In the various aspects, virtualization techniques may be used to reduce the amount of power consumed by execution of applications by power-optimizing the code prior to execution. A dynamic binary translator operating at the machine layer may use a power consumption model to identify code segments that can benefit from optimization and to perform an instruction-sequence to instruction-sequence translation of object code to generate power-optimized object code. Execution hardware may be instrumented with additional circuitry to measure the power consumption characteristics of executing code. The power consumption models may be updated and object code may be regenerated based on the measured the power consumption characteristics of previously executed code. In an aspect, power optimization may be accomplished when the computing device is connected to a battery charger.