Rolling Blackouts

[Darkstar30 8]

I seem to have a problem with rolling blackouts.  I have plenty of power but I get the blackouts all over here an there.  They move to.  When I connect them with power lines those will be powered but power is lost somewhere else.  It acts like there is not enough power, but the capacity is much higher then what is used.  I am not sure what the problems is?  I tried to google it, but the only one that came out that had a similar problem, no one had an answer for it. 

[Compdude787 916]

Getting rolling blackouts is a clear indication that your city does not have enough power. Check the Power graph and see if the power usage exceeds capacity. If so, build more power plants or buy more power from a neighboring city.

I understand if you might have checked this already, and I'm sorry if I'm stating the obvious but I really can't think of anything else that would be causing this problem.

  Edited April 19, 2016 by Compdude787  
adding 2nd paragraph

[Darkstar30 8]

Ok, So I am not sure what it was but I was playing and had a crash to desktop.  It ended up just fixing itself.  Im not sure what it was but maybe reset itself.

[rsc204 21,866]

If you experience blackouts, but the graphs show you have sufficient power to cover the cities demands there are really only two causes.

One is that you've exported too much of your electric to another city. Although the game is pretty good about providing a warning from the advisors.

The other, only occurs when your entire electric grid is not connected together. Say you've a couple wind farms to cover an area far away from the main power source. If this isn't connected to the main grid, the power it generates can only be used locally. It's possible for such sources to have an excess of power, whilst another power source is not sufficient for it's needs.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

And do check to see that your power plants are not ageing out.  Their capacity diminishes over time.

[Darkstar30 8]

Ok thanks for all the tips.   Y'all are the best.  Y'all keep finding my post and helping out.  Is NAM interlinked with sc4 or is it seprate of that?

[HayleyRenaNemeth 465]

8 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

And do check to see that your power plants are not ageing out.  Their capacity diminishes over time.

your advisors will tell you about this if your power plants get into the 60 percents capacity range , it will say something about them not being spring chickens. 

[rsc204 21,866]

2 hours ago, Darkstar30 said:

Ok thanks for all the tips.   Y'all are the best.  Y'all keep finding my post and helping out.  Is NAM interlinked with sc4 or is it seprate of that?

Not sure what you mean by interlinked. Aside from requiring each other to work, they are separate things. The NAM just expands upon the number of possible options in game and fixes some problems Maxis left behind.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

17 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The other, only occurs when your entire electric grid is not connected together.

Yep. I've had this in a different arrangement. The graph shows total power generated by the city. The usage can be half that and still have the blackouts. Mine happened to be after some layout revisions where I failed to notice I'd left one too many spaces between things. From farther out zooms it wasn't apparent to me and the problem occurred a few decades after I'd been in that area. Finally after like the 3rd power plant I built, I had the: Oh, duh moment and turned on the power overlay. Then I spotted the problem. (Complaints at my mayor's office were staggering in number and the political cartoons in the papers were awful. Just awful.)

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

15 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Yep. I've had this in a different arrangement. The graph shows total power generated by the city. The usage can be half that and still have the blackouts. Mine happened to be after some layout revisions where I failed to notice I'd left one too many spaces between things. From farther out zooms it wasn't apparent to me and the problem occurred a few decades after I'd been in that area. Finally after like the 3rd power plant I built, I had the: Oh, duh moment and turned on the power overlay. Then I spotted the problem. (Complaints at my mayor's office were staggering in number and the political cartoons in the papers were awful. Just awful.)

Look forward to seeing this in your upcoming CJ.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

4 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

Look forward to seeing this in your upcoming CJ.

:lmao: No, no. Your own mental image will be far superior to what I could create.

And, that was during my training sessions for the game. I've already started over about 6 times because of what I've learned. My CJ will start with me doing things better than those ol' days.

[Darkstar30 8]

Y'all are talken about older mods, how can I know that I am getting a mod that isn't outdated and will work properly in NAM 34?

[APSMS 1,893]

Um, what? NAM isn't a game, so maybe asking what would work well with the NAM is a better question, but really any mod, as long as it's not transit related is safe, and a lot of the transit mods out there were actually designed with the NAM in mind. 

FWIW, I use a mod that extends power over the entire tile. That way any connection issues are moot, and power lines can be purely cosmetic.

[rsc204 21,866]

6 hours ago, Darkstar30 said:

Y'all are talken about older mods, how can I know that I am getting a mod that isn't outdated and will work properly in NAM 34?

You really only need to worry about if the mod in question would affect the NAM. Either how it was displayed or changing how it functions. So regular buildings and lots are not in any way going to be a problem.

One of the issues, when a mod is not updated, it may not be obvious that it's incompatible with the NAM, such as the T21 mod you showed before. But when you think about it, if the modder who made it is not active, i.e. didn't update the mod, likely they aren't around to update the file description either. In these cases, take a look at the user comments of a download, typically you will find any common problems listed by others who've experienced them.

One worthy point of caution though, many will incorrectly assume mods don't work, because they are not loading them correctly. Any mod that covers the NAM must load after it, that means a folder with a prefix of z____ (that's 4 underscores), at the beginning of it's name. Ignore any instructions or defaults that state otherwise, if you don't want the full explanation, simply trust that z____ will work. The only generalisation here is that RHW mods made before NAM 31 no longer work, mostly everything else should work just fine. If you find a download and aren't sure, feel free to ask in the forums.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

4 hours ago, rsc204 said:

.. a folder with a prefix of z____ (that's 4 underscores), at the beginning of it's name.

Since I haven't begun adding in NAM and other mods yet, would a naming scheme like 0001-<name>, 0200-<name>, 9000-NAM, 9100<name to load after NAM>, etc. work?

[rsc204 21,866]

Yes it should, but you'd have to re-name the NAM folders and everything else too.

The requirement to use the z____ is because the NAM contains two folders. Network Addon Mod, the base mod, and z___NAM which contains overrides for the former. It's the use of the underscore that's important, SC4 will generally load that character after every other. So z___NAM was used to try and stop users complaining the NAM wasn't working, when in fact other mods were interfering with it.

Sadly this sort of backfired, as some have put it "It's caused a load order arms-race", which isn't really helpful. The problem is, most users don't want to understand the whole load order thing, so solutions like this are necessary to avoid an unreasonable number of support requests. See "Where's my water?".

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Since around 2006 I've had a power lot that can power an entire large tile.  It does use a lot of water, so I also added a large water supply lot.  You can find them both in my name on the STEX.  It is an MHD power plant and it isn't cheap.

Neither of these have ever caused a problem with any other mods or the game except to ease the burden of the micromanagement of power and water, which I felt I could do without.  Both the cheats 'how dry I am' and 'fight the power' do nasty things to the game and so are strictly developer debugging aids.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

14 hours ago, rsc204 said:

... most users don't want to understand the whole load order thing ...

I can certainly believe that from my experience doing techy game things on a different forum.

Rest assured I'll be in the other group. I have zero atm and I'll know thoroughly what I'm doing as I begin adding them in. I copied your quote to my linkys section in my CoriNotes section of my CJ so I can find it when I'm ready.

At 638 right now, there's minimal chance for conflict.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You might as well install the patch to 640.  It will save you some grief when you start installing mods if you ever run night mode.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

7 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

You might as well install the patch to 640.  It will save you some grief when you start installing mods if you ever run night mode.

Yes, ofc. I'm simply waiting for rsc's guide we discussed a while back. I'll be the secondary tester for that. Since I'm exploring so many other things before I get started, the delay is no big deal.