If the battery is low in the V5, it's not uncommon to see a lower wattage displayed on the screen because the device can't provide enough output to reach the existing setting. The V5 will only display the power that it is capable of providing, so that's likely why you saw 12 watts and then 10.5 watts displayed when the power setting was actually set at 15 watts. I see this all the time when my battery is getting low. I'll have my V5 set to 8 watts, but I'll get a crappy hit and look down and see that I'm only outputting 6.5 or 7 watts. Time to change the battery. You'd think you'd get a low battery warning before this happens, but it's probably because the battery is at a point where it's not low enough (3.2 volts?) but at the same time can't handle the current requirements to meet the existing power setting. This likely happens more often with batteries that have seen quite a few charge cycles (which mine have) or are not the "high drain" batteries. Just a guess on my part.
As far as how it got set at 15 watts, are you sure your switch isn't starting to fail and you're accidentally getting into the menu when you're holding the fire button down? I've had that happen to me multiple times when my switch was starting to go bad (3 different Zmax's). A failing switch can can act intermittently causing the device to see multiple button presses when you're actually just holding the button down. This can cause you to scroll through the menu and change your power values without knowing it. Many times I'd discover that my power was all of a sudden set to a much higher wattage exactly as you are describing.
I'm not saying it isn't possible that your chip is doing strange things, but I recommend that you first verify it isn't a failing switch. Hopefully your switch is the problem since you can always replace it. If the chip is bad there isn't much you can do about it unfortunately. Best of luck and I hope you get this straightened out.
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