New
#11
spikes for first 45 minutes
sounds like the spikes at startup are caused by one of these:
-system restore
-indexing service
-superfetch
-readyboost(probably not)
system restore is easy to turn off if you want to do a test, but I don't think you can really turn off superfetch, nor should you.
I'd say the best solution is, don't shut down or restart your system! That way instead of waiting 45 minutes, you'll be ready to go in 45 seconds or less.
Properly configured for S3 sleep you computer won't really use any more electricity when sleeping that it would if turned off (maybe 1 watt). If you are worried about power outages you can use hybrid sleep or just use hibernation.
Of course it is possible that certain tasks will still run in the morning when you wake up the machine but it's worth a try, and in any case S3 is great. I stopped shutting down all my machines years ago, except my laptop which I often hibernate.