Dell Command PowerShell Provider Peak Shift feature

Affected Products:

• Dell Command | PowerShell Provider

Peak Shift is an optional feature that reduces power consumption by automatically switching the computer to battery power during certain times of the day, even if the computer is plugged into a direct power source. Peak Shift feature is a utilitarian feature for the power conscious who want to streamline power consumption from mainline. Essentially the Peak Shift feature is presented to the user in the BIOS as shown below:

• The user can enter values for peak shift start, peak shift end, and peak shift charge start.
  • These values are for each day of the week.
  • These values are time fields in a 12- hour time format.
• The user can also specify AM/PM.
• Then the user can enter battery threshold ranging from 15% to 100%.
• Finally, the user can either Enable or Disable peak shift for the weekdays with an Enable Peak Shift check box.
• The importance of the above fields is explained below.

When peak shift is enabled, the following takes place using the user set daily times and threshold value:

• From Peak Shift Start until Peak Shift End, AC power is not used unless the Battery Threshold is reached.
  • Even if the computer is connected to AC power, the machine only uses battery power until the threshold is reached.
  • Also during this period, the naturally, the battery does not charge.
  • When the battery threshold is reached, the computer switches to AC power but does not charge the battery.
• From Peak Shift End until Peak Shift Charge Start, AC power is used when available, but the battery does not charge.
• Apart from the span between Peak Shift Start and Peak Shift Charge Start, AC power is used when available and the battery is also able to charge.

The validation that goes into place when enter peak shift times is that Peak Shift Start < Peak Shift End < Peak Shift Charge Start. In other words, Peak Shift Start time must be less than or equal to Peak Shift End time and Peak Shift End time must be less than or equal to Peak Shift Charge start time. Otherwise, BIOS and Dell Command Powershell Provider (DCPP) complain to user to adhere to this validation.

DCPP has strived hard to present to the user Peak Shift feature as closely adhering to the BIOS as possible. DCPP provides the below three attributes for facilitating the Peak Shift feature:

As seen in figure 1 DCPP facilitates Peak Shift through three attributes namely PeakshiftCfg, PeakShiftBatteryThreshold, and PeakShiftDayConfiguration.

• PeakShiftCfg is a simple attribute that takes only the values Enabled and Disabled.
• PeakShiftBatteryThreshold is an integer attribute that accepts values between 15 and 100 (similar to BIOS).

The generic usage of the above attributes is shown in the screen below:

PeakShiftDayConfiguration is a more custom token which needs more discussion on its usage. Similar to the table in which the BIOS screen provides for changing data related to independent weekdays, PeakShiftDayConfiguration allows the user to get and set day-wise information. The below command must be used and also depicted, to view current day wise settings for Peak Shift:

Dir PeakShiftDayConfiguration|Select –ExpandProperty CurrentValue

The user can avail Peak Shift info similar to the BIOS. The table is listed as Day of the week, its StartTime, its EndTime, and ChargeStartTime. All these fields have the same importance as in BIOS. We have to run the below command, to set Peak Shift data for a day of the week:

Set-item PeakShiftDayConfiguration Tuesday –StartTime 11:30 –EndTime 12:30 –ChargeStartTime 14:30

The user has changed Peak Shift data for Tuesday with the shared command. Similar to the BIOS validation exists namely StartTime < EndTime < ChargeStartTime.

Set-item PeakShiftDayConfiguration Tuesday –StartTime 11:30 –EndTime 12:30 –ChargeStartTime 14:30 –Password myAdminPassword

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