Inspired by the World Earth Day 2010, we’re looking for ways how to improve our energy usage. The first step to improve your personal energy usage is to compile an energy report. Windows 7 has some built-in utilities to do that – will it find any energy efficiency problems on your system?

Tip: If you’re interested in saving energy and money, you should also give Microsoft’s energy savings calculator a try.

1. First of all, start an elevated command prompt (click on the link if you don’t know how)

2. Type powercfg /energy

3. There are several command line options that allow you to specify the time of your energy analysis and where to store the report. The options have to be added just AFTER powercfg /energy

Tip: By default the energy analysis will run 60 seconds and will store the energy report to C:\Windows\System32\energy-report.html

Example (Add this after powercfg /energy)
-OUTPUT C:\energyreport.html -DURATION 120

OUTPUT allows you to define the output path and DURATION the length of the test, obviously.

Full Example
Type: powercfg /energy -OUTPUT C:\energyreport.html -DURATION 120

4. Go to the path that you specified, e.g. C:\energyreport.html and open the html file in your favorite browser. You can now read the full energy report.

The energy report will include warnings, errors and informational notes. Here’s a typical warning that the USB device is not suspending (for good reasons):

USB Suspend:USB Device not Entering Suspend
The USB device did not enter the Suspend state. Processor power management may be prevented if a USB device does not enter the Suspend state when not in use.
Device Name USB Root Hub
Host Controller ID PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0454
Host Controller Location PCI bus 0, device 2, function 0
Device ID USB\VID_10DE&PID_0454
Port Path

You will have to get used to reading the energy report, but you can always google any energy efficiency problems and find a solution.

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