Nintendo's wireless controllers normally don't completely power off. Instead they are in a sort of sleep state. However, people discovered commands to send to Switch 1 controllers so that they enter a factory off state. Meaning the Joycons don't drain their batteries with a connection to the Switch which allows them to use the "find me" feature, similar to how the Wii U GamePad turns on automatically when the system itself is powered on.
You can reference the following for investigation into if a similar thing for any of the Wii U Pro controllers or Wii U Gamepad is possible:
https://github.com/Sopsy/joycon-turnoff
If this can be implemented, it would greatly save infrequently used Wii U batteries from going more quickly to 0%, which can quickly kill them.