Hydro Power Plant

[The Good King 3]

  In order to get better experienced with BAT and just improve the game for myself altogether, I've been making a series of functional buildings. My next project is a Hydro-electric power plant. I've got the design idea down, but it's the technical info that's driving me crazy.

 I want to be realistically fair with the Cost and Power output of this thing, and I've been searching through Google for 2 hours now trying to get a good estimate on how much power Hydro-plants produce compared to the other plants in SimCity. For whatever reason it's very hard to find a straight answer, and unfortunately every source I read seems to give a different estimate than the last. Also, when I actually found a what I thought to be a good answer, about 1300 MWh / day as compared to a nuclear plant supposedly producing 1700 MWh / day, that didn't really match with SimCity's statistic..It seems most sites like to give worldwide statistics, rather than for the average plant.  Also, proper plop costs and monthly maintenance costs are proving a tough search and comparison, so basically I'm wondering what power output and costs you all think would do real life hydro plants justice.

Lastly, I apologize if there was a better forum heading to put this post in.

[bigthing 35]

hi, you may just want to copy one plant. Or make your own average, just add up all the estimates you have and divide by the amount of estimates you have (mean)

[Ephemeron 17]

The most important thing to get right is the ratio of (monthly) cost to power. This is something a lot of people seem to get wrong. Most people make power plants too cheap (not sure if this is intentional or not). I wouldn't care too much for the values of real world power plants, as Simcity is different to these. I suggest that you use the ingame values for reference. The ingame solar and hydrogen and nuclear power plants should have a monthly cost of $0.20 per unit of power. The wind plants are slightly higher at $0.25, but they have the added bonus of being able to build at the beginning of the game. Gas, oil and coal power plants are cheaper at $0.13, $0.09 and $0.04 respectively, but this is in exchange for the pollution they produce.

[Nuck97 0]

In my home province (British Columbia, Canada), the electrical grid is almost exclusively hydroelectric. Electricity for the entire province comes from 4 major hydroelectric dams (2 on the Columbia River, and 2 on the Peace River) and a series of much smaller run-of-the-river projects. Depending on demand and electricity rates, we can also import or export power with Alberta and the state of Washington.

BC Hydro has had the lowest electricity rates in all of North America for as long as I've been alive. I imagine the cost of building a large dam would be enormous, but it also produces a LOT of juice. Thing is, the operating costs of a dam that's already installed and functioning can't be too much, IMO. They only need a team of people to monitor and maintain systems at the dam and along the powerlines to their destination(s). There is no fuel cost since it's gravity-driven water.

I'm not sure how many MWh come out of these plants, but here are the voltage capacities of all the powerlines that come from each major dam (all lines are single-circuit, not double-circuit):

-Peace River/Williston Lake Dam: two 500 kV lines, one 230 kV line, four 138 kV lines

-Peace River North Dam: one 500 kV line

-Columbia River Mica Dam: two 500 kV lines, one 69 kV line

-Columbia River Revelstoke Dam: two 500 kV lines, one 230 kV line

If it were me designing this BAT, I would make the power output of a large dam to be just shy of that of a nuclear plant (say 15000 MWh/month). The cost of power should be relatively cheap (say 200-300 smackers per month running at optimum efficiency in SC4 terms). The one thing that I would do is to have a large cost of building it. Let's say 85 thousand simoleons. Electricity rates in BC have nearly doubled over the past 5 years; one of the reasons being that our hydroelectric plants are all nearing capacity and there are plans for a third major dam on the Peace River, so the province is attempting to collect funds to offset the cost.

I hope you found this info useful, The Good King, and I look forward to seeing or hearing about your progress!

[thepokemaniac 18]

Good luck to you and I can't wait to see them on the STEX!

[Darth Apple 54]

Sounds like a great idea to me!(We kinda needed some new plants, LOL.) Good luck )

-blakesterville.

[SC4BOY 21]

There is a hydro power plant over on simpeg.com ...looks like a dam surprisingly ... You might look at it as an example . I find that Peg does a good job of building a "credible" model.. If it is like a real one, it should have very cheap power (relatively) and very expensive construction cost.. It should last longer (wear out slower) and I would think expensive to destroy..

[The Good King 3]

Originally posted by: Ephemeron

The most important thing to get right is the ratio of (monthly) cost to power. This is something a lot of people seem to get wrong. Most people make power plants too cheap (not sure if this is intentional or not). I wouldn't care too much for the values of real world power plants, as Simcity is different to these. I suggest that you use the ingame values for reference. The ingame solar and hydrogen and nuclear power plants should have a monthly cost of $0.20 per unit of power. The wind plants are slightly higher at $0.25, but they have the added bonus of being able to build at the beginning of the game. Gas, oil and coal power plants are cheaper at $0.13, $0.09 and $0.04 respectively, but this is in exchange for the pollution they produce.quote>

From what I read online, those figures are actually pretty true to the real life estimates, being $/MWh. As for the initial cost I'm thinking pretty high due to the fact that hydro-plants need dams to be built. Most likely, I'll just call it 13,000 MWh / mo.

Originally posted by: Nuck97

Thing is, the operating costs of a dam that's already installed and functioning can't be too much, IMO.quote>

I'd probably assume the same. I found a good articale that said the maintenance costs are about 1/3 of nuclear, oil, and coal plants, so I'll find some value with that in mind. My thoughts are to set a high initial cost to offset a low maintenance cost, or perhaps just leave the "disadvantage" to being the fact that you have to have a river or tributary blocked to make one.

[The Good King 3]

Update* Been a while since I've worked on anything SC4. Unfortunately right around the time I got to working on this and a bank land mark, I started freshman year of college. It's been, well, a bit busy and this semester is proving especially rough. In all, I almost completely forgot about this, but I remembered and so I'm starting back on it.

I did come across a major problem when designing this dam that I think can be circumvented since it's largely just a problem with the rules of the BAT. (most specifically, the lot editor.)

To create the dam I'm basically just going to call the very top of the thing, mostly consisting of a stone walkway and circuit breaker on one end, the 'ground level' and the actual dam will be below ground. However, the Lot Editor requires that all spaces have a lot tile (road, grass, brick etc.) in order to save the lot. Of course, this didn't make any sense to me. If you have to have some grass or road there, how does the marina work? (the marina is has a coastal piece, but is otherwise on the water.) So, I opened the marina lot, and saw that as I suspected it had no lot tiles in the middle. I pressed save, and sure enough the program told me it couldn't save without the lot tiles.

So, I'm wondering: does anybody have a way around this silliness?

EDIT (March 8, 2010): Seeing as it's been months without a single reply, it may within my best interest to just make a new topic designating my question specifically. My guess is a lot of people only look at the intro post, consider the ? answered, and leave without seeing WHY this post was moved.