6 Best Free Power Management Software For Windows

Here is a list of best free power management software for Windows. These software help you manage the power requirements of your PC. You cannot only manage the power requirements, but also reduce the overall power consumption of your PC. Due to this property, you can also use these power managers as laptop battery saver. To reduce the power consumption, these software monitor system behavior like CPU load, Mouse Movement, Keyboard Activity, etc. and accordingly switch power modes. When the PC is in the idle state, these software enable power saving mode to reduce power consumption. However, in case of heavy usage, Balanced and high power modes are used to provide optimum performance. In most software, you can also manually change power modes according to the requirement. Go through this list to find the best PC power management software for yourself.

My Favorite Power Management Software For Windows:

Power Plant Assistant is my favorite software because it intelligently monitors the PC and automatically manages the system power accordingly. Plus, this software is also quite handy for Laptops as it helps in improving the battery backup.

You can also check out lists of best free Church Management, Reference Management, and Time Management software for Windows.

Power Plant Assistant

Power Plant Assistant is a free power management software for Windows. It uses system inbuilt power plan as well as its own power saving modes to optimize power usage. Plus, you can use it to turn off display or to lock system directly. It is a very useful software for laptops as well because it helps in increasing the battery backup and also shows various battery related information. In it, you also get the option to change the default battery icon with the new one to get more information including battery level, active power plan, and power source (battery or mains supply).

This freeware works around three power saving modes, namely, High Performance, Power Saver, and Balanced. According to system load, it automatically switches between available modes. However, options to manually change power mode is also available. Let’s see how different power management modes affects the power consumption and performance of the system.

• In High Performance mode, the system consumes the most amount of power and provide you the best possible performance.
• The Power saver mode slightly reduces the overall system performance in order to reduce the power consumption.
• Balanced mode is a kind of smart mode which consumes less power than normal but still, provides a good amount of performance.

Power Plant Assistant also has an Advanced mode, from where you can set the minimum threshold battery level to trigger power saver mode automatically. Another good option to assign some programs that you want to run whenever system switches to any of the three power modes is also quite handy.

KAR Energy Software

KAR Energy Software is another free power management software for Windows. The main aim of this software is to reduce the PC power consumption without reducing the performance. This software claims to reduce the power consumption up to 48 %. Not just it reduces the power consumption, but it also increases the system performance and reduces the system startup time.

This software uses two main methods to manage the power consumption. The first method is to smartly manage the processor frequency according to the load. The second method uses some advanced features of Intel and AMD processors to bring the power consumption down. The Intel processors have inbuilt EIST and C1E advanced features, but Windows does not support these features natively unless you go through BIOS. However, this software can easily use Intel’s both advanced features directly. EIST and C1E basically enable this software to put PC screen or the whole system in Standby mode. The AMD processor comes with AMD’s own cool and quiet technology that this software uses to reduce power consumption and to increase battery life in case of laptops.

This PC power management software also allows you to manually set the System standby time, Screen off time when idle, and to add some programs that you don’t want to stop when system is in standby mode. Plus, it also shows some important stats on its interface like reduction in annual spending, power consumption in kWh, and CO2 emissions.

Note: This software is only free for private usage. Plus, many premium features are not available in this software. By purchasing its premium version, you can remove all of its limitations.

Granola

Granola is one more free power management software for Windows. It intelligently monitors your PC and adjusts PC performance to save power. Plus, it manages your system in a way that you do not feel any reduction in actual performance and still get better efficiency out of your PC.

In this software, you get Lowest Speed Mode (that reduces the performance but you can significantly reduce the power consumption) and Highest Power Mode (This mode completely turns off the power management to give you the maximum PC performance when required). There is also a third mode or default mode (Miserware) in which, this software automatically adjusts PC performance and power management according to the load.

This PC power management software will lower your energy use by 10 to 35% even when your system is running at full capacity. It also tracks the energy saved to estimate your cost savings and carbon emission reductions. Plus, it can also come in handy for laptop users as it also helps in improving the battery backup of laptops.

Snap CO2 Saver

Snap CO2 Saver is yet another free power management software for Windows. As its name implies, it helps you reduce the CO2 production by running the system more efficiently. It comes with a small floating interface that shows the information about CO2 savings. An inbuilt search bar is also included in it to search the web.

To manage PC power consumption, you can toggle between four available Power Saving modes named as Mild, Medium, Aggressive, and Custom. Let us see the differences between the available power saving modes:

• Mild Mode: This mode turns off the screen after 30 minutes and hard disk after 60 minutes of inactivity.
• Medium Mode: It turns off both the hard disk and screen after 30 minutes of inactivity and enters standby mode after 2 hours. It saves twice as much power than the mild mode.
• Aggressive Mode: It can turn off the screen and hard disk after 15 minutes of inactivity, while it enters to standby mode after 30 minutes. It saves much more power than above two predefined modes.
• Custom Mode: In this mode, you can decide after how much idle time, screen and hard disk will go to sleep. You can also set custom standby time. Plus, you can also turn off power saving mode through this mode.

In this software, you can also feed the hardware information like System Type (desktop or laptop), Monitor Types (LCD, LED, CRT), and Monitor Size (16, 19, 23 inches) to this software according to which, it provides you the best possible power efficiency.

SmartPower

SmartPower is a completely free power management software for Windows. This software helps you significantly reduce the power consumption by Hibernating, Suspending, or Shutting down the PC according to configurable rules. The first thing that you need to configure in it is the selection of Target power state (Hibernate, Suspend, and Shutdown). This software sends the system to the selected power states according to system behavior.

In this software, you can configure various system parameters according to which, you want to enable the power state or keep running the system. Let’s take a brief look at various configurable system parameters:

• Processes: This option keeps awake the system until some specified processes are running.
• Schedules: As its name implies, this option lets you schedule the wake-up time for the system.
• Power Requests: In it, you can enable the Display Power, System power, and Away modes. These modes keep on the system until some programs requesting any one of the enabled modes.
• Users: In this option, you can set the inactive time after which this software enables the selected power state. Users are considered inactive if they haven’t use the mouse and keyboard within the specified time period.
• Devices: This option is used to stay awake the system until any one of the specified devices is active. To specify devices, you can use their IP Addresses or their Hostnames.
• Advanced: It lets you add some Windows services that you want to stop before system go into Hibernation/ Suspended state.
• Network: This option keeps awake the system until the traffic over the network is above the threshold value.
• CPU: It does not let the system go to the selected power state until the CPU usage is above the threshold value.

Overall, it is a quite smart power management software but to fully utilize its potential, you need to carefully configure all system parameters.

NoSweats

NoSweats is a lightweight and portable power management software for Windows. This software is mainly used to reduce the power consumption of a PC by reducing the PC performance when it is not in use. Now, to determine the PC performance, it continuously monitors the Mouse movement and CPU load. Whenever it detects the reduction in CPU load and mouse movement, it automatically changes the PC power mode to low performance to save power. In case of light to normal usage like editing documents, emailing, etc., it switches the PC power mode to Balanced to get nominal performance without wasting too much energy. However, in case of heavy usage, it sets the system to high performance to run the system at its full capacity. There is also a Force high-performance option that you can manually enable by right-clicking on the NoSweat icon which resides in the system tray. This option is useful as you can enable it whenever you have to do some heavy task or gaming.

There are many other advantages of this software than just managing the power such as Less energy wastage, Less system heat, Less noise, Overall electricity cost saving, etc.