I am running my new notebook computer with the following power plan, which specifies that the machine shuts down after one hour of idleness:

However, I do not want the machine powering-down when a long-running backup is running. To solve this problem:

1. I created a new "always on" power plan named "Custom_Always_On".
2. I updated the backup PowerShell script to switch to the "Custom_Always_On" power plan during the backup, and switch back to the "Custom_Auto_Power_Down" plan when the backup finishes. I found the code on Aaron Saikovski's Technical Blog.

SetPowerPlan.ps1:

param($PreferredPlan)

function SetPowerPlan([string]$PreferredPlan)
{
    Write-Host "Setting Powerplan to $PreferredPlan"
    $guid = (Get-WmiObject -Class win32_powerplan -Namespace root\cimv2\power -Filter "ElementName='$PreferredPlan'").InstanceID.tostring()
    $regex = [regex]"{(.*?)}$"
    $newpowerVal = $regex.Match($guid).groups[1].value

    # setting power setting to high performance
    powercfg -S  $newpowerVal
}

SetPowerPlan $PreferredPlan

Backup.ps1:

...
& C:\PSScripts\SetPowerPlan.ps1 "Custom_Always_On"
...
# code for potentially long-running backup
...
& C:\PSScripts\SetPowerPlan.ps1 "Custom_Auto_Power_Down"
...

Now there is no risk of the machine powering-down in the middle of a long backup.

Use PowerShell to control your computer's power utilization