Production of Electricity

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jscott991
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Production of Electricity

Post by jscott991 »

What are the most efficient power plants? This information is not that intuitive, but it would be very helpful to know.

For example, I know that one of the tricks in the early game is to shut down your petrol plants and replace them with coal. But but what other power plants should be eliminated to reduce the production cost of power? If fusion power is the best, should I dump everything else when I can build them?

My guessimates are that, based on production costs, power plants are roughly in this order:

1. Fusion
2. Coal
3. Nuclear
4. Petrol
5. Other

But I don't know that is true and I don't know how efficient it would be to scrap everything and go to fusion or fusion/coal.
powercell
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by powercell »

If I can build fusion power, I wouldn't bother with others especially when I have cold fusion as well.

I use coal power when I produce excessive amount of coal cheaply and I have not yet reach the level of fusion power. Same for nuclear power.

I use other and hydro when I play lower tech region and I can't produce coal/uranium.

I don't use petro power much if I can generate power from other sources. Plus, it is better to sell oil than selling electric power made from oil.
andrew74
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by andrew74 »

So does coal end up being cheaper than hydro if you can produce the coal? Is that just for building new hydro, or should you keep the hydro you have and just when building more, build coal?
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sirveri
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by sirveri »

This is a great question. I assume it's a combination of wages, maintenance costs, and material costs. GC introduced some new buildings. as well. Adv Solar, Anti matter, and Dark Energy power plants.

Just talking about maintenance costs (not initial investments):
Fusion is worse than Nuclear.

Fusion maint costs are around 100$ more than nuclear, and they produce the same output. Which means that nuclear is better than fusion until you research cold fusion unless you're running into Uranium shortages (especially if you have prismatic blocks and VHTR refit). Adv Solar has the same output as coal, but ten times higher maintenance costs, however it doesn't require coal.

I actually was going to load up a game and write down all the values and see what I could come up with. I'll report back with a better mathematical break down later.
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sirveri
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by sirveri »

I've just done a preliminary break down.

Formula, (Output/Maint cost)
List sort by best value
Coal: 151034
Petrol: 75517
Dark Energy: 32586
Hydro: 29445
Nuclear: 29297
Adv Solar: 27898
AntiMatter: 24864
Fusion: 21523
Other: 13272

Some notes about this basic comparison. Firstly, you have to buy fuel for the following plants (coal, petrol, Nuclear). This will skew these numbers down depending on resource costs. Also, this assumes non-upgraded plants, there are numerous research techs to increase the output of Other and nuclear and Fusion (as well as coal and petrol). Fusion actually doubles output to become the MOST productive power source in the game once Cold Fusion is researched (giving it a value of 43046, making it third and the best resourceless plant). Also this doesn't take into effect labor costs, since I don't know base manpower cost per plant. If there is a hidden labor/employment number per plant, then assuming all plants had the same number of people, coal would employ twice as many as nuclear as you would need two to equal output of nuclear. Finally one musn't ignore the environmental impacts, scanning the unit file for pollution values gives a pollution output of 250 for coal, and 200 for petrol. I suspect this increases the ammount you need to spend in environmental spending (for referance, C goods is 120, Ind Goods is 150 and Mil Goods is 180). So this means 500 units of pollution for an equivalent nuke plant. Finally, both anti-matter and dark energy require a matter energy converter to be built in the same hex, meaning a maximum of 5 plants per hex and their maintenance cost would be adjusted upwards. I didn't look at maintenance costs for matter energy converter (they're not cheap either). However it should be factored in and would raise the maintenance cost of all plants in the hex which require it (if you have a dedicated hex, that is a max of five plants per matter energy converter, so divide by 5 and increase maint costs accordingly, which would decrease the numbers above).

One thing to note is that power other gets a +30% boost and a +50% boost from various techs, in addition to not using resource. Nuclear gets +5% from prismatic and +10% from VHTR (also reduces maint by 20%). Now the code in the unit file gives a value of 1 for nuclear and .2 for other (1=8760001 MWh). So since tech boosts add fractions (I think) that would increase the output of power other to 1 (same as nuclear, but with the maint costs of power other), nuclear would output 1.15 with maint costs dropping from 299M to 239.2M. Other maint cost is 132M. So Other is actually more productive. Fusion with cold fusion produces at a rate of 2 (base rate 1 +1 for cold fusion), but has maintenance costs of 407M. Which is 203.5M per unit, which is 70M more than power Other once upgraded (but requires half the facilities with potential for employment issues as seen above). Cost equalising fusion to compare to fully upgraded nuclear yields a maintenance of 234M for 1.15 out. Cost equalising Other to fully upgraded nuclear yields 151.8M per 1.15 units. Fully upgraded coal is +.15 for coal upgrade and -.1 for clean coal (which reduces ALL Pollution levels by 10%) so a output value of .55 fully upgraded. Oh, I should note that I have purposefully left out multi fueled power plants since it applies across the board and would factor all values by the same ammount, so we can safely ignore it. That's 60.6M per 1.15 units for coal, which is about 2.5 times less than Power Other. However you must have access to coal, and it pumps up pollution levels. So my personal list of 'winners'

