Power Supply Problems

[tails2489 350]

Something seems to be blocking power from getting to the southern coast of this small island. My city has plenty of power available and I have even connected the island to the mainland via power lines. If I add another wind station to a couple of blocks to the north it is only working at 28% capacity, but the two I have presently on the island are both working at 100% and rolling brown outs are occurring. WHAT. IS. HAPPENING??

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

@tails2489

I've moved your post into a new topic here in SC4 General Discussion. No worries with posting where you did in Showcase, but I feel with this being a gameplay issue you're looking for suggestions, it'll hopefully be in a more visible place now for people to share input.

Now that I'm here, I feel obligated to reply at least with something about your question. So here goes...

It is quite strange how just the southern part of the island is having power outages. One thing I can suggest is to check the Power Data View and see how the grid gets connected. I suspect somewhere there must be a gap preventing the supply flowing from the mainland pylons. Therefore it's just the 2 wind turbines at maximum capacity, causing the zots to appear due to the shortage. In this way it seems you've got an isolated network, explaining why the total capacity from the graph is more than adequate at 1,000 units surplus, and you only get 28% at the north. Since the graphs for utilities (power, water, and garbage) are only useful to know the totals for a given tile as a whole.

I notice there's an unzoned diagonal section of land directly beside the wind turbines, and I wonder if that might have something to do with the supply getting cut short. But then again I'd have thought it'd still make its way through the dirt field being zoned agriculture. As an additional observation, I see your RCI demand is sky high already at year 4 which is unusual. I suspect you may have a demand mod in play there, although surely that wouldn't cause this issue with the power.

Possibly this is due to the zoning layout, especially along the south west diagonal side. So I recommand taking a look at the Power view, and maybe post a pic of that should there be nothing obvious untoward, and we can take it from there. Of course, someone else might come along soon with other ideas, or even the answer.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

11 hours ago, tails2489 said:

If I add another wind station to a couple of blocks to the north it is only working at 28% capacity, but the two I have presently on the island are both working at 100% and rolling brown outs are occurring.

To be sure I understand the problem are you saying if you add a new wind station here:

^ It will show 28% Capacity Used.

And the game still shows these two at 100% usage?

 

This does seem especially odd because the power should be transferring via the bridge as well as those power lines connecting the mainland to the island. As CB mentioned, the Power Data View would be a good place to look and zoom in on the map looking for any gaps in the green overlay.

Also, does this city tile sell any power to any neighboring tiles?

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I second the request that you look at the power map. (The graph can't account for disjoint power grids). As far as I can tell, this city-sector imports power in some corner that isn't connected to any of its load.

Also, where does the North get its power? We see the bridging, but for all we know, the wind farm in the south is shipping power to the north. Your problem is probably not in any of your pictures. Instead, the disconnect is probably at your implied but unseen power source.

BTW, You shouldn't even need the power lines across the water; the road bridge should conduct electricity.

 

[tails2489 350]

Thank you for taking an interest in my issue, glad to see the A-team is on the case! @CorinaMarie nice drawing, but no I mean much closer, like 1 block to the north and it's 28%. There definitely does seem to be some invisible barrier preventing power from reaching past a certain point. So I now have 4 windmills on the island, the original 2 from my first post are still operating at 100% capacity, and 2 new ones (1 block away and another 1 block further to the north) which are operaing at 28% so they seem to be connected with the rest of the city grid just fine. Rolling brownouts continue in the southern corner.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

The power coverage shows that there's no barrier around the outage, so your error is elsewhere. Since I still can't see any source of power other than the wind farm near the outage, my working hypothesis is still that those southern turbines are the only power connected to your load. Your power graph is informative in one way: It shows that the city has exactly 1000 power to spare, which suggests that a source of 1000 power is out there somewhere, but it is not connected. Look there to see the cause of your problem.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

6 hours ago, tails2489 said:

So I now have 4 windmills on the island, the original 2 from my first post are still operating at 100% capacity, and 2 new ones (1 block away and another 1 block further to the north) which are operaing at 28% so they seem to be connected with the rest of the city grid just fine. Rolling brownouts continue in the southern corner.

The part that is the most perplexing is those showing 28% while obviously being part of the same connected grid of zones.

If you'd like to send me your city I can take a gander at it and see if I can figure anything out. You can use the free option at WeTransfer.Com if you like.

