A quick and dirty guide to power production

[snowyonetwo]

All numbers are assuming max budget, top power production mode, and otherwise-ideal circumstances.

Power plant: 24 tiles, 17.29 power per tile.
Nuclear Power: 49 tiles, 19.5 power per tile.
Solar power: 49 tiles, 14.77 power per tile.
Wind Turbine (26%): 4 tiles, 7.5 power per tile.
Wind Turbine (100%) 4 tiles, 36 power per tile.
Waste Treatment Flant: 16 tiles, 5 power-per-building, 13 tile radius.

If you can get a bunch of buildings crammed in close to the WTF and fill in it's radius I believe it will be the best (or at least very high up there) and you will be getting resources back instead of expending them/getting nothing with the other plants. However the only way I can see this happening is if you manage to fill the radius with nothing but shacks which seems impractical at best. I may be missing some building; but even going to a 1X2 tile building would cut the capabilities of the WTF in half at best.

Nuclear gives the best per-tile output (aside from 100% wind turbine, but I'll get there) but requires uranium to utilize. Uranium cannot be utilized for anything else except building a bomb. This is the most consistent option. Since Uranium is limited in use you do not have to worry about depriving factories of resources and it can be build in the cold war unlike it's green alternatives.

Wind turbines can potentially give the best power output if you can get them really high up; but the amount of space where this is viable is limited per map where as other power plants simply don't have this restriction. If you can't build them high you may as well not bother. However they do not require any workers or resources so they can be used to fill in a gap if you're at pop-max and don't have much space left for some reason.

Solar power doesn't require extra resources or cause pollution but it gives the worst deal per tile aside from a low wind turbine. It also doesn't require roads, but if you're looking for power production there are simply better options.

Your basic power plant is small and gives a surprisingly good investment on power. However it utilizes coal and oil which your other factories will have desires for and produces a lot of pollution. If you want to avoid dealing with uranium and don't have a lot of high spots this is the best deal. Otherwise Nuclear is the best choice or a wind turbine at 100%.

I hope this helps.

[Tsuichoi]

Question: does the solar power facility numbers take into account the 10% upgrade?

Fun fact: if you make Elon Gates a green engineer, he will boost wind and solar power generation by 12% at three stars happiness.

[snowyonetwo]

Yes. It does. I do want to note that Wind Turbines DO COUNT as buildings that the WTF will get power from. So you can put one in the middle of your wind farm. I don't know how much power-per-tile you'll get as it will depend on your island and how much space you have, but this can crank out a LOT of power if need-be!

[Tsuichoi]

That's interesting, thanks for the info!

[snowyonetwo]

Edit: I'm not certain that this will work. It seems that, while wind mills are considered 'valid' targets for the WTF they do not actually produce pollution and may not actually cause it to generate power. I tried this with houses as well and the WTF didn't generate power. This may be because the houses were not inhabited because my citizens were comfy in their modern apartments. If that is the case and houses will generate power for the WTF if inhabited then you can cram a LOT into the WTF's radius since they're 1X2 (as small as you can go without being a shack). If this is untrue and they simply don't generate power you will likely need a larger building with a 2X2 minimum most likely.

[爱让一切都对了]

I doubt about the numbers. Nuclear Power is 48 tiles, not 49. My Power plant outputs 360 MW, which is 360/24=15 MW/tile, not 17.29.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by 爱让一切都对了:

I doubt about the numbers. Nuclear Power is 48 tiles, not 49. My Power plant outputs 360 MW, which is 360/24=15 MW/tile, not 17.29.

One, I would guess that 49 instead of 48 tiles for the Nuclear Power Plant is a typographical error - 19.5 MW per tile * 48 tiles gives 936 MW, which is about right for a Nuclear Power Plant at max budget while Mandatory Siesta is fully leveled up and running.

Two, 360 MW is the output of the Power Plant at medium budget; the first sentence of the original post says that the numbers are for output at [/i]maximum[/i] budget, i.e. nominally 450 MW (~420 MW while running Mandatory Siesta, ~415 MW with Mandatory Siesta and Air Conditioning) in the present state of the game.

Three, there are factors other than budget settings which can affect power output in the game - e.g. Mandatory Siesta or a Capitalist Minister of Economy - that are not explicitly specified beyond "top power production mode and otherwise-ideal circumstances."

Four, all of the posts prior to yours are almost four years old. I don't feel like digging through patch notes to check, but it is entirely possible that some of the relevant numbers have changed since this thread was created.

[爱让一切都对了]

Originally posted by 爱让一切都对了:

Four, all of the posts prior to yours are almost four years old. I don't feel like digging through patch notes to check, but it is entirely possible that some of the relevant numbers have changed since this thread was created.

Thank you. Basically, I just wanna remind readers that this post is no longer 100% correct. We don't know which numbers changed over 4 years.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by 爱让一切都对了:

Basically, I just wanna remind readers that this post is no longer 100% correct.

Your approach does not fit your stated goal. The best way to deal with outdated information in an old thread that hasn't seen a new post in years is to just leave the thread alone - the average forum-goer is never going to see a thread that hasn't seen any activity for four years unless the forum itself is basically dead. Posting in that thread, though? That brings the thread to the front page, thus drawing attention to it - and even if the title interests them enough to click on the thread, most people aren't going to check the dates on the posts in the thread, or even read (or, more likely, skim) anything more than the original post and maybe the last couple of posts in the thread.

[snowyonetwo]

Hi. OP here. I also want to stress that I haven't played this game in four years and the whole reason that this is a 'quick and dirty guide' instead of an 'actual' guide is because it was basically me just sitting down with the best conditions I could/couldn't think of and doing quick back-of-the-napkin calculations. I fully acknowledge details may have changed since then or I may have overlooked some stuff. The whole idea is not some comprehensive breakdown but, rather, someone wants to know what power source is best and finding a forum post that breaks it down into relatively quick and neat chunks to give them a good, general, idea. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if, say, nuclear power is 49 or 48 squares (IIRC it's a 7X7 block so it's 49; but it's been years so I could be easily forgetting something). What matters is that it gives more energy per-tile than a normal power-plant, but not as much as a 100% wind turbine or an utterly 'ideal' WTP. So if you have the space/uranium to spare and need power, it's a better choice than a normal power plant, but also not by such a HUGE leap that you're shooting yourself in the foot if you build a normal one instead.

[Erikkustrife]

Originally posted by snowyonetwo:

Hi. OP here. I also want to stress that I haven't played this game in four years and the whole reason that this is a 'quick and dirty guide' instead of an 'actual' guide is because it was basically me just sitting down with the best conditions I could/couldn't think of and doing quick back-of-the-napkin calculations. I fully acknowledge details may have changed since then or I may have overlooked some stuff. The whole idea is not some comprehensive breakdown but, rather, someone wants to know what power source is best and finding a forum post that breaks it down into relatively quick and neat chunks to give them a good, general, idea. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if, say, nuclear power is 49 or 48 squares (IIRC it's a 7X7 block so it's 49; but it's been years so I could be easily forgetting something). What matters is that it gives more energy per-tile than a normal power-plant, but not as much as a 100% wind turbine or an utterly 'ideal' WTP. So if you have the space/uranium to spare and need power, it's a better choice than a normal power plant, but also not by such a HUGE leap that you're shooting yourself in the foot if you build a normal one instead.

sadly i was for some reason hopeing this included the hydrogen plant lol.