Configure power plans
As computers have grown more powerful over the years, their power consumption has also increased. One of the main concerns with mobile devices that use stored electrical power is that the power in the battery is limited and depletes. Another issue for many organizations is the power consumption by all devices they may own. Conserving energy helps to reduce business expenses and benefits the environment.
Power plans
You can create power plans in Windows that govern power consumption and operations. There are three pre-configured power plans by default: Balanced, Power Saver, and High performance. You can adjust and save any of these power plans or create your own power plan. The following table provides details about each power plan.
| Power plan | Energy usage | Screen brightness | System activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balanced | Medium | Can turn off display after a specified amount of time. | Measures ongoing activity, and, when in use, continues to provide full power to all system components. |
| Power saver | Least | By default, after five minutes of inactivity, the display will power off. | Saves energy by reducing system performance whenever possible. |
| High performance | Highest | Sets the screen at its highest brightness. | Keeps the system's disk drive, memory, and processor continuously supplied with power. |
If the computer is a portable device, such as a tablet or laptop, you can use separate settings within each plan for when the device is on battery or plugged in. Because you can adjust and save each power plan, there's also an option in the power plan to restore default settings. You can use this option to return the power plan to where you started.
You can access the power plans by performing the following procedure:
- Open the Settings app, select System Category, and then select Power & Sleep.
- Select the Additional power settings hyperlink, or alternatively, type Power Plans in the Ask me anything text box on the taskbar. This will open up the Control Panel Power Options page.
Note
You will see only the Balanced and Power saver plans in the Preferred plans section. The High-performance plan appears if you select the down arrow by the Show additional plans section. The three plans are the Windows default plans. However, any new plans you create will also appear on this page.
Configuration options
Different options are available in the Setting app’s System Category section on the Power & Sleep page. The options that are available on your device depending on its hardware configuration. For example, on a laptop or other mobile device, you'll have the following configurable options, with a drop-down list box for various minutes, hours, and never:
Screen
- On battery power, turn off after
- When plugged in, turn off after
Sleep
- On battery power, PC goes to sleep after
- When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after
The Additional power settings hyperlink appears below the settings discussed above, and you can select it to access the Power Options configuration page in the Hardware and Sound section of the Control Panel. The Power Options configuration page includes many options.
Note
Not all devices will have all the settings that the following section lists off. Several of these settings apply to particular hardware that may not be present on all devices.
On the left side is a list of settings, including:
Require a password on wakeup: Use this setting to access the Define power buttons and turn on the password protection page. On this page, there's Password protection on wake-up section that allows you to ensure that when a computer resumes from a hibernated state, the system locks the screen until the user presents credentials. Windows enables this setting by default.
Choose what the power buttons do: Use this setting to access the Define power buttons and turn on the password protection page. Most devices have a power button, and many have a sleep button. For mobile devices with both power and sleep buttons, both buttons include the On battery and Plugged in columns with four choices: Do nothing, Hibernate, Sleep, and Shut down. Some devices don't have a Sleep or Hibernate option. Certain devices also have a Shutdown settings section on the Define Power buttons and turn on the password protection page, which includes check boxes for:
- Turn on fast startup: Allows the Windows operating system to save system information into a file it uses to start up when you reapply power.
- Sleep: Suspends power to the hard drive and display, but continues supplying power to the processor and memory.
- Hibernate: Writes all activity in memory to a file and shuts down all power, but allows the file to reanimate memory with the same values once you supply power.
- Lock: This Option Locks the screen and requires the user to reenter credentials before resuming operations.
Choose what closing the lid does: Use this setting to access the Define power buttons and turn on the password protection page and drop-down list boxes for On Battery and Plugged-in. You also can select an option for Choose what closing the lid does, including Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, and Shut down.
Create a power plan: When you select this setting, the Create a Power Plan Wizard appears, in which you can choose one of the three default power-plan options: Turn off the display, Put the computer to sleep, and Adjust plan brightness. You can save one of these options to a custom name and then change the default plan settings on the wizard’s Edit Plan Settings page. If you select the Turn off the display and Put the computer to sleep values from a drop-down menu that has options from 1 minute to five hours, or never. Using its slider bar, you can also configure the Adjust plan brightness setting from fully dim to the highest brightness setting.
Choose when to turn off the display: Use this setting to access the Edit Plan Settings page, which is identical to the Create a Power Plan Wizard.
Change when the computer sleeps: This setting is identical to the Choose when to turn off the display setting.
The Power Options screen also lists the default and custom power plans. When you select the Change plan settings setting and access a particular power plan, the Change advanced power settings setting becomes available. This setting opens the Power Options window with a list of options you can expand and individually select. These options include settings for the battery, hard disk, graphics, multimedia, and USB, which refers to universal serial bus.