[tails2489 350]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The part that is the most perplexing is those showing 28% while obviously being part of the same connected grid of zones.

If you'd like to send me your city I can take a gander at it and see if I can figure anything out. You can use the free option at WeTransfer.Com if you like.

Thanks, yeah let's do that. It'll probably end up being something really obvious once another set of eyes gets a good look.

[tails2489 350]

9 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

The power coverage shows that there's no barrier around the outage, so your error is elsewhere. Since I still can't see any source of power other than the wind farm near the outage, my working hypothesis is still that those southern turbines are the only power connected to your load. Your power graph is informative in one way: It shows that the city has exactly 1000 power to spare, which suggests that a source of 1000 power is out there somewhere, but it is not connected. Look there to see the cause of your problem.

Hey, yes I have another cluster of Windmills on the mainland that are fully connected to all zoned areas. I've zoned the entire perimeter of the city with agricultural zones and there are no gaps.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

6 hours ago, tails2489 said:

Thanks, yeah let's do that. It'll probably end up being something really obvious once another set of eyes gets a good look.

Sounds good. Let me know when you have a linky to it so I can download it.

[tails2489 350]

On 2019-03-13 at 5:25 PM, CorinaMarie said:

The part that is the most perplexing is those showing 28% while obviously being part of the same connected grid of zones.

If you'd like to send me your city I can take a gander at it and see if I can figure anything out. You can use the free option at WeTransfer.Com if you like.

@CorinaMarie is this right? https://we.tl/t-yNzM0vlgGx ?? Thank you!

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

7 hours ago, tails2489 said:

@CorinaMarie is this right? https://we.tl/t-yNzM0vlgGx ?? Thank you!

Yep. Tis perfect. I've downloaded your city, created a new random region for it, and imported it into a large tile:

 

As you've already done, the first thing I peeked at was the power overlay:

^ The north two wind mills do indeed show 28% usage and the other two are at 100%. There are no power gaps anywhere in your city so this is extremely odd. If I add more wind mills along the east/west road with the closest 28% one the 100% wind mills do not change.

 

However, if I place some new wind mills across the street from the 100% ones then it does affect them:

^ So something is really weird here.

On a probably unrelated note, I'm missing one plugin:

 

Which I suspect is a growable residential:

 

I peeked at your city tile in Reader and there is one which might be the plugin I don't have:

^ Tho this one is in the Transportation category so I'm not sure this is related.
 

And then even with your city totally isolated in a new region the demand graph is maxed out:

 

So, I'm still completely confuzzled because the residential plugin I'm missing and whatever is creating the extra demand doesn't seem like they should be the cause of the power boundary problem. I even tried dezoning all around those two 100% ones so they were isolated and they did then drop to 0%. Next I zoned and grew a factory and a couple of houses across the street from them and they went to 3% usage which seems normal. The odd part is when I then zoned more industrial such that the two power grids reconnected and those two immediately shot back to 100% usage.

At this point I can conclude you are not imagining things as the problem is really there and I have no idea what could be causing it. If you could let me know what extra plugins (besides NAM) you are using I might be able to peek inside them and see if anything stands out as odd.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

Trying it another way. I dezoned such that the southern part was isolated from the rest of the island and the power usage goes to normal looking for both parts:

 

But the moment I zone anything which reconnects the power grids the southern ones jump back to 100% and the rolling brown outs start again.

[tails2489 350]

@CorinaMarie thank you for taking a closer look, I am glad it's not some rookie mistake going on. I have a lot of plugins on top of plugins, many of which may be redundant or conflict with one another, there's really no organization to my plugins folder. Not sure how to share the list of what I have added from simtropolis and sc4d and other sites. If you were still curious and could tell me how to share I would be happy to get you that info. I'm also perfectly fine at this point with severing that little part of the city to run on it's own grid so I can get to work on the rest of the city. Thank you @Cyclone Boom for moving this to it's own thread so it got noticed by the right people.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

57 minutes ago, tails2489 said:

If you were still curious and could tell me how to share I would be happy to get you that info.

It could be a long drawn out process to figure out which it is from viewing the plugins folder itself. You could try the Query tool on those residentials with the concrete looking front yards and see what names they have. From there we might be able to Google them and find out what they are.

Zoomed out and circled so they'll be easier for you to find:

 

59 minutes ago, tails2489 said:

I'm also perfectly fine at this point with severing that little part of the city to run on it's own grid so I can get to work on the rest of the city.

