As you surmised in your comment the limitation is not with the software but with your battery not reporting correctly.
To clarify these software tools below will only measure power consumption on laptops when running on battery. For desktop or server machines the only current solution is an electronic watt-meter that plugs into the mains socket.
#Power Statistics
In Ubuntu Precise 12.04 there is a new power statistics history window. This can be accessed by clicking the battery item in the application indicator menu then selecting Latop Battery tab.
#Powertop
As mentioned by the OP this program provides information on per process/device power usage.
#Powerstat
Another alternative that measures process/device power usage is powerstat that was written for Ubuntu by Colin King. There is a detailed review of its features on hecticgeek.com.
It can be installed from the PPA: ppa:colin-king/powermanagement
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As you surmised in your comment the limitation is not with the software but with your battery not reporting correctly.
To clarify these software tools below will only measure power consumption on laptops when running on battery. For desktop or server machines the only current solution is an electronic watt-meter that plugs into the mains socket.
#Power Statistics
In Ubuntu Precise 12.04 there is a new power statistics history window. This can be accessed by clicking the battery item in the application indicator menu then selecting Latop Battery tab.
#Powertop
As mentioned by the OP this program provides information on per process/device power usage.
#Powerstat
Another alternative that measures process/device power usage is powerstat that was written for Ubuntu by Colin King. There is a detailed review of its features on hecticgeek.com.
It can be installed from the PPA: ppa:colin-king/powermanagement
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Have a look at s-tui: https://amanusk.github.io/s-tui/. Runs in the terminal, shows you the parameters pertinent to the CPU.
Baeldung
baeldung.com › home › administration › finding the power consumption of a machine in linux
Finding the Power Consumption of a Machine in Linux | Baeldung on Linux
March 18, 2024 - Based on the energy information, we can take a timestep and compute the power. We compute power with energy divided by time. This approach uses the RAPL (Running Average Power Limit), which is one interface for reporting the accumulated energy consumption of various device components.
linux - How to find power draw in watts? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
I've been asked to estimate the power consumption of the servers I run for my laboratory. I thought that I'd ask if there was some handy Linux commandline to get the power consumption of the server... More on unix.stackexchange.com
Linux application to monitor the power consumption
Yes, you can use powertop to monitor the overall power draw of your computer. With calibration you can also get a rough estimate of how much power each process/device is using. More on reddit.com
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September 30, 2021How do you monitor power consumption?
PowerTop can be used to monitor power usage at the process level as described in How to monitor power usage in Linux , but it doesn't monitor total system power consumption (memory, drives, PSU, etc.), at least to my understanding. I use lm-sensors as described in How to install sensors (lm-sensors) on Ubuntu / Debian Linux for monitoring CPU core temperatures along with the Telegraf lm-sensors plugin for writing these to InfluxDB and displaying them in Grafana. Some have suggested this, but I don't see power consumption reported by lm-sensors on my servers, a mix of Supermicro X8 systems and Lenovo Tiny desktops. I have monitored power consumption using two methods: Initially, by running SNMP queries (in a Python script) to an APC AP7801 , networked, metered PDU. I bought this PDU (cheaply on eBay) with the expectation to monitor individual outlets, but I didn't dig deep enough before buying it and learned later that it reports only total power consumption for all outlets. Currently, I use the Telegraf apcupsd plugin on the host (Debian-based NAS) that monitors my APC BackUPS Pro 1500 through USB. This provides all information available in the apcaccess command, and also is written to InfluxDB and displayed in Grafana. Again, both of these methods monitor only total power consumption. There are two options for monitoring power consumption of individual systems: Use a networked, metered PDU that monitors power consumption by outlet rather than a total. These are available, for example the CyberPower PDU81004 Switched Metered-By-Outlet PDU, 100-240V/15A, 8 Outlets, 1U Rackmount , but can get pretty pricey. Use smart plugs that include power monitoring, like these TP-Link Kasa Matter Smart Plug w/ Energy Monitoring . More on reddit.com
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August 14, 2023How I fixed high idle power consumption with my 7000 series GPU
I gave up a couple of months ago and just decided to let my Cpu's integrated graphics run my second monitor lol. More on reddit.com
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March 25, 2023Videos
15:31
20 Terminal Tools To Monitor Linux Resource Usage - YouTube
30:47
Find out battery power consumption (wattage) on your laptop on ...
