It seems that Windows likes to put devices to sleep. The way sleep works is that it puts your computer into a low power state where it draws between 3-10w of power instead of the full power your computer currently uses. However, the option “hibernate” is hidden and is better for your power consumption as it saves everything running in memory to your hard drive and turns the computer off and the power supply is now in standby, meaning it will be drawing 0.5-1w depending on the age of your computer.
Enable Hibernation on Windows 10 & Windows 11
These power options were introduced in Windows Vista, so will apply to Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11.
This link has a tutorial on how to change Windows 11 so that it will work with hibernation.
However, I’ve found it quicker to press Windows key and R to open Run and type powercfg.cpl to open the Control Panel Power options rather than going through the long winded menu system.
Add hibernation button to your desktop and task bar
This video shows how to add a hibernate shortcut to your desktop that you can drag to your task bar.
You can delete the shortcut from the desktop once you’ve done this and the one in your task bar will still work.