Going this route I did find that placing just two new wind mills across the street to the west of the two 100% ones does reduce usage to 73% without dezoning anything so that would give you a more cohesive appearance while also avoiding the odd power problem.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

I. Found. The. Culprit.

 

I don't know why it's the problem, but bulldoze that one wind mill and everything goes back to normal with the power grid. (You can do that from the saved copy of your city tile you sent to me.)

And there'll be no need to try to figure out which plugins I don't have as they are not the cause of this.

[tails2489 350]

22 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I. Found. The. Culprit.

 

I don't know why it's the problem, but bulldoze that one wind mill and everything goes back to normal with the power grid. (You can do that from the saved copy of your city tile you sent to me.)

And there'll be no need to try to figure out which plugins I don't have as they are not the cause of this.

Wow that is a weird one. I'll give it a shot a little later on and hopefully that does the trick. Thanks again!

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Super detective work @CorinaMarie in figuring that out. I'm pleased to say it solves the problem for me too.

Personally I've not experienced this glitch before, and it sure is a strange occurrence. Testing and I can confirm the issue with the power grid, and how those two wind mills report being at 100% capacity there. I tried re-plopping them both which still resulted in the max usage being totalled straight away.

Being curious about this, I decided to see what happens when disconnecting the entire island from the power grid on the mainland. Since the bridge carries a power supply (via cables), I removed this and the power pylons too over the water. This led to all the wind mills on the island having a shared 18% usage.

As follows:

(I fixed up a few diagonal streets because I had them missing, and I suspect since my NAM config is different.)

No rolling brown outs occurred at this point.

However, re-connecting the power supply from the mainland via the bridge or pylons and the issue resurfaced. Both returned to 100% capacity again.

As they were:

 

Then back to the solution...

Bulldozing the wind mill Cori identified as the culprit on the mainland's south side fixed the problem straight away. Upon doing this, I observed both the previously 100% capacity readings were instantly reduced to 27% with the connection still there to the island. I also tried rebuilding the wind mill there and it was still solved. Saving the tile, closing the game and loading again had it stay that way too (leaving the old wind mill spot empty or keeping the new replacement one).

Here it is at later 28% after running for a year or so (pictured looking westwards):

 

I suspect the additional 1% is due to a combination of age degradation and also how a few properties were redeveloping. That 28% though is consistent how the north wind mill was. Of course, the no job zots could be prevented by zoning more industrial or commercial, even on the mainland so they can commute over the bridge.

Speaking of age degradation, there's this mod which increases that to prevent utility structures including power plants from wearing out over time. The "radical" version there extends the lifespan to 4,902 years. For custom lots, Cori explained in this post how to make this unlimited through a bit of exemplar editing using Reader. It is important to rebuild them after editing though, as otherwise they continue to degrade at their original rate (based on the curve threshold).

Back to the issue with the rogue wind mill...

I'm still unsure what potentially triggered this behaviour. Since you've reported having a number of content items installed, I suspect it could be due to certain plugins you have, or have had previously. Maybe some mods or plopped lots were bugged with improperly modded properties, and their residual effects got saved in the tile. I did notice how the wind mill was located amid a polluted farming area. But even if they get shut down due to excessive pollution (which I believe only impacts water structures), that doesn't explain how bulldozing allows the power grid to be distributed correctly as it should. Also rebuilding there and it returns to normal as well.

So I guess we can only speculate on why this is happening. Whatever it is causes the network to be disrupted, and when connected to the island it results in power outages due to a shortage in supply. But thanks to what Cori discovered with finding the source, hopefully it no longer does for you also.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

1 hour ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Being curious about this, I decided to see what happens when disconnecting the entire island from the power grid on the mainland.

Great minds think alike. That was my first step too when trying to narrow down where the problem was. As you found that then made the wind mills on the island behave properly.

So next I just started dezoning a 4 tile wide patch to isolate more and more until I found the culprit:

^ Then since the island was ok with this cut I tossed in a couple power pylons to reconnected the zones together and divided the rest by about half.

 

And finally I arrived at this:

 

So that had it narrowed down to a small section and by chance I bulldozed that bad wind mill, reconnected to the rest of the power grid, and lo and behold the ones on the island were working properly.

 

As a side note @tails2489 you might want to consider using my NKO mod.

