Creating a Custom Power Management Plan
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 11, 2019)
Most modern computers allow Windows to control both the computer itself (including the hard drive) and the display monitor. These components can be set to automatically "turn off" after varying amounts of inactivity. If the pre-defined power management plans in Windows don't meet your needs, you can create your own custom plan. Follow these steps:
- Display the Control Panel.
- At the left side of the screen click the Hardware and Sound heading. Windows displays the Hardware and Sound screen.
- Under the category of Power Options, click the Change Power-Saving Settings option. Windows displays the Power Options screen. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Power Options screen.
- At the left side of the screen click Create a Power Plan. Windows displays the Create a Power Plan screen. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The Create a Power Plan screen.
- Pick one of the existing power management plans (Balanced, Power Saver, or High Performance) as the starting point for your new power plan.
- Specify a name for your power plan.
- Click Next. Windows displays the Edit Plan Settings screen. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3. The Edit Plan Settings screen.
- Use the controls on the screen to specify when Windows should turn off the display and put the computer to sleep. (Remember that the times represent periods of activity, so 10 minutes means that the device is turned off when you stop using the computer for 10 minutes.)
- Click Create.
Author Bio
Allen Wyatt
With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...
Ignoring Hyphens in Word Counts
When you instruct Word to tell you how many words are in a document, it treats hyphenated words or phrases as if they are ...
Discover More
Default Click and Type Paragraph Style
When you use the Click and Type feature, Word uses applies the Normal style to the paragraph created. You can specify a ...
Discover More
Counting Values in Table Cells
In Excel it is easy to count how many times a certain character occurs in a column of cells. In Word, it is a bit ...
Discover More
Using Powercfg to Change the Name of a Power Scheme
The Powercfg utility allows you to control how power is used on your system. This tip shows you how to use the ...
Discover More
Changing the MAC Address for a Network Adapter
MAC addresses are used to uniquely identify devices on your network, such as a network adapter. Here's how you can modify ...
Discover More
Using Powercfg to Query an Existing Power Scheme
This tip shows you how to use the command-line Powercfg utility to query a given power scheme from your current environment.
Discover More
Comments