Comment 71 for bug 1872001

@eggie Yes, you should actually blacklist the nouveau module. Or instead, if you don't want your Nvidia card to drain power while you're using exclusively Intel graphics, run the following commands:

sudo -i
cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/00-pcidevices.rules
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="0000:01:00.0", SUBSYSTEM=="pci", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/remove'"
EOF

This adds a permanent rule to eject the Nvidia card from your system so that it won't use any power. Reboot for it to take effect. On some laptops this doesn't stop the Nvidia card from draining power, but on Dell laptops it does. This is what I use on my Precision 5540, which is essentially the same laptop as yours.