What is a POW file? A POW file contains a "power plan" or "power scheme" that optimizes the power consumption of a computer running Windows. It stores settings that can be deployed to multiple devices or used as a backup to configure the power consumption of a device. POW files are created when exporting a power plan with the Powercfg command.

More Information Windows 10 comes with pre-configured "Balanced," "High performance," and "Power saver" plans. You can also create a custom power plan in Windows 10 by modifying the power settings for your device. How do I create a custom power plan? To configure a power plan with custom settings in Windows 10, follow these steps: Open Settings by clicking the Start menu and selecting the gear icon Click System Select Power & sleep Click Additional power settings on the right pane of the window Select "Create a power plan" on the left pane of the new window Choose the plan, name it, and then click Next Select the settings for the plan, and click Create How do I export a POW file? Windows provides the Powercfg.exe tool to manage power plans. To export a power plan as a POW file with Powercfg in Windows 10, follow these steps: Open the Start menu and search for "Command Prompt" or "cmd" Right-click the Command Prompt app and select "Run as administrator" Type powercfg -list and press the Enter key Copy the GUID (5 groups of characters separated by dashes). For example, f349f321-8108-47d9-9c27-0786618f478c Choose the location you want to export the POW file to and paste the power plan GUID (instead of the example GUID used here) in the following command: powercfg -export path\to\folder\[name for your plan].pow [GUID] . An example of an export command that exports the power plan as an Example.pow file on the Desktop with the example GUID: C:\Users\SharpenedProductions\Desktop\Example.pow f349f321-8108-47d9-9c27-0786618f478c You can now navigate to the location you exported the POW file to in order to access the file How do I import a POW file? To import a power plan POW file with Powercfg in Windows 10, follow these steps: Open the Start menu and search for "Command Prompt" or "cmd" Right-click the Command Prompt app and select "Run as administrator" Type powercfg -list and press the Enter key Type the following command to import the POW file: powercfg -import path\to\folder\[name for your plan].pow . An example command to import the Example.pow file from the desktop: powercfg -import C:\Users\SharpenedProductions\Desktop\Example.pow Type powercfg -list and press the Enter key to retrieve the GUID of the power plan Then, type powercfg -setactive [GUID] and press the Enter key to activate the power plan. An example command using the f349f321-8108-47d9-9c27-0786618f478c GUID looks like this: powercfg -setactive f349f321-8108-47d9-9c27-0786618f478c Type powercfg -list and press the Enter key again to verify that the POW file is imported and the power plan is active NOTE: Power plans were introduced with the release of Windows XP SP2 in 2004.