How to Exclude SCCM Devices from Power Management

In this article, we will explain how you can exclude SCCM devices from Power Management. SCCM admin can allow users can now opt-out of power plan via Software Center, and it’s easy.

Organizations that need to monitor and lower computer power consumption can benefit from SCCM’s Power Management feature. Furthermore, you can use various power plans on computers both during business hours and outside of them.

A power plan is a set of hardware and system parameters that controls how much power your computer uses. To implement a power plan to their managed devices, the majority of enterprises either use Group Policies or Configuration Manager. You can also use Microsoft Intune to manage power plans on managed Windows devices.

Recently, we published a step-by-step guide on how to configure power management in Configuration Manager, and this guide includes the steps to deploy power plans to device collections using SCCM.

Reasons for excluding devices from power management

Listed below are some examples that an organization may want to consider for excluding devices from power management.

• Some organizations have a requirement that the computers must remain turned on for some reason.
• Computers that users need to connect to by using Remote Desktop Connection. When a remote device has to be accessed using RDP, applying power plans will put block the remote connections.
• Windows servers installed with distribution point role shouldn’t be applied with power plans. A DP server is busy sending the content to clients and must remain online for serving clients.
• The organization has public computers such as kiosk computers, monitoring consoles etc. In these cases, the computer and the monitor must remain turned on.

Also Read: Run SCCM Task Sequence with a High-Performance Power Plan

Why should you allow users to opt-out from Power Management in SCCM?

Why allow users to exclude their device from power management? Allow me to explain this with an example. Suppose an employee works for an organization whose initiative is to become more energy efficient with the equipment that they use. The ConfigMgr admin has deployed a SCCM power plan to Windows 10 and Windows 11 device collections that will turn off monitor after 10 minutes of inactivity.

This power plan might be inconvenient for some users. The monitor turns off after 10 minutes if you are giving a presentation while in a meeting. Furthermore, you might not want your laptop to go to “sleep” while the lid is closed. You may therefore provide users the option to exclude the power management using client settings in SCCM.

Also Read: The Best Guide to Customize ConfigMgr Software Center

How to Exclude SCCM Devices from Power Management

A Configuration Manager admin can allow users to opt-out or exclude the devices from power management. While this step has to be manually done by user, the configuration manager admin has to first allow the option to do that.

Use the following steps to allow users to exclude their device from power management.

• Launch the Configuration Manager console.
• Navigate to the Client Settings in the console.
• Go to Default Settings > Power Management, ensure “Allow users to exclude their devices from power management” is set to Yes.

Exclude Devices from Power Plans in Software Center

Once you have enabled the option to allow users to exclude their device from power management, let’s understand how a user can opt-out of the power plan. To achieve this, the software center is required, and you can use the following steps:

• On the client computer, launch the Software Center.
• Switch to the Options tab and expand Power Management.
• Check the box “Do not apply power settings from my IT department to this computer” and click Apply.
• Restart the computer after making the above changes.

Exclude Device Collection from Power Management

A Configuration Manager administrator can exclude an entire device collection from power management, rather than requiring users to manually opt out. Once your device collection is prepared, you can easily add any devices that don’t require the use of power plans. Take a look at the best practices for power management in SCCM.

Step 1: Create Device Collection

You have to first create a device collection in SCCM exclusively for the devices that needs to be excluded from applying power management settings. You can refer to the following guides to create device collections for different operating systems.

• Create Windows 11 SCCM Device Collection | 21H2 | 22H2
• Create SCCM Windows Server 2022 Device Collection
• Create SCCM Device Collection for Windows 10 Computers
• SCCM Device Collections for Windows Server 2022 2019 2016

Step 2: Exclude a collection of computers from power management

• Launch the Configuration Manager console
• Go to Assets and Compliance > Device Collections.
• Right-click the device collection on which you want to exclude from power management and select Properties.
• Switch to the Power Management tab. Select Never apply power management settings to computers in this collection. Click Apply and OK to save your settings.
• The power management settings will not apply to the devices within this device collection.