Questions about power.

[tiremann 0]

Has anyone seen smoke and sparks coming from their power lines, and if so do you know what it means? I've tried increasing and decreasing the amount of power flowing, added to the cost of maintenance, and replaced the towers, but can't figure what it is supposed to indicate, or whether I've actually solved anything. To the best of ny knowledge only replacement seems to have had any effect, but the towers themselves are never very old, just carrying power to an area that has no zoning in between. On a similar note, is there a way to initiate a power deal from a neighbour, ie, get power from a larger neighbour for my small rural area? Thanks for any help.

[BlackJackal 0]

From SimCity.com:

If you reduce the Power Department budget too much, your power poles will deteriorate over time and eventually end up sparking. Since the sparks can cause fires nearby, you should take care of this situation, either by increasing funding to at least 100% or by replacing the distressed power poles.quote>

So the moral of the story is to keep your funding at 100% to keep poles from sparking. This will not fix poles that are already sparking, as those need to be replaced.

 As for power deals, you need to establish a neighbour connection between the two cities using power lines. IE: Drag your power lines to the edge of the map. This will allow for the sale of power from one city to another. The same goes for water, except you'd use pipes obviously.

[tiremann 0]

Thanks BlackJackal. I've got the link, but I can't seem to initiate a deal for power, although water and garbage seem to have appeared on the table (sorry for the pun).

[lucashp 1]

Maybe you allready have enough eletricity?/dont need eletrcity? or some times, the other city might not have enough power/water for themselfs, not beaing able to give you some.. Or sime times it just doesnt come up.

[manu-fan 0]

Hi,

I've had the same thing happen to me - not being able to set up Power neighbor deals.

In one city I create too much power and make sure the power lines go to the other city. In the other city, I make sure there's not enough power.

No deals aere offerred!

Is there a length of time this needs to continue for (more than a month) for the deal to be offered? What else could I be doing srong?

Thanks.

[mayormot 4]

I've had it take longer than a month for all the deals to appear. Up to a year. Other times it's nearly immediate. I don't know why. If you have a rubber chicken, wave it over the computer and see if that helps?

[Stewy13 0]

Theres really nothing you can do to get the power deal sooner, as stated it might pop up in a second or it might take a year OR MORE which is really annoying. Best thing to do it power the other city yourself with whatever is cheapest for you, if you think it'll come up soon plop a Windmill but if your trying for a large city then perhaps a coal plant. Whatever you choose though just run your city normally and check in on the deals till it pops up.

Good Luck with your City building!

[Sam 163]

With power deals, I think the city buying the power must have a need of 1000 MW before a deal can be initiated, since the power is sold in units of 1000 MW. I find that a lot of my residential only cities don't go near the 1000 MW level for quite a long time. So if your city only needs for example 700 MW you may not be able to initiate a deal.

[Tommy_Vercetti3 3]

The city selling also has to have enough power to sell. The city buying must need enough power(over like 500MW) or around that. Sometimes it takes a few game days. Make sure the powerlines have an actual open connection to the selling city and the power lines in the selling city must have the power lines working good and hooked to a power supply.

Hope this helps.

[cogeo 960]

The smallest deal can be 1000MWh/mo. If the selling city has a small surplus deals can only be multiples of 1000MWh/mo. The buying city must be able to support the deal (financialy) for at least 4 months. You can start a deal even with zero population.

And the power generated in the city isn't the cheapest possible, as you can only operate your plants only at 75-80% of the capacity, the "profit" the selling city can make is 10%, but the cost is calculated on the total production, so actually the selling city loses money. This is why power plants cannot make any profit. The cheapest possible power is import deals!