is 33 minutes

Summary: 381.8 wakeups/second,  0.0 GPU ops/second and 0.0 VFS ops/sec

            Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
          3.2 ms/s     182.7        Timer          tick_sched_timer
        100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D3: Intel
          7.9 ms/s      25.1        Process        /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background no
          1.9 ms/s      24.2        Interrupt      [6] tasklet(softirq)
          2.9 ms/s      23.2        Process        /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=zygote
          8.1 ms/s      20.3        Process        /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service
          0.7 ms/s      17.4        Timer          hrtimer_wakeup
          4.2 ms/s      12.6        Process        unity-2d-panel
        604.4 µs/s       9.7        Process        syndaemon -i 2.0 -K -R -t
        149.7 µs/s       9.7        kWork          ieee80211_iface_work
          0.8 ms/s       8.7        Process        metacity
         19.5 ms/s       1.0        Process        powertop
          3.0 ms/s       6.8        Process        //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
        699.0 µs/s       6.8        Process        /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird
          4.3 ms/s       4.8        Process        gnome-terminal
        658.9 µs/s       2.9        Interrupt      [1] timer(softirq)
         75.1 µs/s       2.9        kWork          iwl_bg_run_time_calib_work
        163.8 µs/s       1.9        Process        /usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon
         70.6 µs/s       1.9        Process        [ksoftirqd/2]
         25.8 µs/s       1.9        Process        [ksoftirqd/0]
          1.0 ms/s       1.0        Process        /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/powernapd
        408.2 µs/s       1.0        Process        unity-2d-shell
        189.8 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser
        124.4 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/unity-lens-applications/unity-applications-daemon
        113.3 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon
        112.0 µs/s       1.0        Process        nautilus -n
        104.9 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-trash --spawner :1.2 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/0
         77.5 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/colord/colord
         75.6 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor
         75.0 µs/s       1.0        Interrupt      [53] i915
         74.9 µs/s       1.0        Process        /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor

What should I do to make the battery consumption lower?

Best Answer

You should consider installing jupiter

You can select power modes with it, and it's very easy to control. It really saves out battery.

Open terminal and do this.

Add the repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/jupiter

Update

sudo apt-get update

Install jupiter

sudo apt-get install jupiter

And to other people reading this and are using an Asus EEPC netbook, install this asswell

sudo apt-get install jupiter-support-eee

Have a nice day :)

Related Solutions

Battery – Ubuntu Consumes Too Much Battery

You have an Aspire R7. If my assumptions are correct, it is either an Intel Broadwell-based computer or Skylake-based. (core i5/i7-5xxx/6xxx)

There are many ways to conserve power in Ubuntu. In 16.10, TLP is by default now included. Configure TLP from:

gedit admin:///etc/default/tlp

sudo nano /etc/default/tlp

I recommend setting your CPU governor to powersave when on battery, and performance when plugged in. There are also several other power saving settings there.

Install powertop:

sudo apt-get install powertop

And open it up with sudo powertop in terminal. You can view "Tunables" in the rightmost tab. You can either auto-adjust with:

sudo powertop --auto-tune

Or create a an HTML power report:

sudo powertop --html=powertop.html

Which you can view in the terminal directory. In that HTML file is a list of Tunable commands. Put that in your rc.local script.

If you have the Broadwell/Skylake version of the R7, you will most likely have the known C-state bug with current Intel CPUs. C-states are the sleep states that can be utilized by the CPU, and higher sleep states can save considerable power. You may need to play around with disabling certain devices (SD card reader, Ethernet, etc.) to get working C-states. Unfortunately, this is a known issue and may not be fixed for quite a while.

The current C-state bug does not allow the CU to achieve C-states lower than C3. You can view current C-states in "Idle Stats" in powertop, on the left hand side.

Finally, if you're fairly desperate, I would use a lightweight DE, or even a WM. After fixing C-state issues in my laptop, and switching to i3 window manager, I get at least 7 hours of battery life (heavy browsing, videos, even casual gaming).

Best Answer

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Battery – Ubuntu Consumes Too Much Battery

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