Power Utility Guidelines

[ionic tangle]

Hi Phil, I was catching up on the new series and heard you ask how transmission lines work work you connected up the geothermal plant and incinerator.

I’m a land planner for a large utility in Washington. Hopefully my experience in a power utility but also the planning world can assist you with this question! I also hope this is educational for anyone else who asks!

Substation. The game calls them transformers and this is wrong. Transformers are a single piece of equipment within the substation, stepping up or down the power. The substation is the whole facility, but this isn’t a critique on you. Large customers often do get their own substation for power. They often pay for it themselves too. Some will also own the substation even. They do this because they are the sole user, and they need specific conditions to be maintained to avoid expensive destruction of their facility. These substation are called taps, where they “tap” into a transmission line that passed through the area. When this occurs, the transmission line detours into the substation then comes back out. The line is still the same line however, we just peel of some of its capacity.

So, you are probably correct to have the substation next to the rail yard. The industrial area would probably have one or two subs in real life and any other major industrial property would as well. The university would also probably get its own dedicated sub give the importance in the community and its use as a potential emergency shelter in worse case scenarios. You would also have a least one sub on either side of the river to feed each parts of the city. For the game, I wouldn’t go to this extent, but, you will need to think about your transmission system in the future as your grid reaches capacity and you want to make sure all customers are served equally. Right now, the farthest customers from any substation are at risk of losing power as soon as the capacity for the river crossings max.

Hope that helps!

[quaint kite]

wow, interesting! Thanks for the info

hopefully he sees this

[ionic tangle]

For those others who might find this useful, I have a few other insights and tips to be aware of as well. Let’s talk transmission!

Transmission lines never split or collect together like we see in CS2. The game does it to simplify things and that’s ok. Why we don’t ever split a transmission line is for two reasons, cost and capacity.

All lines are rated for a specific capacity of energy carry. When you split a line you crest two lines that have double the capacity, but you can’t use the full capacity on either because your limited by the single line. It’s a waste of money then to have such huge structures built and never use their full capacity.

If we do need to multiply and divide up a line, that is where switchyards are useful. Switchyards connect multiple transmission lines together and allow the utility to control where power is flowing through different lines. This can be super handy if we need to divert power around a break, the lines can become a back up for each other.

[vague pond]

Excellent explanation, and interesting to boot! Thanks for sharing.