Batteries have a decreasing life span. As you continue to charge and discharge, the amount of time Surface is on battery power decreases.In order for the battery to last longer, many of us leave our surface connected, unless we have to work on the road. Microsoft introduced the Battery Limit feature for this use case, which helps extend battery life, meaning it preserves the battery’s ability to take and hold a charge.
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- Turn battery limiting on or off on Surface devices
- Turn battery limiting on or off in Surface Pro 4 and later
- Turn battery limiting on or off on Surface Pro 3
- Enabling Battery Limiting Using Surface Enterprise Management Mode or PowerShell Firmware Scripts
- Using Microsoft Surface UEFI Configurator
- Using PowerShell Scripting for Surface UEFI Manager
- Supported Surface Devices for Battery Limiting
Turn battery limiting on or off on Surface devices
So how does the battery limiting feature increase battery life? This changes the way UEFI charges the battery of the Surface device. After enabling this function, it will charge the battery to 50% of the total capacity and then stop charging . The system will keep limiting until the device is connected. In case you connect the device when the battery charge is more than 50%. The battery icon will show that the device is connected but is discharging until it reaches 50% of its maximum charge capacity.
This feature is made available to Surface devices through a Surface UEFI firmware update. The update is distributed through Windows Update or through the MSI driver and firmware packages available from the Microsoft Download Center.
Turn battery limiting on or off in Surface Pro 4 and later
The battery limiting feature is currently available on Surface Pro 4 and Surface Pro 3. Other Surface devices will receive this feature in the future. This can be enabled by configuring Surface UEFI.
- Boot UEFI with Power + Vol Up when you turn on the device.
- Select Boot Configuration> Advanced Options.
- Set Enable Battery Limiting Modeto On.
Turn battery limiting on or off on Surface Pro 3
You can enable battery limiting on Surface Pro 3 in kiosk mode. This mode was originally intended for scenarios where the device must continuously operate on power.
- Boot UEFI with Power + Vol Up when you turn on the device.
- Select the kiosk mode.
- Select Battery Limit and then select Enabled.
Enabling Battery Limiting Using Surface Enterprise Management Mode or PowerShell Firmware Scripts
SEMM or PowerShell scripts are two more options to enable UEFI battery limiting. You can use Microsoft Surface UEFI Configurator on Surface Pro 4 along with scripts. However, on Surface Pro 3, you can only use PowerShell scripts.
Using Microsoft Surface UEFI Configurator
SEMM is a feature of Surface devices that works with UEFI. This allows administrators to secure and manage firmware settings across an organization. If you have multiple Surface laptops, you can manage settings for all of them using this tool.
- In SEMM go to advanced settings.
- Switch to kiosk override.
- Select the Battery Limit battery profile from the drop-down list.
Using PowerShell Scripting for Surface UEFI Manager
Download PowerShell script for Surface Pro 4 from here and Surface Pro 3 from here. To enable battery limiting, change the Active Control Scheme for Battery Usage Pattern to 1 from 0. On Surface Pro 3, change the Suggested Value under BatteryLimitEnable to 1.
Supported Surface Devices for Battery Limiting
Here is the list of supported Surface devices and UEFI version
- Surface Pro 3 – September 10, 2018 update. UEFI version: 3.11.2550.0, EC version: 38.14.80.0 and later.
- Surface 3 – Updated December 6, 2018. UEFI Version: 1.51116.218.0
- Surface Pro 4 – September 10, 2018 Update. UEFI version: 108.2318.769.0, EC version: 103.2241.256.0 and later.
- Surface Book – October 10, 2018 update. UEFI version: 91.2327.769.0, EC version 90.2226.256.0 and later.
- Surface Go – November 9, 2018 update. UEFI version: 1.0.10.0 and later.
It is not available for devices such as Surface Laptop (1st generation), Surface Pro (5th generation), Surface Pro with LTE Advanced Model 1807, Surface Book 2, Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, and Surface Go with LTE Advanced … Be sure to check the Microsoft support page for the latest updates.