Coal
Other (fully upgraded)
Cold Fusion
Nuclear
Petrol
Dark Energy
Hydro
Adv Solar
AntiMatter

I think BG needs to seriously consider how they calc maintenance costs and turn it into an independant variable. Right now it is calculated using: cost (Industrial goods x base cost/unit) x unknown variable. If they freed the maintenance costs from the construction costs things would work out out better (I suspect it is half the plant cost per year for maintenance for ALL structures, since that seems to be the formula for military maintenance).
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The_Blind_One
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by The_Blind_One »

Labour costs are ''added value''

added value can be found default.WMDATA in your maps folder.

it says something like,

&&WMPRODDATA,2,// Timber,,,,,,,,,(product name)
wmbasecost,75,,,,,,,,,, (<--- ADDED VALUE)
wmfullcost,75,,,,,,,,,, (no purpose)
wmnodeproduction,3500000,,,,,,,,,,(production multiplier)
wmprodperpersonmax,2,,,,,,,,,,(max sellable goods per person)
wmprodperpersonmin,2,,,,,,,,,,(min sellable goods per person)
wmmargin,1.334,,,,,,,,,,(world market price of basecost)
wmurbanproduction,0,,,,,,,,,,(production in urban areas)
bwmterrain,1,,,,,,,,,,(resource harvested from terrein?, 1 yes, 0 no)
producefrom,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 (possible synthetic? the first 0 stands for agriculture, 2nd for freshwater and so forth, (any number above zero is a ratio).

With synthetics, if the number says 1.7 then that means 1.7 of good x is needed for this good.
Like petroleum

&&WMPRODDATA,3,// Petroleum,,,,,,,,,
wmbasecost,50,,,,,,,,,,
wmfullcost,50,,,,,,,,,,
wmnodeproduction,40000000,,,,,,,,,,
wmprodperpersonmax,12,// Was 12, then 18,,,,,,,,
wmprodperpersonmin,9,,,,,,,,,,
wmmargin,3.0,,,,,,,,,,
wmurbanproduction,0,,,,,,,,,,
producefrom,0.2,0,0,0,1.7,0,0,0.9,0,0,0

It takes 0.2 agriculture to produce one oil.
it takes 1.7 coal to produce one oil.
it takes 0.9 energy to produce one petrol.

Keep in mind that I use different values for my game's economy :D
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sirveri
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by sirveri »

thank you so much for finding this for me. It will help a massive ammount for my future modding.
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andrew74
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by andrew74 »

sirveri wrote:Some notes about this basic comparison. Firstly, you have to buy fuel for the following plants (coal, petrol, Nuclear). This will skew these numbers down depending on resource costs.
I think purchasing fuel for the various types of power will greatly affect the cost/benefit analysis. Assuming no tech advances and taking into account fuel and maintenance, what would be the formula for the cost of each Mwh of power produced, with a variable (X) being the price of the good? It would help if we knew the true cost of pollution as well, and factored that in.
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sirveri
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by sirveri »

Now that I've found the variable for electrical power generation I know how many units it take to produce one unit of electricity.

1.79 for oil
.47 for coal
.03 for Uranium

Base price for fuel:

Petrol 145
Coal 80
Uranium 95

1 Unit of Energy equals 8760000 MwH Therefore:

Petrol x Energy ammount x base cost: 2273.658M for 8760000 MWh/yr
Coal x Energy ammount x base cost: 329.376M for 8760000 MWh/yr
U x E x base: 24.966M for 8760000 MWh/yr

Base production factors for Petrol, Nuclear, Coal:
Petrol: 0.25
Coal: 0.5
Nuclear: 1

4 Petrol for 2 Coal for 1 Nuclear (base unmodified from tech).
New formula = 1 Unit Energy / (total combined maint + fuel costs for 1 unit energy)
Petrol: 8760000 / ((29M * 4) + 2273.7M) = 3665 MWh per 1M$
Coal: 8760000 / ((29M *2) + 329.4M) = 22612 MWh per 1M$
Nuclear: 8760000 / ((299M) + 25M) = 27037 MWh per 1M$

So Petrol definately comes out the bar none loser. Coal is worse than nuclear. This means fully upgraded power - other is THE best plant in the game, bar none. Plus since the price of oil is RARELY at base cost... Same if you have to import Uranium for 950$/t. Cold Fusion is also a good choice if you want to limit your facilities and it's also possible I might be wrong in how the fractions are applied to the units energy generated for power plants.
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catatonic
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by catatonic »

fully upgraded power - other is THE best plant in the game, bar none.
Cold Fusion is also a good choice if you want to limit your facilities
Ok SirVeri - I have become a believer. I have just conqured both North and South America and am in the midst of a big power crunch. I now have the choice between Power- Other and Power - Fusion (Cold) and I have decided to follow your advice.

