Energy first

[David]

I have obtained some preliminary design details for the power plants from the dev team. The design is not fixed in the stone and may change as we come up with new ideas over time or integrate new suggestions into existing design.


Power Plant Types:
Fossil-fuel Power Plant
Nuclear Power Plant
Solar Power Plant
Wind Turbine

New Functional Units:
Power Generator
-can be set up in Fossil-fuel Power Plants, capable of taking in the following types of fossil-fuels: coal, oil and potentially natural gas. At the moment we are still pondering whether transportation of natural gas will require pipelines or not, which the game currently doesn't support and will require implementing a new system for letting users to lay pipelines. Or we should just exclude natural gas for simplicity if the pipeline system doesn't seem to add to the gameplay in meaningful way.

Nuclear Power Generator
-can be set up in a Nuclear Power Plant

Solar Power Generator
-can be set up in a Solar Power Plant

Wind Turbine unit
-can be set up in a Wind Turbine

Power Sale unit
-for selling power and can be set up in all types of power plants.

Battery unit
-for Solar Power Plants and Wind Turbines

A basic connection will look like this:
[Power Generator] --- [Power Sale unit]
[Nuclear Power Generator] --- [Power Sale unit]
[Solar Power Generator] --- [Battery] --- [Power Sale unit]
[Wind Turbine] --- [Battery] --- [Power Sale unit]

While the layout plan for power plants will be 3x3, there is a restriction that you can only set up one Generator unit for each power plant building. So you will have to build a new power plant if you want to increase the electricity supply to the city.

[therealevan]

Great start David!

[counting]

So current design will not include utility products or parts as intake? Just fuel from fossil fuel power plants. And other unit like battery unit will only cost an abstract amount of setup cost and worker salaries? If only one generator unit can be used, what would the rest of the empty space for? Power Storage would be interesting like inventory unit, and deal with fluctuation of power production perhaps?

In real life power plant there is a technology called pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) using artificial dame and reservoir to storage energy for load balancing. Technical term of these kind of method is called "grid energy storage". There has been reported as using cave to store compressed air as some sort of wind turbine energy storage, or using excessive energy to cool down air to liquid air and vaporize it to generate air flow as well. And of course the obvious use of huge scale battery farm and perhaps even using electrolysis to produce hydrogen to store energy and burn it with fuel cell to generate electricity later. Even with science fiction like technology using superconducting magnetic energy storage with superconductors, or using thermoelectric material to directly transform energy back from any thermal source. Grid energy storage should be universal regardless of which power plants they are, since they are means to storage excessive electricity into other form and re-release it later. (but obviously PSH is much easier to implement in hydropower plants, air-related easier in wind power plants, but they can still work with other types with higher setup cost)

(Or we can still have independent abstract maintenance unit with setup cost and constant overhead and worker salaries as placeholders, function as keeping power plant efficiency and at working order. Whether or not they need intake of utility tools/parts could be considered in later patch or expension)

[David]

counting, thanks for your inputs.

So current design will not include utility products or parts as intake? Just fuel from fossil fuel power plants. And other unit like battery unit will only cost an abstract amount of setup cost and worker salaries? If only one generator unit can be used, what would the rest of the empty space for? Power Storage would be interesting like inventory unit, and deal with fluctuation of power production perhaps?

I have got feedback from the dev team regarding the issues you brought up, as below.

Maintenance costs of power generation equipment
For the sake of simplicity and consistence with other aspects of the simulation, maintenance costs of power generation equipment are covered by the “Operating Overhead” expense item on the income statement, in the same fashion as factories and other firm types. In other words, it is assumed that there is a continuous effort to maintain the equipment and therefore it is able to keep working, though their efficiency will become inferior to newer generations of power plants. (see below for details about this.)

