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Create a Custom Power Plan

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Applies To: Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

A power plan is a collection of hardware and system settings that manages how computers use and conserve power. A power plan is also known as a power scheme. You can create custom power plans that are optimized for specific computers.

By default, Windows® 8 and Windows Server® 2012 include three power plans: Balanced, Power Saver, and High Performance. You can customize these existing plans for your systems, create new plans that are based on the existing plans, or create a new power plan from scratch.

Optimizing Windows power plans can help improve battery life. However, a single poorly performing application, device, or system feature can significantly reduce battery life. For information about factors that influence battery life, see Managing Battery Life and Power Consumption Overview.

In this topic

Creating a customized power plan

Listing the available power plans

Deploying a power plan

Creating a customized power plan

  1. Click Start, and then select Control Panel.

  2. Click Hardware and Sound, and then select Power Options.

  3. The Power Options Control Panel opens, and the power plans appear.

  4. Click Create a power plan.

  5. Follow the on-screen instructions to create and customize a power plan file that is based on an existing plan. Name your power plan "OutdoorPlan".

Note

You can manage most common power plan settings through Control Panel. To fine-tune settings that do not appear in Control Panel, see Fine-Tune a Custom Power Plan. 

To deploy the power plan, see [Set the Default Power Plan](hh825711\(v=win.10\).md).

Listing the available power plans

  1. On your technician computer, at an elevated command prompt, type the following:

    powercfg -LIST

    The computer will return the list of available power plans. In the following example, these plans are Balanced, Power saver, and OutdoorPlan.

    Existing Power Schemes (* Active)
-----------------------------------
Power Scheme GUID: {guidPlan1}  (Balanced) *
Power Scheme GUID: {guidPlan2}  (Power saver)
Power Scheme GUID: {guidPlan3}  (OutdoorPlan)

    Note the GUIDs that are listed next to the power plans that you want to capture.

Deploying a power plan

  1. After you have created power plans that work for your system, you can deploy the power plans to your destination computers.

    To export the OutdoorPlan power plan that you created on your technician computer, open an elevated command prompt, and then type the following

    powercfg -EXPORT C:\OutdoorPlan.pow {guidPlan-New}

    This creates a new power plan file.

  2. To deploy the power plan, see Set the Default Power Plan.

Next Steps

Set the Default Power Plan

See Also

Concepts

Managing Battery Life and Power Consumption Overview
Test Battery Life and Power Consumption