Production of Electricity

Imports, Exports, Taxes & Social Spending... discuss these topics here.

Moderators: Balthagor, Legend

GIJoe597
Board Admin
Posts: 2918
Joined: Sep 29 2008
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by GIJoe597 »

I have never seen the new plants, (GC) included in this chat. How does Antimatter and Solar compare to the others?
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
NephilimNexus
Lieutenant
Posts: 66
Joined: Sep 28 2009
Human: Yes

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by NephilimNexus »

I threw this question into the basic calculator and came out with the following data. Note that this assumes that you are building five facilities of Antimatter/DarkEnergy per hex (the sixth being the energy converter). If you build less than the maximum of five in the hex then your economic ratio will suffer accordingly. Simply put, I asked how many energy units you get per money unit spent. Results are for maximum tech level (175) and did't include Small plants.
  • Coal: 182,500 e/u per $.
  • Petrol: 91,250 e/u per $.
  • Hydro: 36,500 e/u per $.
  • Nuclear: 36,198 e/u per $.
  • Fusion: 26,545 e/u per $.
  • Antimatter: 26,083 e/u per $.
  • Darkmatter: 34,187 e/u per $.
  • Other: 16,373 e/u per $.
  • Advanced Solar: 34,488 e/u per $.
Obviously the biggest bang for your buck is coal, followed by petrol. However these are offset by the need for coal mines & petroleum facilities, both of which are finite rescources (until you make synthetic plants). Plus, SimCity tells me that coal & petrol plants probably drive up your Environmental costs through the roof.

For some reason Fusion has a lower payoff than fission Nuclear plants. I have no idea why that is.

Antimatter and Darkmatter certainly give the best payout for land required, but they're still not the best systems.

Out of the three types of "free energy" systems, Hydro is hands down the winner. They require no fancy technologies and give the best payout of energy for your dollar of all the green techs. Advanced Solar comes in at a close second, and actually gives more power per acre, but isn't quite as efficient on the wallet. They also require about three years of research to unlock, too. On the plus side they can be built anywhere, whilst hydro is more limited. However, I've found that so long as your control Ontario & Montreal you'll have enough potential hydro spots to power pretty much the rest of the North American continent.

Now if you're cramped for space but good on income then obvliously Dark Energy is the big winner if you don't have access to Uranium mines. If you do, however, then plain old nuclear fission is still the way to go for energy vs. space used.

I'm assuming that the game factors in power plant types to your Environment rating, so in the long run my advice would be develop as follows: Nuclear to keep you going until you get Advanced Solar to replace them with, and put Hydro in any hex that can support it. Once you're going entirely Adv.Solar & Hydro your environment costs should drop very, very low; again assuming that Environment is affected by such things. Dark Matter & Antimatter look cool, and are very handy for when you accidentally end up taking the capitol of Manchuria and find that you have half a billion new citizens who don't like brown-outs, but in the long run even those should be phased out in favor of the Hydro/Adv.Solar combination as soon as you can.
catatonic
General
Posts: 1113
Joined: Jun 03 2009
Human: Yes

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by catatonic »

NephilimNexus wrote:I threw this question into the basic calculator and came out with the following data. Note that this assumes that you are building five facilities of Antimatter/DarkEnergy per hex (the sixth being the energy converter). If you build less than the maximum of five in the hex then your economic ratio will suffer accordingly. Simply put, I asked how many energy units you get per money unit spent. Results are for maximum tech level (175) and did't include Small plants.
I don't think that you can do this without amortizing the cost of the facility over a certain number of years. I assume that you did include the cost of constructing the six nodes and their central hub complex? And the cost of fuel.

I am interested as to why you come up with different conclusions than the guys did on the first page of this thread. "Sirveri" concluded there that petrol was the worst and "other" was the best.
Last edited by catatonic on Oct 01 2009, edited 1 time in total.
"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
GIJoe597
Board Admin
Posts: 2918
Joined: Sep 29 2008
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by GIJoe597 »

This perplexes me and has for more than a year. People getting different results when they do this.

I build in this manner and it works for me;

Coal
Nuclear
Fusion
Anti
Dark

I always see a direct decrease in energy cost when I scrap Petrol plants, (even an AAR where I document it) which is why I cringe when I see Petrol anywhere near the top.


Could we get George, maybe the only one that really knows, to chime in. I would like to see a no guessing, factual listing of energy. Which is meant to be "best/most efficient" in game terms.
Last edited by GIJoe597 on Oct 24 2009, edited 1 time in total.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
vortex79
Colonel
Posts: 284
Joined: Jul 21 2008

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by vortex79 »

Can anyone direct me to a thread where there has been a comparison taking these factors into consideration regarding power production:

1. Materials Cost
2. Labor force and dependent labor force cost. (IE. If you closed down the mines/wells OR exported versus using the materials.
3. Induced scarcity impact on the AI if you stop being a supplier of power production materials.
4. Replacing mines with non-resource consuming energy sources.. IE. Close down coal/coal power, build hydro.
NephilimNexus
Lieutenant
Posts: 66
Joined: Sep 28 2009
Human: Yes

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by NephilimNexus »

Play as (or conquer) Ontario and build Hydro Electric on every hex that can hold it and you can pretty much power the entire North American continent right there.
vortex79
Colonel
Posts: 284
Joined: Jul 21 2008

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by vortex79 »

