I've had 2 flights in the last week where the seat power was not operational for my pair of seats in F. There was a RED light on the outlet panel and no power. All other seats in F had power and their status indicator lights were GREEN. One was on a 739 and the other on an A320.

The flights were the last ones of my day and I needed power for my electronics who's batteries had run down.

My understanding is that the seat power is not 15A service but that it's limited to 45W, which is only 3A. There were many notebooks a few years ago who's power packs drew 45W but the minimum nowadays seems to be 65W with many notebook computers using 90 and even 135W. When a device is plugged in which draws more power than a circuit is designed for, a circuit breaker trips and prevents the overload.

I brought this situation to the lead FA's attention before the boarding door was closed and got nowhere. In both cases the FA thought that:
a} changing from ground to engine power would correct the situation which is not the case.
b) resetting the IFE system would fix it. It won't since it has nothing to do with the IFE.
c) they would have to to write it up for TechOps to handle. Also not true.

There are circuit breakers on the aircraft for these circuits that can be reset and they can only be in one of 3 places - integrated in the power plug panel at the seat, at the FA's station or in the cockpit. Supposedly, both of them checked with the cockpit (which I don't believe) without getting any resolution.
SO -

DELTA - how can you 'qualify' flight crews who don't know how to handle a situation like this? (It's just like the FA's who still announce that Wi-Fi will be turned on when the aircraft reaches 10,0000 feet even though all mainline aircraft now have gate to gate wi-fi.)

It's also my understanding that newer aircraft are equipped with larger capacity seat power and it might be something to address on older aircraft when heavy checks are performed since all of the equipment and wiring is exposed and checked.

Why not add this to the final cleaning checklist so Tech Ops could handle it before boarding if that's what's required?