Waste-to-energy plants and their capacities

[Tommy Vercetti 11]

Hello all. Yesterday I've posted a question in Reddit here. I am trying to figure out what's the total amount of garbage one WTE plant can burn per month. It may seem to be a question that is easy to answer. Here and here points to the same amount - 50,000 tons. But it is simply not true.

In my city I saw the threshold of 850 tons. It couldn't take any more garbage from the neighbours. So I wanted to isolate the test and createad a test city that has no neighbour connections. The value was 850 tones again. Even when my city grew in size (100,000 residents) and the garbage was accummulating - the capacity to burn the garbage remained 850.

So I thought "ok, maybe this is CAM that has nerfed something again." So I've installed a fresh SC4 on my Mac; installed the NAM; and run the same test. This time it was 500 tons. It means that CAM actually bumped the capacity!

I've noticed that the power capacity (5,000MWh) of the plant in my tests correlates to the garbage burned capacity (500 tons) as 10:1. However in the link I've sent above it seems that the ratio is reversed - 1:10. I am not sure which variant was intended to be there; and which one happened to be a mistake. Intuitively I wouldn't think I would need to have 6 of these WTE plants to accommodate the amount of rubbish I have in my 300,000 people region - seems a bit unrealistic, yet this is exactly what I've encountered. On the other hand, I've installed another WTE plant from here, that also claims to have a 50,000 tons of garbage capacity - and yet, it has exactly the same 500 tons threshold.

Does anyone know what is the intended behaviour for this one? Perhaps I should create a mod that fixes this issue and allows a single WTE to process 50,000 tons per month  
Please let me know your thoughts guys!

[Ulisse Wolf 4,460]

1 hour ago, Tommy Vercetti said:

So I thought "ok, maybe this is CAM that has nerfed something again." So I've installed a fresh SC4 on my Mac; installed the NAM; and run the same test. This time it was 500 tons. It means that CAM actually bumped the capacity!

SIM (formerly CAM Core) has only modified the amount of electricity, so there are no changes related to trash.

In the “Prima Guide,” W2E power plants have a maximum monthly capacity of 500 tons of trash, which means this is in line with the Maxis simulation.

There’s probably some secret setting in the Utility Exemplar that needs to be adjusted, or it’s a bug in the game code, so there isn’t much that can be done about it.

[Tommy Vercetti 11]

I actually created a new dat and set the "Waste to energy monthly Capacity" to 5,000,000 so that I'd get 50,000 tons in game. It worked. And I am happy.

However, I think I made it too OP; I have a city with population of 620,000 residents and the amount of rubbish burned was just below 6,000.

I am thinking to set a value for this plant so that it is enough to support a city of 250,000 residents - feels reasonable. That's 3x more than the current value (850 tons) set in CAM. Maybe later I will create a fancy advanced plant that will have a higher capacity and less polution for a higher cost; but that's for another time.

[Tommy Vercetti 11]

Actually. I've got a better yet idea. I would like to create 2-3 variants of WTE plants. Some for small cities, others, advanced and modern for large cities - each with different values for capacities, energy output, pollution and costs (and maybe of different lot sizes as well). That way I wouldn't need to guess the optimal values - but rather be able to plop the one that fits the city.

 

The only problem - I never created any mods, so I may be looking for an enthusiast, who would be onboard with this idea. I would be happy to pay for this project too! 🙂

[Tommy Vercetti 11]

On 12/07/2026 at 5:50 PM, Ulisse Wolf said:

SIM (formerly CAM Core) has only modified the amount of electricity, so there are no changes related to trash.

SIM has not modified garbage related numbers, I see that. However the CAM_Power_Garbage_Buildings.dat file that sits inside the "2 CAM Building" folder did. 

I am already working on my next power plant - so excited! My first ever modding - after 23 years of playing the game...

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

2 minutes ago, Tommy Vercetti said:

I am already working on my next power plant - so excited!

Woot!  

I remember the joy of my first successful (growable) BAT.  

Kept us posted. I'm following along to see how it goes. Btw, are you using an updated power graph? I remember @cogeo included one with their SC3K Incinerator Replica, but I also (vaguely) recall other peeps might've improved upon it.

[Tommy Vercetti 11]

3 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, are you using an updated power graph?

I'm not using an updated power graph at the moment. I'm still learning how the power plant exemplars work, so I'm currently using existing plants as references. I did notice the "Age to output level response curve" property in Reader, though. Is that the graph you're referring to?

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

3 minutes ago, Tommy Vercetti said:

I'm not using an updated power graph at the moment.

In their SC3000 Style Incinerator file they include a modified version of the GraphMod V2.1. Here's the s/s they show for it:

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

Also, separately, this is a me thing. I set the Age Degradation to zero so the plant itself will never expire.  

[Ulisse Wolf 4,460]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

In their SC3000 Style Incinerator file they include a modified version of the GraphMod V2.1. Here's the s/s they show for it:

The updated chart is included in the SIM

1 hour ago, Tommy Vercetti said:

SIM has not modified garbage related numbers, I see that. However the CAM_Power_Garbage_Buildings.dat file that sits inside the "2 CAM Building" folder did. 

That's SIM (formerly CAM Core)