When AC cycle is applied, the RTC date is empty (issue been tracked separately to find out why the RTC is not persisting the date).
With kernel 201521202, issuing "hwclock" from the BMC command line displays the epoch time.
After updating to kernel openbmc-20151210-1, hwclock displays an error:
root@barreleye:~# hwclock
hwclock: RTC_RD_TIME: Invalid argument
After updating the RTC via "hwclock -w", the "hwclock" command will display the date, so the issue is only when the RTC is empty.