Electricity

## Introduction

During the early-game, it's all about survival and you don't really need electricity, but as you can start to afford to build Modules, you'll need to make electricity to power them. This can seems a little complex to set up at first, but in no time, you'll have a huge electrical grid powering building and modules.

### Electricity types

There are (currently) two types of electricity, High voltage (HV) and Medium voltage(MV). HV is what the generators put out, but your buildings and modules can't cope with that, so they need MV. This is accomplished using a Sub-station. The most basic hook up would be Generator > Substation > Module.

## Generators

### Wood/Coal

This is the most basic, it burns lumber or coal and takes in dirty water to produce steam to drive a turbine. Coal will burn longer than lumber. At first you will need to use a wooden bucket to put water from a lake into it, but when you can afford a Liquid Pump, that makes things easier. You can fill up a shed or other storage full of wood or coal and use the Logistics to fill it up.

### Gas

These don't use water, but simply burn various gases to turn a turbine, Hydrogen, butane and several other gases are flammable, so whatever you have around. They can produce more power than Wood/Coal generators.

### Wind

Free power, 27 hours a day. However it can be unreliable when there is little wind if you are using it to its full capacity, so you might want to have a few on one network to maintain enough power. It'll spin faster during storms, so a little bonus with the bad weather.

## Substation

This serves two purposes, it transforms HV (High voltage) to MV and also acts as a central distribution to buildings and modules.

## Pylon

You don't need to use these, you can just have Generators > Substations. But if you want to have one central power hub area, pylons can take the HV in all directions to multiple substations throughout the world

## Connections

Once you've placed your electrical items down, you'll notice each has a power pole, looking at this and pressing F will show you information about it and allow you to make changes and disconnect connections.

Making connections is a similar process, look at the power pole, but press C. You'll hear an electrical buzz sound to confirm, then look at another power pole on another device and press C again. A blue holo-electrical connection has been made.

Power generators will ONLY connect to pylons and substations, so don't worry, you can't accidentally connect HV to a module and blow it up.

Substations are the middle-man, they will allow connections to generators to draw power, pylons to draw power from a distance and buildings to supply MV power.

Colony buildings require power for the life-support to run. If there is a power outage, the colonists won't die instantly, but CO2 will build up and O2 deplete, also it might get too cold or hot for them, so don't leave the power off for too long, as it's not good for them.

Each generator has a maximum amount of Kilowatts, as it approaches this limit. it's a good plan to add more generators to take up the strain. Power losses to entertainment buildings such as the Cinema will just make the colonists grumpy.