Why kernel 3.6.2 is so much less energy efficient than 3.6.1 on Mint 13? I noticed, that the power consumption in my ASUS P53E notebook is doubled (from 10W to 20W) when I change from kernel 3.6.1 to 3.6.2 (or later). I use Ubuntu Quantal mainline kernel from kernel-ppa/mainline - Kernel Ubuntu on Mint 13 Maya (which is based on Ubuntu Precise 12.04). Please advise me, what additional information I should post, to help you answer. The power measurements agree with the significant difference in processor temperature (ca. 45 C on 10W and ca. 65 C on 20W), so it is not a glitch of the power meter.

I think there's a power utilization regression that was introduced in 3.6.x. If you can, stick with the older kernel. Supposedly, there's also an ext4 metadata block corruption bug in 3.6.2 as well, so it might be worth waiting.