Wind and Solar "quite expensive" is just wrong - pls reflect some reality as you did great so far

[Allianz4000]

So far I really love what you are doing, but this is BS and I have to call it out:
"Cities: Skylines II features various different power plants from the green, sustainable but quite expensive Wind Turbine, Solar Power Plant, Geothermal Power Plant, and Hydro-electric Power Plant to the raw, polluting power of fossil fuels in the form of Coal Power Plants and Gas Power Plant."

Wind and Solar (PV) are by FAR the cheapest ways to produce electricity. Please reflect this reality in game and don't create some arbitrary and weird values.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007420547&fileuploadsuccess=1

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth#the-price-decline-of-electricity-from-renewable-sources

I know it is a game and modding.... this is not the point. I think the devs did a great job so far and in every info we got we saw that, especially compared to CS1, there will be more realism in the simulation, aesthetics etc. etc. as the devs listen to feedback from the community and CS1. So in that regard i wanted to point that out because it kind of bugs me. It's a game but it aims to reflect realism and especially this topic is an important one. Alsp people, kids etc - people who aren't informed might get a wrong impression and project this into real life. I dont want to sound dramatic but in these times were we have so much deliberate disinformation, fake news, propaganda etc. I think this kind of matters. Even if its a small piece in a mosaic.

You get the point then:
i think if we aim for realism we should do it right. Especially if its as easy as changing some numbers in a game.

[Aturchomicz]

Yeah but Coal has a bigger ROI compared to Solar, of course a lib like you wouldnt know that lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSzzuY1Yw0

[Ghostrider]

Originally posted by Aturchomicz:

Yeah but Coal has a bigger ROI compared to Solar, of course a lib like you wouldnt know that lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSzzuY1Yw0

A very interesting video indeed, and surmises one of many issues with renewables.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Ghostrider:

Originally posted by Aturchomicz:

Yeah but Coal has a bigger ROI compared to Solar, of course a lib like you wouldnt know that lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSzzuY1Yw0

A very interesting video indeed, and surmises one of many issues with renewables.

Solution is quite simple: Government takeover. When the capitalist market is stopping the cheaper option because they can't gouge the consumer with it, then government should step in and build the cheaper option to undercut the capitalists and save us all money.

As an all-powerful dictator in cities skylines the cost should represent the actual cost to the producer. In cities skylines you are not building a power plant to gouge the consumer. You build the power plant to give away its electricity.

[lethminite]

Doesn't even need to be that far. Just need the costs of fossil fuels to be captured correctly. The moment some courts put the fossil fuel industry on the hook for some percentage of disaster recovery costs proportional to their CO2 emissions, and the change in disaster frequency due to said CO2 emissions, I would imagine a very swift turning point.
The question is if that (or something similar) comes soon enough.

I would have liked that video to give some explanation as to why they don't think there is a good ROI. It didn't address the question directly. It seemed to imply competition was too fierce, and energy has become too cheap, but that would effect fossil fuel power too, so i'm not really understanding how it would keep it's ROI, but solar would lose it. Either that, or it was just meaning the cost of land being a limiting factor.

For the OP, I find renewable power always ends up the right way to go even if it's more cost per MW, in CS:1 I only occasionally maybe bought a non-renewable power plant. Not having pollution or traffic seems like a far bigger up side. As a game mechanic, would be dumb to include other types of power plants at all if they cost more and generated less.
I guess similar to above, could have the defining feature of a coal power plant be footprint, rather than cost, but then you'd need to make sure it's pollution footprint didn't undermine it. Either that, or just imagine the game is set 10 years ago.

[RRhoads]

The windmills should be much larger than what they are in CS1. Windmills around where I live are over 700 feet tall. I slso hope we have to build service roads to them.

I really like the new solar plants.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by lethminite:

I would have liked that video to give some explanation as to why they don't think there is a good ROI. It didn't address the question directly. It seemed to imply competition was too fierce, and energy has become too cheap, but that would effect fossil fuel power too, so i'm not really understanding how it would keep it's ROI, but solar would lose it. Either that, or it was just meaning the cost of land being a limiting factor.

If you are buying kWh you have a very easy and simple way to compare the price to other sellers of kWh and to change supplier.

If you are buying gas/oil for your cooking and heating you cannot as easily compare that to a kwh and it is not easy to change to an electric solution.

If your government did not care to protect you you may be stuck with oil/gas and are looking at a 20 000 euro investment to change, with no option to connect to district heating because it simply does not exist.

In a country like Sweden or Denmark however you are unlikely to buy a house or apartment that comes heated by oil/gas, so if your electric bill is too high you simply change provider with a few clicks on the internet.

[¤ OpN ¤]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Originally posted by Ghostrider:

A very interesting video indeed, and surmises one of many issues with renewables.

Solution is quite simple: Government takeover. When the capitalist market is stopping the cheaper option because they can't gouge the consumer with it, then government should step in and build the cheaper option to undercut the capitalists and save us all money.

As an all-powerful dictator in cities skylines the cost should represent the actual cost to the producer. In cities skylines you are not building a power plant to gouge the consumer. You build the power plant to give away its electricity.

🤢🤮
This dude just said government take over.... Yeah cause the government does things so efficiently......