With the high demand you have you are getting more medium wealth homes and then they can't find work because it's mostly farm land. This way when new homes grow as low wealth they will stay low wealth. You could selectively bulldoze the medium wealth ones after installing my mod and hope they grow as low wealth. Tho it's not guaranteed they will sprout as low wealth since demand for medium wealth (and everything else) is also sky high.

[tails2489 350]

Thanks again for solving this mystery! I was able to get the same results as you, removing that windmill solved the power supply problem.

[tails2489 350]

Now my game is freezing every time start to further develop this city tile and hit the Save button. Starting to think this city will never come to fruition.

One curious thing I noticed too.. Once the problematic windmill was removed my "Environment" bar went from red to green. Funny little bug.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

6 hours ago, tails2489 said:

Now my game is freezing every time start to further develop this city tile and hit the Save button. Starting to think this city will never come to fruition.

As in freeze and no recovery or just takes a bit longer than expected? I didn't ever save it myself as I wanted to be able to come back to the original you sent for each subsequent test. Ofc, I have the original download in a separate folder so I'll give it a try adding on and playing it a bit and see what happens for me when saving.

 

6 hours ago, tails2489 said:

One curious thing I noticed too.. Once the problematic windmill was removed my "Environment" bar went from red to green. Funny little bug.

Now that is interesting.

Out of habit I always toggle to the money pane before doing anything so I didn't notice. As goofy as this bug is/was I really wonder what combination of things caused it to happen. It may be that it's still got a gremlin in its belly and will continue to wreck havoc from now to eternity. Before I gave up on that city tile completely, I'l prolly try the Obliterate City option. Note: That does wipe out everything you've built, but will preserve the landscaping you've done.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

10 hours ago, tails2489 said:

Now my game is freezing every time start to further develop this city tile and hit the Save button.

Perhaps as a test it's worth trying with an empty Plugins folder except the NAM. I wonder if there's an item or a combination of content you've got installed which is causing unpredictability, and possibly can be attributed to the game freezing. It is odd should the freezing have just started after bulldozing the troublesome wind mill though.

An easy way to do this is by renaming your Plugins to something else, then creating a new one and copying in the NAM or selected items.

Should the issue go away with an empty Plugins folder, then it could be worth trying the binary search method to narrow down the item(s) responsible. A backup of everything is probably a good idea though before attempting this.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

@tails2489

I've played in your city for several hours with minimal plugins and have saved numerous times without any issues. (I didn't worry about any aesthetics, but just zoned and grew things.) Here's how it looks:

 

As CB mentioned, if the game is totally locking up (freezing) when you go to save it's likely to be plugin related.

[tails2489 350]

@CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom it seems to be working now, thanks! I think it may have just been my computer freezing due to overheating or too many programs running or who knows. It's not an ideal gaming laptop but it's all I've got. I think I tried to continue on with the city 3 times and just couldn't save anything. It's working now after doing very small additions and saving frequently, seems to be running like normal again. It was probably more hardware related than anything.

 

On 2019-03-17 at 9:07 PM, CorinaMarie said:

@tails2489

I've played in your city for several hours with minimal plugins and have saved numerous times without any issues. (I didn't worry about any aesthetics, but just zoned and grew things.) Here's how it looks:

 

As CB mentioned, if the game is totally locking up (freezing) when you go to save it's likely to be plugin related.

Hey that's lookin good!

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

@tails2489

I've become much more curious about that Demand Creator Lot in your city:

 

Do you happen to recall where you downloaded it or what it's called? (The query name is exactly what you get if extracting the plain green Open Grass Area so that's no particular help when I Googled for it.)

[tails2489 350]

19 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

@tails2489

I've become much more curious about that Demand Creator Lot in your city:

 

Do you happen to recall where you downloaded it or what it's called? (The query name is exactly what you get if extracting the plain green Open Grass Area so that's no particular help when I Googled for it.)

 

[tails2489 350]

@CorinaMarie have you built it up to 83,000 sims?? Holy you are good. I've hardly had any playing time this week.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

1 minute ago, tails2489 said:

@CorinaMarie have you built it up to 83,000 sims?? Holy you are good. I've hardly had any playing time this week.

Yes. Yes, I have.

I would've posted another pic of it, but I didn't want to be too distracting.

[CorinaMarie 29,868]

11 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I didn't want to be too distracting.

Ofc, if you want to see what I've done to your city, I'd be happy to show you. (Tis up to 99,095 now.)