Track PC Power Consumption With Microsoft Joulemeter
Tracking a PC's or Laptop's power consumption can be helpful in several ways. It can for instance be used to analyse power usage to reduce the energy bill or find ways to increase a laptop's battery life by reducing the overall power usage.
Microsoft Joulemeter is an experimental program for Windows that can track the PC power consumption. It is compatible with desktop and mobile computers.
The application places an icon in the Windows system tray on startup. A click on that icon displays the main interface where the power consumption and statistics are displayed and constantly updated.
The power consumption is divided into base, cpu, disk and monitor which are added to get a total power consumption. The application currently is not measuring the gpu's power consumption which - on modern computer systems - uses lots of power.
It also has to be noted that the values are estimations if the application is installed on a desktop computer. The connection of a WattsUp power meter and the calibration module of Joulmeter is said to return accurate statistics.
Laptop users do not need a WattsUp meter. They simply have to pull the plug if the laptop is at least 75% charged to get more accurate power date.
Microsoft Joulmeter is an interesting program for Windows that can track a computer's power consumption. The software can be downloaded from Microsoft Research.
We need your help
Advertising revenue is falling fast across the Internet, and independently-run sites like Ghacks are hit hardest by it. The advertising model in its current form is coming to an end, and we have to find other ways to continue operating this site.
We are committed to keeping our content free and independent, which means no paywalls, no sponsored posts, no annoying ad formats (video ads) or subscription fees.
If you like our content, and would like to help, please consider making a contribution:
Joulemeter Calibration is crashing once I start it. Anyone else having that problem?
Are you using a 64-bit operating system?
Yeah, Win7 64bit.
I have experienced the same.
Joulemeter wouldn’t even install on my XP system, yet I didn’t see anything on the Microsoft project page which says it’s for Win7 only. And it left a service entry which I had to delete by editing the registry. Would’ve been nice if it had created a restore point automatically during installation.
Does not seem to properly install on Windows XP professional with Service Pack 3.
Requires .Net Framework 3.5.
Why do you and everyone consistently fail to document programs’ requirements?
Because it is sometimes not mentioned on the developer’s website at the time of writing. If you know a method of finding out if and which .net Framework is required by an application let me know.
Even i have .net framework 3.5 as well as 4 it didnot worked on my service pack 3 32bit os.
mine worked fine , no issue what so ever , running ultimate 7 64 bit , and running frame work 4
Thank you this really helped!