I am constructing a complex of 60 "Other" power plants in the former Venezuela. If I can finally get ahead of the power curve, I may sometime be able to scrap all of my coal power plants just like I did all of my petrol plants.

One billion Americans are counting on you!

Now onwards to the Caribbean...
"War is merely the continuation of politics [diplomacy] by other means"
General Carl von Clausewitz - 1832

"Defense: De ting dat keeps de cows off de road."
Catatonic - 2012
catatonic
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by catatonic »

These Power - Other plants certainly take up a lot of space.

I just noticed something about the power production statistics:

1. In the Production/Electric Power/Commodity Facilities tab if you select a type of power plant to build then place the cursor over a hex with existing power facalities then the tool-tip pop-up will display the actual power production for that hex, adjusted for tech advances, supply, default output, etc.

2. The build tool-top for power plants has mis-scaled the "Max Possible Output" figure for each type of power plant. The figure is given in kilowatts rather than Megawatts as labled.

Using 1) above I can determine that each of my hexes of six Power-Other plants produces about 42,000 MWh of power or about 7,000 MWh per each Other plant that is officially max rated at only 1,752 MWhs. This is roughly that same output as another hex that contains one Cold Fusion and one Other power plant (43,300 MWh). 43,300 minus 7,000 gives the CF plant an output of 36,3000 MWh for a plant officially max rated at only 8,700 MWh.

Since the construction and maintainance costs of those five Other plants exceed those of one CF plant, and the five Others will produce slightly less power than the CF (35 vs. 36.3), I can't see the advantage of Other over CF in real-time game terms (year 2032, tech level 157).

I think that I am going to reverse-course of this power strategy decision.
"War is merely the continuation of politics [diplomacy] by other means"
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"Defense: De ting dat keeps de cows off de road."
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Roest
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Roest »

I'm must say i don't know if any of these numbers make any sense.

Right now i have 149 fusion plants with cold fusion researched. The production screen shows a annual capacity of 3,832,950,000MWh which would mean a capacity of 25,724,496MWh per plant. This is roughly 3 times of what the tool tip says.
catatonic
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by catatonic »

The production screen shows a annual capacity of 3,832,950,000MWh which would mean a capacity of 25,724,496MWh per plant.
This just shows that your plants are performing at times 3 of their official max. output. The X3 factor is due to your tech advances that improve power generation in all Power plants by a certain percentage each time there is a new discovery. My best ones seem to be performing X4, but yours could be lower if your plants are located in poorer supply regions. Some of my prime coal plants also operate at X3 official max.

As I said above, I think that the numbers are mistakenly displayed in Kilowatts instead of Megawatts. A Power-Coal plant in SR2020 has an official base max. output of "4,380,000". So what does this mean? Lets go to the real world - a 2009 coal plant will produce between 275 and 1000 Megawatts (275,000 - 1,000,000 KW). The power is billed to the consumer in Kilowatts per hour.

The game is set in the future, so let's assume that there have been advances in clean coal technology and technology of scale. Then it is possible that in the year 2020 an average coal plant has a max output of 4,380 MW or 4,380,000 KW. Viewed like this, BG has just made the mistake of listing power outputs in Kilowatts instead of Megawatts.
"War is merely the continuation of politics [diplomacy] by other means"
General Carl von Clausewitz - 1832

"Defense: De ting dat keeps de cows off de road."
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Ruges
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Ruges »

catatonic wrote:
The game is set in the future, so let's assume that there have been advances in clean coal technology and technology of scale.
Its funny that we think this way. When infact the games start day is a mear 10 and a half years away. While enough time to be discovered, probly not enough time, nore cost effective to acualy put such techs into practice.
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tkobo
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Re: Production of Electricity

Post by tkobo »

This was looked at in depth in sr2010, and at that time it was found clearly that oil and coal were the most "bang for your buck" power sources in the game.I find it unlikely thats changed.

And there ARE clean coal technologies in the game,the one i can think of had to be researched, but i was playing a low tech region so no idea on its actual tech level.It actually lowered coal power production by like 10% or something if i remember correctly.
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