Its been proven by many studies (1 , 2) that keeping a battery charge between 20% and 80% can help prolong its lifespan. Constantly charging a battery to 100% can degrade the battery health over time. This is because lithium-ion batteries, which are most common in electronics, can experience increased wear and tear when they are outside that range. By imposing charge limits, you can help extend the lifespan of your battery and maintain its health over the long term.

Imposing charge limits does a huge benifit to your battery life in the long run especially if you are someone like me who keeps their laptop plugged in most of the time. Some laptops may also have built-in features or software that allow you to set custom charge limits, so it’s worth checking your laptop’s documentation or settings to see if this option is available. I use Lenovo and they have a “conservation mode” that does exactly this by keeping the charge capped at 80% when enabled.

Sadly that lenovo software is only available for windows, but there are ways to do this on linux as well. This will guide you to do that on Debian 13.

  • Install tlp (Debian/Ubuntu):
sudo apt update; sudo apt install tlp
sudo systemctl enable --now tlp
  • Edit the configuration:
sudo nano /etc/tlp.conf
# look for START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0 and STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0
  • Check what your hardware supports:
tlp-stat -b

Look for a line like:

Parameter value range:

  • STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0: 0(off), 1(on) — battery conservation mode

If your machine supports only 0/1 then setting

STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=1

will enable conservation mode (on Lenovo/Ideapad this writes to a kernel driver file). For hardware that supports numeric thresholds you can set values like START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=40 and STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0=80 meaning it will keep between the range 40% and 80%.

  • Apply and verify:
sudo tlp start
sudo tlp-stat -s -c -b
# you should see "Battery Care" / "conservation_mode = 1" or your configured thresholds

Notes

  • tlp applies settings at boot when the service is enabled. If a vendor kernel module (eg. ideapad_laptop) is used, tlp will toggle the driver’s conservation_mode.
  • If you see only on/off support, use the safe default (enable conservation). If thresholds are supported, pick conservative numbers (40–80%).
  • Always double-check tlp-stat -b output before changing settings.

That’s it, a quick way to reduce long-term battery wear on Linux.