How to make your battery last longer with Windows Power Plan settings

Windows "power plans" are a great way to manage your computer or laptop.

When paired with the latest and greatest processors, laptop batteries can last up to 10 hours or more, depending on make and model.

Customizing Windows power plan settings allows processors and other hardware components to switch between low power, low energy and high power modes.

So, here's how to customize Windows power plans to extend battery life and save power.

Contents

What are Windows Power Plans?

How to switch power plans

∟ How to switch power plans on desktop

∟ How to switch power plans on a laptop

Less power consumption and longer battery life with custom power plans

1. Turn off the display and put the PC to sleep

2. Sleep advanced settings

∟What is "Hibernation"?

3. Processor power management

4. Wireless charger and graphics settings

5. Other settings

Battery power is best saved with a custom power plan

What is a "power plan" in Windows?

A "power plan" is a collection of settings that determine how certain features of Windows behave and are not specific to laptops.

Power plan options vary by hardware, but you can create and use custom power plans on any PC with Windows 10.

Windows 10 has three power options by default:

Balance:

Windows 10 balances system performance with system hardware power consumption. So the CPU speed will be faster or slower depending on your needs.

Power saving:

Windows 10 reduces system performance to conserve battery power.

The CPU runs as slow as possible, but you can also save power by lowering the brightness, reducing the amount of time it takes for the screen to turn off, and switching the hard drive and Wi-Fi adapter to power saving modes. To do.

High performance:

Windows 10 performs better and consumes more power. Most of the time, the CPU will run faster, the screen will be brighter, and other hardware components won't go into power saving mode while they're not working.

Windows 10 power plans are meant to improve performance and extend battery life, but they aren't perfect. In addition, the power plan is prioritized when using the PC normally.

For example, activating a power saving plan will reduce the brightness of the screen, but you can also restore it to its original brightness.

Sometimes you have to switch power plans to use certain applications.

For example, if you want to bang games on your laptop, you should turn off the power saving power plan so that the CPU can run at full capacity.

CPU-intensive activities, such as games, use CPU turbo boost as needed to ignore power plan restrictions related to CPU performance.

How to switch the power plan

How to switch the power plan between Windows 10 desktop PC and laptop is as follows.

How to Switch Power Plans on Your Desktop

The quickest and easiest way to switch power plans on your desktop PC is to type "power plan" into the Start Menu search bar. and choose the best one from the results.

The "Power Options" page in the control panel opens, so select the plan you want and you're good to go.

Alternatively, press Windows key + I, then type "power plans" in the Settings app's search bar. Selecting “Edit Power Plan” opens the Control Panel page.

How to switch power plans on a laptop

If you are using a laptop with Windows 10, there are alternative power plan management options.

Since you are using a battery-powered device, you will see a battery icon in your system tray.

Select the battery icon to reveal the power plan sliders.

Slide left for longer battery life (Power Saver plan), slide right for better laptop performance (High Performance plan).

You can also open Power Options in the Power Plans control panel by right-clicking the battery icon and selecting Power Options, or use the shortcut in the previous section.

Use custom power plans to save power and extend battery life

Sometimes none of the default power plans meet your needs.

When you use a laptop with a portable battery and want to extend the battery life of both devices, customize the power plan to suit you.

To create a custom power plan, select Create a Power Plan from the Control Panel Power Options menu on the left side of the window.

Name your power plan and select an existing plan to base it on.

When you create a custom power plan in Windows 10, you will set:

1. Turn off the display and put the PC to sleep

These two things are the easiest to adjust first. How many minutes do you want the display to turn off after inactivity? Or how many minutes do you want your PC to go into sleep mode if you haven't used it in a while?

For portable devices, Windows 10 has options for "on battery" and "plugged in". Experiment with different timings and find the one that works best for you. If your purpose in creating a custom power plan is to save power and extend battery life, set the number as low as possible.

Display Brightness

Where do I toggle the display brightness setting? Microsoft removed the option to set display brightness (and adaptive brightness) through power plans in Windows 10 update 1809. I find this a little frustrating. The display's adaptive brightness options were another handy power-saving element that could be customized.

However, you can still change the brightness of your display without a toggle switch. Tap the notification icon at the bottom right of the screen to open the Action Center. At the bottom of the panel is a slider to adjust brightness.

By dimming your monitor just a little bit, you can save an incredible amount of power.