20:19
Linux Power Management & Monitoring with TLP & Powertop - YouTube
14:58
Top 5 System Monitoring Tools for Linux – Unleash Peak Performance!
09:44
Top 10 ways to monitor Linux in a Terminal - YouTube
Reddit
reddit.com › r/homelab › how do you monitor power consumption?
r/homelab on Reddit: How do you monitor power consumption?
August 14, 2023 -
Since power usage (at least cpu-wise) is fairly easy to monitor in windows (hwinfo). Is there is a cli equivalent for linux?
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PowerTop can be used to monitor power usage at the process level as described in How to monitor power usage in Linux , but it doesn't monitor total system power consumption (memory, drives, PSU, etc.), at least to my understanding. I use lm-sensors as described in How to install sensors (lm-sensors) on Ubuntu / Debian Linux for monitoring CPU core temperatures along with the Telegraf lm-sensors plugin for writing these to InfluxDB and displaying them in Grafana. Some have suggested this, but I don't see power consumption reported by lm-sensors on my servers, a mix of Supermicro X8 systems and Lenovo Tiny desktops. I have monitored power consumption using two methods: Initially, by running SNMP queries (in a Python script) to an APC AP7801 , networked, metered PDU. I bought this PDU (cheaply on eBay) with the expectation to monitor individual outlets, but I didn't dig deep enough before buying it and learned later that it reports only total power consumption for all outlets. Currently, I use the Telegraf apcupsd plugin on the host (Debian-based NAS) that monitors my APC BackUPS Pro 1500 through USB. This provides all information available in the apcaccess command, and also is written to InfluxDB and displayed in Grafana. Again, both of these methods monitor only total power consumption. There are two options for monitoring power consumption of individual systems: Use a networked, metered PDU that monitors power consumption by outlet rather than a total. These are available, for example the CyberPower PDU81004 Switched Metered-By-Outlet PDU, 100-240V/15A, 8 Outlets, 1U Rackmount , but can get pretty pricey. Use smart plugs that include power monitoring, like these TP-Link Kasa Matter Smart Plug w/ Energy Monitoring .
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My choice https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU
LinuxConfig
linuxconfig.org › home › how to check and tune power consumption with powertop on linux
How to check and tune power consumption with Powertop on Linux
August 29, 2023 - In this tutorial we learned how to install and use Powertop on some of the most used Linux distributions. The tool allow us to monitor and retrieve power usage statics and apply some suggested power saving tweaks.
TecMint
tecmint.com › home › open source › powertop – monitors power usage and improve laptop battery life
PowerTOP - Analyze and Manage Power Consumption in Linux
January 18, 2024 - To run it in calibration mode, use the --calibrate option. If you run Powertop on a laptop battery, it tracks power consumption as well as processes running on the system and after getting enough power measurements, it reports power estimates.
Abilian
lab.abilian.com › Tech › Green IT › Power consumption (Linux servers)
Power consumption (Linux servers) - Abilian Innovation Lab
April 6, 2026 - Monitoring power consumption in Linux servers can be accomplished using various tools and methods, depending on the desired level of accuracy and the specific use case. While software-based tools like powercap, lm-sensors, and powertop provide quick and accessible insights, external hardware ...
Red Hat
docs.redhat.com › en › documentation › red_hat_enterprise_linux › 8 › html › monitoring_and_managing_system_status_and_performance › managing-power-consumption-with-powertop_monitoring-and-managing-system-status-and-performance
Chapter 16. Managing power consumption with PowerTOP | Monitoring and managing system status and performance | Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 8 | Red Hat Documentation
The PowerTOP tool can provide an estimate of the total power usage of the system and also individual power usage for each process, device, kernel worker, timer, and interrupt handler. The tool can also identify specific components of kernel and user-space applications that frequently wake up ...
Ubuntu
manpages.ubuntu.com › bionic › man(8)
Ubuntu Manpage: powerstat - a tool to measure power consumption
powerstat measures the power consumption of a computer that has a battery power source or supports the RAPL (Running Average Power Limit) interface. The output is like vmstat but also shows power consumption statistics.
Linux Hint
linuxhint.com › monitor_optimize_power_usage
How to Monitor and Optimize Power Usage on Linux? – Linux Hint
Guide on how to monitor the system resource usage with the different tools and how to optimize the power usage on a Linux system using various doable methods.
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If your computer actually keeps track of power (e.g. notebook), than on kernel 3.8.11 you can use the command below. It returns power measured in microwatts.
cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/power_now
This works on kernel 3.8.11 (Ubuntu Quantal mainline generic).
