Comment 28 for bug 838543

Found this fix and it worked for me, though I know my issue differs from a lot of yours. Also I'm not sure of the consequences of adding this conf key, perhaps someone more technically gifted can chime in.

Open a terminal and copy in:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/general/use_time_for_policy false

Hope this helps someone else out.