Brownouts due to HAVING a power plant

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

It's kind a of a bug and kind of isn't...

One of my cities receives almost entire power from a neighbor deal. However, in order to provide a solution for garbage, I have also built a W2E incinerator. The W2E incinerator produces only about 400 units and runs at "half-speed".

Here's the problem - whenever the incinerator runs out of capacity due to limited funding, I am having brownouts, even though the rest of the power is being provided by the neighbor deal. The city gets a surplus of about 800 mwh but suffers brownouts regardless, as soon as incinerator reaches a cap.

Any suggestions how I could work around this? It's as if the game was just reading the capacity of the W2E, ignoring the neighbor deal source altogether.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

Unless I'm missing something, I get the impression you are juggling the funding to maintain an overall profit in your city. Could you simply cancel the neighbor power import and use that money to increase funding to the W2E?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

6 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Unless I'm missing something, I get the impression you are juggling the funding to maintain an overall profit in your city. Could you simply cancel the neighbor power import and use that money to increase funding to the W2E?

No, no. Funding is not a problem this time.

I use the "innovative" solution of sending entire power from a powerhouse city tile, distributing it away, along the grid. Also, thanks to your help with the neighbor deals mod.  Besides, W2E would not suffice to power that city.

I have other towns connected to that grid. They don't have any power plants and are entirely dependent on the deal. They also don't display symptoms of any brownouts despite having the same, low amount of surplus. Like I'm saying, it's as if the game focuses the attention on the state of affairs at the W2E plant, disregarding the fact that the city has, in fact, excess power.

I would have completely removed the W2E if it wasn't for the garbage. And I don't want to dump them in the landfill in this particular case.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

2 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I would have completely removed the W2E if it wasn't for the garbage.

How about Plan B?

^ Let that handle the garbage and it won't mess with the power supply.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

29 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

How about Plan B?

 

Excellent! I always missed the SC3000 incinerator. You're the best! 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

@CorinaMarie, you still there?

It looks like, after all, I have discovered a very strange bug!  

Whenever I place either the W2E or a regular burner in my city, I continue to suffer from brownouts.

They start to appear the very moment I connect either of the two plants to the power grid. When I sever the electrical connection again, the city goes back to normal and suffers no brownouts.

Some really strange stuff going on here... Just in time for Halloween.

Could it be that your modification for easier neighbor deals causes some sort of interference between the power system and certain utility buildings? Again, this city receives all the juice from a neighbor deal, so perhaps the game reads some of the data incorrectly?

The only workaround for this issue that I managed to find so far is to provide a separate power source to a garbage facility, separate from the rest of the city. In this particular case, the brownouts don't appear. It's as if the garbage disposal plant "infects" other buildings with power shortages, once it is connected.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

2 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

@CorinaMarie, you still there?

No. Cori has left the building.

 

3 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Could it be that your modification for easier neighbor deals causes some sort of interference between the power system and certain utility buildings?

We certainly cannot rule that out.

Since you are familiar with running deals, perhaps a vanilla test in a sandbox region without using my mod would be the best way forward. If that does not glitch the same way then it would add support to your speculation. As it is tho, the data in the mod doesn't seem like it could be related as it simply changes the thresholds and stabilizes the garbage costs and income.

Let me know how the vanilla test goes. If my mod is borked, I can simply remove it so no one else has to suffer thru what you've found.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

22 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Let me know how the vanilla test goes. If my mod is borked, I can simply remove it so no one else has to suffer thru what you've found.

Sadly, I can't seem to confirm, beyond reasonable doubt, that there is a correlation between your mod and the lowered threshold for brownouts. Sadly for me, luckily for anyone else.

The affected city has about 300 mWh of surplus power. Perhaps it is too low after all...? I don't know... Believe it or not, but I have never run into brownouts before...

[twalsh102 1,601]

Simple solution #1: you already stated that disconnecting the WtoE plant or Incinerator from the grid fixes the problem. So disconnect it from the grid. You don't need the power for your city, and the PP powers itself and its garbage disposal capability.