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Another KISS solution, completing Adam's suggestion. This is for people who don't have a power_now file. (Arch)
echo - | awk "{printf \"%.1f\", \
(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/current_now) * \
$(cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/voltage_now) \
)) / 1000000000000 }" ; echo " W "
Reports the actual power draw in Watts with one decimal place.
Xmodulo
xmodulo.com › how-to-monitor-power-usage-in-linux.html
How to monitor power usage in Linux
October 26, 2020 - For Linux-based systems, you can use PowerTop, an ncurses-based command-line tool developed by Intel to monitor process-level power consumption, and to provide suggestions to optimize power management.
GitHub
github.com › joular › powerjoular
GitHub - joular/powerjoular: PowerJoular allows monitoring power consumption of multiple platforms and processes · GitHub
On PC/Servers, PowerJoular uses powercap Linux interface to read Intel RAPL (Running Average Power Limit) energy consumption. PowerJoular supports RAPL package domain (core, including integrated graphics, and dram), and for more recent processors, we support Psys package (which covers the energy consumption of the entire SoC). On virtual machines, PowerJoular requires two steps: Installing PowerJoular itself or another power monitoring tool in the host machine.
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Medium
medium.com › @dreams-smoke › how-to-monitor-power-usage-of-your-linux-computing-system-with-prometheus-grafana-f21b9933762
How to monitor Power Usage of your Linux computing system with Prometheus/Grafana | by Saurabh Sarkar | Medium
November 11, 2023 - Performance Optimization: Power consumption can be correlated with system performance. By monitoring power usage alongside performance metrics, you can analyze the relationship between power and workload and optimize system configurations for better performance per watt.
GitHub
github.com › sosy-lab › cpu-energy-meter
GitHub - sosy-lab/cpu-energy-meter: A tool for measuring energy consumption of Intel CPUs · GitHub
CPU Energy Meter is a Linux tool that allows to monitor power consumption of Intel CPUs at fine time granularities (few tens of milliseconds).
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Linux Mint Forums
forums.linuxmint.com › board index › main edition support › software & applications
power consumption monitor? - Linux Mint Forums
October 11, 2024 - Jerboum wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 6:33 am The best way, this is what I use, is to have a device that is pluged on the power between the power outlet and the monitor's plug, it costs around 15 € It might be the best way, but I don't want to use hardware. Please guys, only reply if you have software recommendations as I'm genuinely not interested in hardware. Thanks for your advice, though! In other circumstances I will take it, but not this time ... Check for example this https://www.baeldung.com/linux/power-consumption 1.
Red Hat
redhat.com › en › blog › take-control-your-rhel-systems-power-consumption
Take control of your Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems’ power consumption with pmda-denki
November 23, 2025 - RAPL just covers some subsystems but is available on almost all servers. With PCP, pmda-denki, and pmie, one could also implement monitoring that sends alerts if power consumption suddenly rises.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/ubuntu › linux application to monitor the power consumption
r/Ubuntu on Reddit: Linux application to monitor the power consumption
September 30, 2021 -
Is there a tool/app available in Linux/Ubuntu or other distribution, to monitor how much Power is being consumed by the computer (in this case a Dell XPS 15 9510 laptop) from the USB-C/TB 4 port.
It would be good to have Volts and Amps as well. Thanks
Baeldung
baeldung.com › home › administration › linux power-saving tools
Linux Power-Saving Tools | Baeldung on Linux
February 6, 2024 - We can use the powertop tool to monitor and analyze the power consumption in Linux.
UbuntuMint
ubuntumint.com › home › how to display power usage in watts on ubuntu’s top bar
How to Monitor Power Usage in Real-Time on Ubuntu
September 28, 2024 - The GNOME PowerTracker extension allows users to monitor power consumption and battery usage in real-time from the Ubuntu top panel."
Red Hat
docs.redhat.com › en › documentation › red_hat_enterprise_linux › 10 › html › monitoring_and_managing_system_status_and_performance › managing-power-consumption-with-powertop
Chapter 9. Managing power consumption with PowerTOP | Monitoring and managing system status and performance | Red Hat Enterprise Linux | 10 | Red Hat Documentation
PowerTOP estimates total system power usage and consumption for individual processes, devices, and kernel handlers. The tool can also identify specific components of kernel and user-space applications that frequently wake up the CPU. Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses version 2.x of PowerTOP.