One embodiment provides a system and method for predicting network power usage associated with workloads. During operation, the system configures a simulator to simulate operations of a plurality of network components, which comprises embedding one or more event counters in each simulated network component. A respective event counter is configured to count a number of network-power-related events. The system collects, based on values of the event counters, network-power-related performance data associated with one or more sample workloads applied to the simulator; and trains a machine-learning model with the collected network-power-related performance data and characteristics of the sample workloads as training data 1, thereby facilitating prediction of network-power-related performance associated with a to-be-evaluated workload.