Simple solution #2: Plop the Incinerator. Plop a Wind Turbine next to it to power the Incinerator. Keep it disconnected from the grid.

What are you doing about Garbage disposal in your other cities, if you don't want to use Landfills? If you are using WtoE plants in these other cities for garbage disposal without the same problems, that would seem to indicate that there is something else going on in this one city.

Simple solution #3:  Since you already have a central power city, why not use it as a central garbage disposal city, and set up neighbor deals with neighboring cities to import their garbage, and using whatever garbage disposal facilities you want to use to handle the necessary capacity. Besides WtoE solutions and the Incinerator, there are several other solutions that function as Landfills that cause garbage to essentially disappear (without the obvious eyesore of a landfill) by using the premise that garbage is being "exported" elsewhere through the use of rail cars or long-haul cargo trucks ( @nbvc has set her on the STEX, and @whatevermind has a set over at SC4D). Then there are the "fantasy" or "semi-fantasy" solutions of the "Hyperspace Garbage Disposal", SM2's "The Pit", and Pegasus' "Garbage Chute."

While none of these solutions will solve whatever underlying issues may be causing your problems, they should solve your brownout issues.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

11 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

Simple solution #2: Plop the Incinerator. Plop a Wind Turbine next to it to power the Incinerator. Keep it disconnected from the grid.

Yep. This is one of the workarounds that I thought about.  This actually gives me an idea - a power generator lot!

Essentially, that would be a small, independent power source on a 1x1 lot. It could generate a small amount of electricity (30-75?) and be used in situations like this one or other special instances like rough terrain. A small amount of pollution (if it's a gasoline-powered generator) and off we go!

Or do we already have something like this...? 

11 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

What are you doing about Garbage disposal in your other cities, if you don't want to use Landfills?

Other cities use landfills, export garbage, use PEG'S chutes or Cori's cheat.  This is the first time I built W2E ever, so I don't have any comparison thus far.

11 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

Simple solution #3:  Since you already have a central power city, why not use it as a central garbage disposal city, and set up neighbor deals with neighboring cities to import their garbage, and using whatever garbage disposal facilities you want to use to handle the necessary capacity.

Sounds like a decent solution, though most of the cities along the way are arranged linearly in this region and don't neighbor my "powerhouse".

In other words, I would need to build some holding centers to do it that way, but I don't really want to.

11 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

Then there are the "fantasy" or "semi-fantasy" solutions of the "Hyperspace Garbage Disposal", SM2's "The Pit", and Pegasus' "Garbage Chute."

Yes, I know these. Thanks for the reminder! 

[twalsh102 1,601]

5 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Or do we already have something like this...?

Off the top of my head: There are several generator-based power supplies from SM2, SFBT, and Pegasus. There are numerous sets of Solar Cell power plants from SM2, SFBT, Pegasus, Paeng, and probably others. There are obviously numerous versions of Wind Turbines available. Almost all of these that I've looked at are rated at 200 or more units of power generated. The SFBT SolarModule by Andreas over at SC4D is rated at 75 units, and the Small Solar Panel in the Maxlion set by @paeng is rated at 50 units. Nothing else that I've come across is rated at anything less than 100 units. If you want to take something that looks like a generator, maybe take the generator lot (a NG powered generator rated at 200 units)from the SFBT Rural Power Supply set by @Andreas Roth (available here or at SC4D) and de-rate it, if the amount of power generated is important. Or if the source of power doesn't need to be conspicuous, this same set includes a power generating tree, generating the same amount of power.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

It could generate a small amount of electricity (30-75?) and be used in situations like this one or other special instances like rough terrain.

I've always liked the looks of @deadwoods's Aussie Windmill - Power on a 1 x 1 lot for areas unconnected to the main power grid. It is set with 200 mwh just like the Maxis Wind Turbine, but you could edit the Power Generated (property 0x27812852) in Reader to be whatever you like. (Value is currently 0xC8 which is 200 in decimal.)

Then there's a 1 x 1 substation which produces 500 mwh in @dk1's Power Plant pack. It could also be adjusted to whatever output you prefer.