Key Points
- Generate a Sleep Study Report in Windows 10 or 11 by running powercfg /sleepstudy in an elevated PowerShell or Command Prompt window.
- The report saves as an HTML file and highlights top offenders: the apps, drivers, and background tasks using the most battery during sleep.
- A drain rate under about 0.33% per hour is healthy; a rate at or above 1% per hour signals a real problem, based on Microsoft’s SleepStudy documentation.
- Windows 11, version 24H2 and later automatically limits wake sources during Modern Standby, reducing drain on updated devices without extra configuration.
- Use /output to choose where the report saves, and /duration to extend the reporting window beyond the default.
This comprehensive guide demonstrates how to generate a Sleep Study Report in Windows, including how to use the powercfg command to save the report as an HTML web page, and how to interpret the contents of the Sleep Study Report.
Generating and understanding Sleep Study Reports will help you better comprehend your Windows device’s power usage, as well as help identify the causes of unexpected battery use and performance issues.
Free up your IT team from chasing alerts and labored reporting.
Understanding the Sleep Study Report
Power management in Windows provides a number of features for monitoring and managing the resource and power usage of your PC. This ranges from power modes that give you broad options for power usage (best performance, balanced, or best power efficiency) as well as further customization options for optimizing for performance or battery life.
In addition to the power management tools available in the Windows Settings App, the powercfg command line tool can be used for fine-grained power management and to automate power management. It is also the tool you will use to generate Sleep Study Reports.
Sleep Study Reports can be generated in Windows 11 and Windows 10 Modern Standby (a feature that enables modern Windows devices to better manage power usage, allowing mobile devices to instantly sleep and resume, and improving battery life). Sleep studies contain information about system activity the last time it was in a low power mode (e.g., sleep or standby), so that you can see how power was used, and troubleshoot battery life issues. For example, if you’re charging your laptop before driving to work, and arrive with a low battery, a Sleep Study Report will help you determine the cause.
The information included in a Sleep Study Report includes:
- Information about your system, including BIOS and operating system versions, and whether modern standby is supported
- How long your device last slept for, and how much battery was used during this time
- Whether your device was connected to a network during this time
- Detailed information about recent sleep sessions (including duration and battery drain rate), and what ended the session (scheduled tasks, hardware events, or network activity)
- Which hardware is using the most power during sleep, for example, Wi-Fi or hard drives
- Information about power transitions that can help uncover why your device may not be sleeping properly
- The list of active background tasks that continued to run while your device was in a low-power state
The most useful feature of the Sleep Study Report is the top offenders. This is a list of apps, drivers, and background tasks that used the most battery while your system was asleep.
powercfg can also be used to generate other useful reports about your device’s power usage, including battery reports and power efficiency reports.
Preparing to generate a Sleep Study Report
Sleep Study Reports can only be generated on mobile Windows 11 and Windows 10 devices with hardware that supports Modern Standby.
Before you begin, confirm your device supports Modern Standby by running powercfg /a in an elevated Command Prompt or PowerShell window. If the output lists Standby (S0 Low Power Idle), your device supports Modern Standby and can generate a true Sleep Study Report. If it doesn’t, Windows will generate a System Power Report instead (see the Troubleshooting section below).
To generate a Sleep Study in Windows, you must be logged in as an Administrator or be able to open an elevated PowerShell session.
How to generate a Sleep Study Report in Windows using powercfg
To generate a Sleep Study Report in Windows 11, follow these steps:
- Open PowerShell as an Administrator by right-clicking on the Start button and clicking Terminal (Admin). If you’re still running Windows 10, click Command Prompt (Admin) instead.
- Enter powercfg /sleepstudy and press the Enter key to run the command.
- The Sleep Study Report will be saved as an HTML file, and the path to the file will be displayed. Usually, this will be in your User directory.
- Locate and open the report file in your default web browser by double-clicking on it.
Once your report is generated, you can move it to a different location, or customize where and how it’s created using command flags.
To save the report to a specific location:
powercfg /sleepstudy /output “%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\sleepstudy-report.html”
To generate a report covering the last 7 days instead of the default window:
powercfg /sleepstudy /duration 7 /output “%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\sleepstudy-7-days.html”
At a glance: powercfg commands for power reporting
| Task | Command | What it does |
| Check Modern Standby support. | powercfg /a | Lists the sleep states your device supports |
| Generate a Sleep Study Report. | powercfg /sleepstudy | Saves an HTML report to your user directory |
| Save the report to a specific path. | powercfg /sleepstudy /output “path.html” | Controls where the file is saved |
| Extend the report window. | powercfg /sleepstudy /duration 7 | Covers the last 7 days instead of the default |
| Generate a battery report. | powercfg /batteryreport | Reports battery capacity and usage history |
| Generate an energy report. | powercfg /energy | Flags power-setting errors and warnings |
Interpreting the Sleep Study Report to troubleshoot power management issues
There’s a lot of information included in a Sleep Study report, and it can seem overwhelming when trying to troubleshoot sleep issues.