Power savings vary from monitor to monitor, but according to a Harvard Law School energy manager, turning a computer monitor's brightness down from 100% to 70% "can save up to 20% of the energy your monitor uses." You can save money."

You may not notice if you dim your monitor by 30%, but you will notice an increase in battery life.

2. Advanced sleep settings

There are other options you can adjust besides the sleep timer in the basic settings.

Windows 10 advanced power plan settings hide a lot of customizable options. Select Change advanced power settings to open the advanced menu.

Then you will see three sleep options: "Sleep after", "Allow hybrid sleep" and "Hibernate after".

Hybrid sleep combines sleep and hibernate modes into one mode, but it's for the desktop, so ignore it for now.

You can use a combination of the "Sleep after" and "Hibernate after" options to toggle the option to put the computer to sleep at the same time as hibernation. can.

If you set the sleep timer to 'Never' and set the duration of the hibernation timer, the computer hibernates instead of sleeping after a certain amount of time.

The best option for maximum battery savings is a combination of the two.

Don't just put your computer in sleep mode (which uses more power overall), allow your computer to enter sleep mode after a certain amount of time.

What is "hibernate"?

Hibernate drops to your RAM hard drive and then shuts down your computer. This significantly reduces power consumption (although it doesn't completely eliminate power consumption).

In addition, since the state of the computer is saved to the hard disk, there is no risk of losing data when the battery dies (a common problem with sleeping).

But be aware that waking up from hibernation takes longer than waking up from normal sleep.

3. Processor power management

Decreasing the brightness of your display can reduce power consumption and extend battery life. However, there are other things that affect power consumption in custom power plans.

The amount of power your CPU uses depends on how you use it. Running a power-intensive program (or multiple programs) can significantly increase power consumption, regardless of any power plan.

The "Processor Power Management" option controls the power output of the CPU and provides a percentage of min and max states.

When the max state is set to 100%, the CPU will use its full capacity if needed. On the other hand, setting the max state to 50% uses less CPU.

However, a percentage amount of 50% is not exactly half. In other words, if you have a 2.0GHz processor and set the maximum processor state to 10%, your laptop will not use only 200MHz.

Processor power management options are like tools for lowering CPU frequency, allowing you to use less CPU resources. So you can save some power and battery life.

However, you can't find perfection by looking at numbers alone when it comes to this method, so you'll need to experiment with the applications you run regularly to see which option works best for your device.

4. Wireless Charger and Graphics Settings

If you have an Intel system, you will find an Intel Graphics Settings option in the Advanced Power Plans menu.

This option allows you to define the default level of graphics for integrated CPU graphics settings, switching between Balanced, Longest Battery Life, and Maximum Performance.

If you want to extend battery life and reduce power consumption, switch to 'Maximum battery life'.

Another power saving option for custom power plans is Wireless Adapter Settings. The wireless adapter can periodically power down to save battery life.

Changing this setting adjusts the amount of time before the Wi-Fi adapter goes to sleep. For maximum battery life, switch to "Maximum Power Saving".

5. Other Settings

There are many settings in the advanced power plan options that you might want to experiment with. However, there are some settings that, while functioning correctly, have no meaningful impact.

For example, under desktop background settings, USB settings, power button and lid settings, and multimedia settings.

There are also a few things that are laughably nearly irrelevant to power saving, such as "Set Desktop Background". If your computer background changes every minute, every 3 minutes, every 10 minutes, it has absolutely nothing to do with power saving.

While options such as changing the amount of time before the hard drive turns off are useful in theory, they are not strictly It's hard to notice the impact on battery life without a measured test.

For example, a mechanical hard drive requires 1-3 watts when active, but uses only 0.2-0.3 watts most of the time when it is idle. SSDs (Solid State Drives) use even less power.

After weeks of testing these settings with a power meter and stopwatch, I still get a quarter of the benefit of turning the display brightness down when it doesn't need to be maxed out. you won't be able to

So don't waste your time doing that. Let's focus on something more fundamental.

Custom power plans are the best way to save battery power

Although power plans in Windows 10 can help you save battery power, there are limits to what you can do with them.

As explained in this article, the most effective way to save power is to reduce screen brightness and use idle mode efficiently.

When you're on battery power, it's also helpful to try to do things that consume less power.

For example, when you're on battery power, focus on word processing and email, and don't render things like 3D images.

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Screenshot: Lifehacker [Japan Version]

Source: Harvard Law School

Original Article: How to Extend Laptop Battery Life With Custom Windows Power Plans by MakeUseOf