[Hedning]

Originally posted by ¤ OpN ¤:

🤢🤮
This dude just said government take over.... Yeah cause the government does things so efficiently......

It's funny how government is blamed when it is corrupted by capitalists and the solution then is more capitalism.

Yes actually the government can in many circumstances be vastly more efficient than the free market.

On topic the power plants are one thing. The largest power company in Sweden is 100% owned by the government and Sweden is about 40% hydroelectric, 30% nuclear, 16% wind, and 10% cogeneration. Swedes were only indirectly affected by the gas shortages caused by the war since electricity is traded on the European market. Sweden were a net exporter helping keep the bills low as many other European countries struggled to make up for the loss of gas.

If we look at healthcare and compare US to UK, UK has vastly superior health outcomes while spending a fraction of the money. Private health care introduces a redundant middle man called "insurance company" who not only leeches profit while providing no benefit, but also complicates the contact between the doctor and the patient. Not only that but the for-profit health care creates perverse incentives where you are not rewarded for curing the patient but making it need as much care as possible.

You can also look at something that is government funded almost everywhere: Roads. Imagine having to build 2 or more parallel roads for multiple companies to compete over a route, alternatively have local monopolies everywhere. Cartels are almost forced as different company roads need to connect to each-other. The options are so obviously terrible it is almost a given that government build the roads.

[way2co0l_2003]

"It's funny how government is blamed when it is corrupted by PEOPLE and the solution then is more power concentrated into the hands of a few people."

There, fixed it for you.

Renewable energy has costs. It will take far more than a single wind turbine to provide the power a small city will require. It's one thing the game is trying to reflect in how it prices things. They don't want to force you to cover half the map to power your fledgling city, but they also can't boost them so much that you can do it with just a few dozen without paying a high price for it either. There has to be a tradeoff that makes it viable while working within the game limitations, which in this case refers mostly to the space your city can be built witin.

[Allianz4000]

Originally posted by way2co0l_2003:

"It's funny how government is blamed when it is corrupted by PEOPLE and the solution then is more power concentrated into the hands of a few people."

There, fixed it for you.

Renewable energy has costs. It will take far more than a single wind turbine to provide the power a small city will require. It's one thing the game is trying to reflect in how it prices things. They don't want to force you to cover half the map to power your fledgling city, but they also can't boost them so much that you can do it with just a few dozen without paying a high price for it either. There has to be a tradeoff that makes it viable while working within the game limitations, which in this case refers mostly to the space your city can be built witin.

Well it doesn't necessarily need more than a single wind turbine to power a small city. Today's wind turbines are big and can supply 10.thousands of people with electricity. Like this recent one from Mingyang, the MySE 16-260 which is designed to power 80.000 residents. But they are not the only ones - Vestas and other have similar designs. Those are what is currently build and it would be reasonable to have similar turbines represented in the game as well. Wind turbines are not small toys. They are among the tallest structures - designed to power cities.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mingyangsmartenergy_myse16-offshorewind-activity-7086980077443297280-Cazt

https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/offshore/wind-turbine-sg-14-236-dd

Even onshore is capable do the same:
https://www.enercon.de/en/products/ep-5/e-136-ep5/

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/onshore/wind-turbine-sg-7-0-170

[way2co0l_2003]

And these examples are expensive undertakings. Ones that took decades and billions in research to "unlock". If you're wanting the game to include such options late into the game, then they should be similarly expensive unlocks. The ones you throw down at the beginning of the game are an entirely different thing. Cheap, limited tech options which will require a large number to provide any meaningful power supply.

[way2co0l_2003]

Not to mention, 80,000 people is a fair bit when you're looking at game terms, but in any real life term it's not as impressive as it suggests. You'd need somewhere close to 100,000 of those things to provide power to the world's population based on the suggested capability of providing power to 80k people, a figure which I personally dispute but that's beside the point. And it's also ignoring the power requirements that go beyond simple household applications such as industrial needs. Finding space to plop down hundreds of thousands of these things in areas with sufficient wind for generation is an obstacle all alone, let alone being able to make enough of them in the first place. We're more likely to get a few thousand than we are tens of thousands. Wind power is niche, plain and simple. It's supplementary. It helps. But there is no such thing as massively sustainable and affordable renewable power. Nuclear is as close as it gets atm.

But even when it just comes to the game, the game abstracts things, so even if you build a city that in the real world would house millions, you will have much smaller numbers in game. You'd still need dozens in high wind corridors to provide any meaningful power to even a small southern californian city for example. The game makes them expensive for good reason.

[Enterprofilenamehere]

They're adding new air pollution mechanics into the game. There's your reason to not build fossil fuel plants.

Studies like this often use cherry-picked data as well. The article you linked appears to use data from Europe, where renewables are indeed cheaper, but this isn't the case in most of the rest of the world. The price of renewables has decreased a lot in the past couple decades, but in many places it is still much cheaper and easier to use fossil fuels, especially if there are large deposits nearby or there is a lack of sunny or windy weather in the area.

[RRhoads]

I have yet to build coal or gas plants in CS1, so won't be touching that in CS2 either. Wind, solar or nuclear power for me.

[way2co0l_2003]

To each their own. Coal power for me. Nice and compact, mixed right in with my trash and industry so it's hardly a problem at all. :D