The top offenders section does most of the leg work for you: it identifies the software and hardware that are consuming the most power during sleep or that are stopping your device from sleeping at all, saving you the work of interpreting the data yourself. Look for components that have a high battery drain rate or that remain active while your device is asleep for potential causes of short battery life.
Once you’ve identified the problematic app, you can try the following troubleshooting steps:
- Re-install the application (and update to the latest version if there’s one available).
- Reset the application configuration.
- Configure the application to not continue running in the background if the option is available.
If a device is using significant power while sleeping:
- Try re-installing or updating the device driver (try looking on the manufacturer’s website for newer versions that may not yet be in Windows Update).
- Disconnect the device while your computer is asleep.
- Check the device for physical faults.
If you notice more sleep sessions than expected, check the wake sources to see what may be causing your device to wake up and go back to sleep while it’s not in use.
According to Microsoft’s SleepStudy documentation, a drain rate under about 0.33% per hour indicates a device that can achieve 12 or more days of Modern Standby battery life, a rate between 0.33% and 1% per hour is a middle tier worth watching, and a rate at or above 1% per hour is flagged as high drain and worth investigating further
Troubleshooting Common Issues based on the Sleep Study Report
The most common issue when generating power reports in Windows is not being logged in as an Administrator. You may also be prevented from running the Sleep Study Report if you are part of a Windows Domain and do not have the necessary privileges.
If your Windows device does not support the Modern Standby requirement for generating Sleep Studies, a System Power Report will instead be generated (though the output HTML file name will still be named sleep study). This is the equivalent of running powercfg /systempowerreport.
If you’re generating this report on a Windows 10 device, keep in mind that Windows 10 reached the end of mainstream support on October 14, 2025. Consumer Extended Security Updates for Windows 10, version 22H2, are available through October 13, 2026; devices without ESU enrolled after that date will no longer receive security updates.
Thinking about using scripts for Power Management optimization?
Check out this advanced PowerShell guide for IT pros and MSPs
What’s new in Windows 11, version 24H2 and later
Starting with Windows 11, version 24H2, Microsoft added adaptive guardrails that automatically limit which processes and devices can wake a system from Modern Standby. On devices running 24H2 or later with current updates, this reduces the kind of unexpected wake-ups and battery drain that Sleep Study Reports are often used to diagnose. If you’re seeing high drain on a 24H2 or later device, check that Windows Update is current before assuming the cause is a specific app or driver.
Additional tips for optimizing power management in Windows
Generally, you should enable battery-optimized power settings from within the Windows Settings app on mobile devices where portability is a priority.
If you find your device battery is not performing as expected, you should generate a battery report by running powercfg /batteryreport from the Command Prompt or PowerShell. You can also run a power efficiency report by running powercfg /energy which will display errors and warnings about potential power issues and their cause.
There are also third-party tools that you can use for Windows power management:
- Batterymon can help you diagnose battery issues with detailed statistics about battery performance and comparisons with expected behavior.
- HWMonitor monitors system performance and can help uncover the cause of unexpected resource usage or battery drain from software or hardware.
However, in most cases, the built-in Windows functionality is sufficient for normal users. Third-party tools may lack guardrails to protect you from setting power options that may lead to instability or damage to your system.
Windows power management at scale with remote monitoring and management (RMM)
Identifying and troubleshooting Windows power management and battery life issues by generating Sleep Study Reports, interpreting their contents, and then fixing each issue on a per-device basis is impractical even for a few devices. If you are in charge of tens or thousands of devices, you need full visibility into the health of each device so that problems can be preemptively solved at the most convenient time — (not when the user is about to head off to a conference with a laptop that doesn’t work).
The NinjaOne remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform lets you manage Windows, Apple, and Android devices from a centralized web interface. It directly integrates with Windows power management functionality, allowing you to remotely monitor device hardware, track battery health over time, and generate alerts or tickets when a battery’s performance crosses the thresholds you set.
This is especially relevant if your fleet still includes Windows 10 devices: with mainstream support already ended and consumer ESU coverage running out in October 2026, fleet-wide visibility into which devices are still on Windows 10 matters more than ever.
You can also watch the video version of this guide on how to generate a Sleep Study Report in Windows if you prefer a visual explanation.