In real life power plant there is a technology called pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) u

sing artificial dame and reservoir to storage energy for load balancing. Technical term of these kind of method is called "grid energy storage". There has been reported as using cave to store compressed air as some sort of wind turbine energy storage, or using excessive energy to cool down air to liquid air and vaporize it to generate air flow as well. And of course the obvious use of huge scale battery farm and perhaps even using electrolysis to produce hydrogen to store energy and burn it with fuel cell to generate electricity later. Even with science fiction like technology using superconducting magnetic energy storage with superconductors, or using thermoelectric material to directly transform energy back from any thermal source. Grid energy storage should be universal regardless of which power plants they are, since they are means to storage excessive electricity into other form and re-release it later. (but obviously PSH is much easier to implement in hydropower plants, air-related easier in wind power plants, but they can still work with other types with higher setup cost)

This is a good suggestion. But in the game the demand for electricity will be fairly constant as it will be calculated based on actual number of business firms and residential housing in the game, which are unlikely to fluctuate greatly. So there will not be a need for load balancing the electricity supply.

(Or we can still have independent abstract maintenance unit with setup cost and constant overhead and worker salaries as placeholders, function as keeping power plant efficiency and at working order. Whether or not they need intake of utility tools/parts could be considered in later patch or expension)

It seems that just increasing the setup costs and maintenance costs of the core power generation units will have the same effect.

We will introduce new internal units to nuclear power plants. The details are as below.

Units for handling nuclear waste
Nuclear reactors produce nuclear waste. There are two options to handle it.

1) Create an unit for storing it – but when the storage unit is full, the player will have to set up another unit and thus keep increasing the upkeep cost. And the old storage unit cannot be destroyed, occupying space of the 3x3 layout.

You may create several unclear waste storage units and link them together. When one of them is full, the firm will automatically utilize the next one that is still not yet full.

2) Set up a high-tech, very expensive unit for recycling the waste. The initial investment is high, but the advantage is that the power plant will not have to deal with problems associated with storage of nuclear waste.

So the units are:

Nuclear Waste Recycle unit
-for recycling nuclear waste

Nuclear Waste Storage unit
-for nuclear waste storage

Units connections for Nuclear Power Plant
[Nuclear Power Generator] --- [Power Sale unit]
--- [Nuclear Waste Recycle unit] or [Nuclear Waste Storage unit]

[counting]

I wonder what's the challenge if there's no risk and fluctuation involved in power plant firms? even media firms have fluctuation, and product have economic cycles. Fluctuation is the base status of electricity usage. Appliances don't turn on and off in sync, and obviously not all the time. Fluctuation should be considered the basic property of electricity usage. It's "base consumption line" can come from number of factories and houses, but real power usages shouldn't be constant. In real life it fluctuates greatly between day and night, summer and winter, and no 2 year have the same pattern of fluctuation.

[David]

While we don't have day and night cycles in CapLab, it should be possible to have seasonal fluctuation in electricity demand. I will forward your suggestion to the dev team.

[bundyaxl]

For power plants it should have input units for the fossil fuel ones, and i suppose we might need uranium for the nuclear power plants. Wind and Solar wouldn't need inputs.

Unless the coal power generator unit will also work as an input unit.

And I agree with seasonal fluctuations. Those are probably the biggest. And of course fluctuations due to supply and price.

[David]

For power plants it should have input units for the fossil fuel ones, and i suppose we might need uranium for the nuclear power plants. Wind and Solar wouldn't need inputs.

You've got it right. The player will be able to add Purchasing units in fossil-fuel power plants and nuclear power plants.

[counting]

You've got it right. The player will be able to add Purchasing units in fossil-fuel power plants and nuclear power plants.

So will it include at least one extra type of mine for Uranium? Or will it be rare metal as my original proposal and can be used for other products?

[David]

The types of natural resources available on the map will include Uranium.

As for coal, we are still thinking if we should separate thermal coal from coking coal (for making steel) or just have one type of coal for both power generation and steel production. The former approach is more realistic whereas the latter may be better from a gameplay balance perspective as there will be higher demands for coal and it will easier to operate a coal mine as a profitable business.