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Mavericks - power use / service battery

Has anyone seen their power use increase dramatically (or their service battery warning come on) after upgrading to Mavericks?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 2:21 PM

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431 replies

Oct 29, 2013 8:06 PM in response to petermac87

same thing reported after Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion and now Mavericks. But only happening to a few people.

This one thread indicates it's more than a "few people." I didn't have any problems when I bumped up from Snow Leopard to Lion. (Skiped ML.)


I was able to silence the Service Battery alert by resetting the System Management Controller (SMC). However the battery drain and meter erraticness is still persisting. I'm going to try recalibrating the battery.


Activity Monitor (CPU) shows kernel_task for root taking up 75 threads and over 200 wake-ups. What's that about? Only Firefox uses more cycles, but I'm actually using that.

Oct 29, 2013 11:27 PM in response to BFOSSEN

I'm not quite facing the issues mentioned here; mid-2010 MBP and I've been getting the Service Battery Alert but my battery still lasts its usual ~4 hours, which is what I used to get as well.


I think the theory put forth by one of the users is correct that there might be pre-mavericks apps that could be causing a bit of the drain. I did a fresh install on my MBP for the first time and since did not install a ton of apps I no longer use and have found a) no additional drain to battery life and b) my memory management got a lot better and now I don't ever seem to be under 500 MB of free memory at any time (pre-mavericks used to reach 14 MB when I had a lot of things open).

Oct 30, 2013 4:56 AM in response to BFOSSEN

was able to correct the service battery, after completing a full battery cycle. run your battery all the way down to 0% then let it charge fulling over night for 5-6 hours. after that my in my MBP battery reads that it is in good condition.The battery life still doesn't say it will last longer then 3 hours, but I used it all yesterday, and it lasted a lot longer then it said it would.

Oct 30, 2013 7:13 AM in response to BFOSSEN

Yup.


The very next day after installing Mavericks my battery capacity tanked. I know this as I had been tracking it pretty religiously with Coconut battery. I'm also getting the Service Battery warning.


As of today my Macbook Air is 27 months old, has 510 battery load cycles and has a current capacity of 5088mAh vs a design capacity of 6700mAh(76%).


Prior to the install of Mavericks, at 490 loadcycles, I had a capacity of 5696mAh and no Service Battery Warning.


See attached pic for dramatic dropoff in battery capacity.


Just yesterday I purchased a replacement battery and wishing I hadn't now as it seems this might be an issue with Mavericks. I'll hold off installing it to see if there is a resolution from Apple.


I'll just add, the lowest the capacity got to after the install was 4783mAh(probably triggering the Service Battery alert), and has recovered slightly to the 5088mAh mentioned above.

User uploaded file

Mavericks - power use / service battery

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