Thoughts about electricity

[Dieziet]

With the new update and its new power lines I took a fresh look at the electricity game, and I noticed a few things:

1. Some buildings have 2 different energy consumption entries. The steel mill for example has a maximum production consumption of 11 MWh per day of production and below that there is a second entry for a max energy consumption per day of 26 MWh. Which one is correct? And there are quite a few more that have 2 entries like that.

Given that the second consumption entry is the circuit breaker wattage x 60 seconds, at first I thought as if the circuit breaker is over-engineered and the true consumption of the mill is 11 MWh, but on the other hand many other buildings don't have the first entry, so I go with 26 MWh.

2. Why does the steel mill have high voltage access, but needs only 440 KW? You could supply 5 steel mills with one substation and one medium power line. I understand that most of the coal input is actually used to actually power the smelting itself, but if the arc furnace is supplied by an internal power plant, why use high voltage? Other buildings seem to have their own power plants too, as they should, like the cement works and the oil refinery, yet they don't have a high voltage socket.

I wonder if the power stats of the buildings in general are a work in progress, and whether they will be a balance pass.

[barry.zandstra]

My best guess is that A) buildings use more power starting up than they do running at full power. So perhaps max production means if you have ample raw materials and full labour for 24 hours. And B) if you use day/night cycle buildings use extra power at night. The extra power is for lighting and not production, so it isn't counted.

[Total Oh No]

As far as I can tell, the 11 MWh are the max energy the building needs for its actual job (at 100% productivity). But there are actually still other factors that can cause a building to consume more energy. For example lighting during night and some other stuff. (I'm not sure what exactly the other stuff is, but it includes things like "heating" and "living" factors.) The absolute max (with 100% productivity and with all other factors) it consumes is 26 MWh.

I was also surprised when I noticed that the steel mill only needs really tiny amounts of energy. It can actually be supplied by the smallest medium voltage wire. There's not really any point to the high voltage connection. I think maybe the dev might increase the building's power usage in the future.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally posted by Total Oh No:

As far as I can tell, the 11 MWh are the max energy the building needs for its actual job (at 100% productivity). But there are actually still other factors that can cause a building to consume more energy. For example lighting during night and some other stuff. (I'm not sure what exactly the other stuff is, but it includes things like "heating" and "living" factors.) The absolute max (with 100% productivity and with all other factors) it consumes is 26 MWh.

My observations concur. The number up with the resources is the amount that is variable based on the "rate of production" or whatever the 'here's how it's operating compared to capacity' meter is labeled. The numbers down below are total per day and total per second (circuit breaker), which factors both the 'rate or production' component and the fixed component.