when using Power Plants it feels to me like cheating because it reduces the cost for electricity to 0.
So at this point I would feel much better if fuel is needed to generate the electricity.
Because a Power Plant costs money and occupies some space it should be cheaper to buy the fuel than to purchase electricity. At all there must be some attraction to do the research and build this slot so there should be a benefit for producing the electricity in-house.
An improvement of this suggestion could be to add new slots for fuel tank and fuel receiving. A new fuel pipeline with resticted placeability could make the layouting of a production line and it’s supply chain a bit more challenging.
Would be great to know how others thinks about this.
Maybe even an idea to have a roof layer on the factory, so you can put solar panels on top, but then of course, you can only produce electricity from them during day time. At night you need to use power plants, thus saving you fuel costs and reduce power costs further.
Personally I’d prefere it to be removed.
I dont think factories make their power in house.
I work in an industry rubber factory and we purchase out electricity of the grid.
Our company usually invest in low energy lighting, timers to turn off unused machinery
or better switchgear? to lower electricity costs, that might be something to look at?
Just my thoughts…
even smaller companies try to produce some of the needed electricity by themself. This depends on the business and on management decisions.
In fact the price per kWh electricity will be more expensive regarding to the peak usage. So when keeping the base demand in house the peak will be less and it will get cheaper at all.
But of course, if you need to heat up something it will be much more cheaper to use gas or oil.
Almost all car factories have solar panels on their roof these days.
I also worked in a factory with some real heavy equipment and they used generators when used as those machines pull so much electricity it would cause a massive spike on the electricity network. Pretty sure they could cause a blackout when turned on using net electricity.
