I have googled this a bit and looked at powrprof.dll and PsShutdown but I haven't found a way to do exactly what I want to do.

You know that power save option that lets Windows turn off your monitor(s) if you haven't touched the system for x amount of time?

Well, I have a PC that needs to be on most of the day (and night), and I have to watch it much of the time, so I can't have a short timeout for automatically turning off the monitor. However, once I leave it for a few hours (happens at varying times of the day), I would like to be able to issue a command that puts the computer in this mode. Not sleep mode, not hibernate mode. Monitor off, that is all.

I realize of course I could just turn the physical monitor off. That is not what I want. This Dell monitor takes forever to display a picture from a cold state. If it is turned off by the computer not sending a signal - not so bad.

Is there any way for me to do this? As mentioned, the OS can do it, so I would find it really useful if I could do it too. :)