I know. I've intentionally conquered Ontario for that very purpose before. I think Hydro is better than pretty much everything except other non-resource consumptive power sources. You can then sac all the extra coal and petrol pants, run on the minimum resource demand and don't export to world market to put pressure on your enemy's economy's.
Saluki77
Sergeant
Posts: 14
Joined: Jul 05 2008

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Saluki77 »

I threw together some numbers on power generation versus cost, over 1, 3, 5, and 10 years. Lets see where they stack up.
I built a group of 6 power plants on the same industrial complex hex, 100% supply, 100.2% infrastructure rating. No technologies have been researched. I used the following prices:
coal @ 111
petrol @ 204
Uranium @ 950
Industrial Goods @ 19,000

Power Production Costs

Hydro - 19,808,363 MWH/year - $160
Other - 11,906,949 MWH/year - $161
Nuclear - 60,774,887 MWH/year - $171.02
Coal - 29,492,629 MWH/year - $194.81
Petrol - 14,775,494 MWH/year - $450.6

OK, that is pretty shocking how bad petrol plants are. But, these numbers are just for raw production, lets include build cost now.

Building Costs (6 Plants):

Coal - $960 – 98,628 IG - $2,833,932,000
Petrol - $960 – 98,628 IG - $2,833,932,000
Other - $9,600 – 230,136 IG - $13,972,584,000
Hydro - $11,520 – 990,000 IG - $30,330,000,000
Nuclear - $21,600 – 779,178 IG - $36,404,382,000

A bit of a reversal there, with coal and petrol jumping to the top.

Final comparison, lets compare total production costs, with building cost added in, and then divide that by electrical production. That will get us the actual cost of the building and production over a number of years.

------Year 1-Year 3-Year 5-Year 10
Coal - $291 - $227 - $214 - $204
Nuclear - $770 - $371 - $291 - $231
Other - $1,334 - $552 - $396 - $278
Hydro - $1,691 - $670 - $466 - $313
Petrol - $642 - $515 - $489 - $470

Coal proves to the cheapest form of power generation over the first 10 years of a plants life time. The next part was a bit of a surprise for me, with Nuclear coming in second. Other came in a solid third, with Hydro and Petrol pulling up the rear.

I will play through a bit, reseach every technology and post all of the GC plants some other day.
Saluki77
Sergeant
Posts: 14
Joined: Jul 05 2008

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Saluki77 »

Well I had nothing better to do today, so I put together some numbers for the GC power plants.
All plants are build in a group of 6 on a single industrial complex hex, 100% supply 200% infrastructure, ALL techs researched.

-------Year 1-Year 3-Year 5-Year 10
Solar - $334 - $219 - $196 - $178
Coal - $246 - $209 - $202 - $196
Fusion - $417 - $255 - $223 - $198
Nuclear - $485 - $275 - $233 - $201
Other - $525 - $286 - $238 - $202
DarkE - $522 - $289 - $242 - $207
AntiM - $605 - $312 - $253 - $209
Hydro - $1,077 - $470 - $348 - $257
Petrol - $450 - $384 - $371 - $361

I ran into a problem with the power plants that don't consume resources. I found that they produce power at the same cost, according to the production manager, as the base power generation from city hexes. So the actual cost to generate the electricity was identical between all of the non-resource consuming power plants. The only difference that makes one type more efficient than the others, is the cost of the building itself.

For non-resource consuming plants, go for the Solar as they are the cheapest to build. For small regions, Fusion is the best as it offers the most electricty per hex in the game. For the power plants available at the start of the game, Coal and Nuclear are the best choices, offering cheap electricty throughout the game.
Rhyus
Colonel
Posts: 363
Joined: Feb 19 2010
Human: Yes
Location: Barnsley, Yorkshire, England

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Rhyus »

Ok so i have read alot of posts about power plants and just so i am clear fusion produces the most MWH right?
Also if someone could put a list together saying how many MWH each power plant produces including GC ones that wold be very helpful.
battlegoat9787
Colonel
Posts: 325
Joined: Jul 16 2008

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by battlegoat9787 »

Anti matter, dark energy?

I've never come across these techs and plants yet. Tell me, are they on SR2020, SR2020 GC or from a Mod?
User avatar
Balthagor
Supreme Ruler
Posts: 22082
Joined: Jun 04 2002
Human: Yes
Location: BattleGoat Studios

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Balthagor »

They are part of GC.
Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com
GIJoe597
Board Admin
Posts: 2918
Joined: Sep 29 2008
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by GIJoe597 »

Image
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
Rhyus
Colonel
Posts: 363
Joined: Feb 19 2010
Human: Yes
Location: Barnsley, Yorkshire, England

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by Rhyus »

ok thanks for that, but how many MWH does fusion make.

oh and is this with all the techs or not?
GIJoe597
Board Admin
Posts: 2918
Joined: Sep 29 2008
Human: Yes
Contact:

Re: Production of Electricity

Post by GIJoe597 »

There is some issue with the description not showing correct numbers I read some time ago, so I do not know if this is base or modified. But I have, in game, research the tech to increase output.
Image

Fusion for example does not change on the tech readout card after you research Cold Fusion:
Image



I always build at least to fusion since it has no requirement on placement and no need for input resources. Free energy as it were.

***
Speculation based on my game play, not to be taken as fact.
It is considered a "high tech" job and I have noticed it increases the wages of my work force, placing upward movement on GDP/c.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
Post Reply

Return to “Production & Economy - 2020”