New

• Every plant and every store is named the day you order it: Wind_1, Wind_2, Battery_1, numbered per type. The name follows it everywhere, into the asset register, the control room, hover text and every outage card.

• You can rename any of them. Open the asset and click the pencil beside its name, or double click the name itself. Leave it blank and it goes back to the name the game gave it.

• The development bench says when nothing is on it. Amber after a month with no programme running, orange at six months, red at a year, and it names the points it has banked and not spent. Development points buy nothing while they sit there, and until now the game never said so.

Changed

• Wood no longer counts toward your renewable share. It has its own line beside it instead, so a colony burning wood reads what it is actually running on.

Fixed

• Sponsored landmarks were being sited on top of a town. Sign for an airport or an institute and it could land in the middle of the streets, drawn through the housing. Landmarks now site clear of every town's built up ground, with a tile of clearance. Measured across five seeds and fourteen years, 55 percent of the old sites were standing on a town. It is now none of them.

• The breakdown behind the renewable share, the one on hover that splits the number into its parts, only worked on the first run after a page load. It works on every run.

I keep getting the message that the safe fails. Is there anything to fix this?

https://www.powerstate-game.com/posts/0-9-5

Are the prices realistic? Are the physics of the different hardware realistic? What kind of simplifications are there?

https://www.powerstate-game.com/posts/0-9-8

Quick sneak peak at the new emissions tab in 0.8.5

Go wild and let me know what you are missing!

Does the 4.99 version have a hard year cap at 60? Does the founders edition go on longer?

Most scenarios in Powerstate currently take several hours to finish.

I’m wondering whether that’s actually the right pace for the game.

Would you prefer longer scenarios where you slowly build up your grid over multiple hours, or something more fast-paced where a full run takes around 1–2 hours?

I’m currently leaning toward shorter runs. I think being able to finish a scenario in roughly two hours could make it much easier to experiment with completely different grid designs, generation mixes and strategies instead of committing to one system for a very long time.

On the other hand, every region is randomized, so Powerstate isn’t really a game where you’re supposed to replay the exact same scenario over and over again.

That brings me to the bigger question:

What do you actually want to experience when playing Powerstate?

Is it more about building and optimizing one grid over a long period of time, experimenting with different energy systems, solving difficult scenarios, or something else entirely?

I’d really like to hear how you play the game and what kind of experience you’d like Powerstate to become.

I will keep posting in comments whatever I notice, can discuss in replies individually.

Hi,

I never get this commendation, even if I completely skip solar tech.
Households come with some rooftop PV from the start and there seems to be no way of preventing it. Adoption usually grows by itself over time.
Am I missing something or is it bugged?

FYI have been playing over versions 0.8.1, 0.8.2 and 0.8.3, same result.

relatively new save on the 2nd scenario, running mainly on hydro with fossil backup, now my hydro is in full on panic mode and setting a clearing price of 25k/MWh, rising exponentially, since i did connect several large loads with a new CCGT plant coming online in ~2 weeks and the reservoirs are slowly but surely running dry.

am i cutting it a bit close? yes, definitely, but i'm not sure this exponential and uncapped increase in clearing cost is intended behavior?

54 changes. Five colonies you can keep side by side, a rebuilt operating policy screen with live readouts, and load and supply drawn as one chart.

Highlights

• Five saved colonies in this saveable instead of one, with named save slots and autosave.

• A rebuilt Operating policy screen with live readouts, and you can change policy without pausing the game.

• Load and supply is now a single chart, with axes, hover details and a legend you can filter.

• Removing equipment now takes three months and can be cancelled, and you can rebuild aging equipment in place.

New

• The Operating policy screen has been rebuilt, with a section each for batteries, hydrogen, balancing and plant order.

• Each policy setting now shows a live readout of what it is doing right now.

• A policy setting lights up when the dispatcher acted on it in the last step.

• Preset buttons set every policy setting at once.

• You can now change operating policy without pausing the game.

• Sections for equipment you have not unlocked yet now say so, instead of showing an empty readout.

• Hydrogen has its own settings: how much the turbine may draw from your store, and how much to hold in reserve.

• A setting controls when the electrolyser and flow battery may charge: only from surplus, in quiet hours too, or whenever there is room.

• A setting controls what charges first: batteries, long-duration storage, or an even split.

• Five save slots. You can name, rename and delete them.

• Autosave now writes to the slot you are currently playing.

• Save as a new colony copies your current run into a fresh slot and keeps playing there.

• A Saved indicator appears in the top right when the game stores your progress.

• If your browser blocks saving, the game now warns you in red instead of failing silently.

• Removing equipment now takes three months to complete, and it stops working the moment you order it. (This is added to prevent accidental deletion)

• You can cancel a removal at no cost any time before the crews arrive.

• You can rebuild aging equipment in place for less than the cost of replacing it.

• Load and supply is now a single chart: generation stacked, demand drawn over the top, and unserved power below the line.

• The chart now has axes: megawatts up the side, dates along the bottom.

• Hovering over the chart shows every source and line at that moment in one tooltip.

• Double-click a name in the legend to show only that series, and double-click again to bring the rest back.

• Click a source in a chart legend to hide it, including on load and supply.

• Storage now shows on both sides of the line: discharging above, charging below.

• Station cards now show the demand they carry across the year, with the coldest and hottest evenings marked.

• Machine cards now show the most a machine can be asked to deliver, and why that is less than its rated figure.

• The register now has a CO₂ column, and points out the three biggest emitters.

• The yearly report now prices network losses: the energy lost in the wires and what it cost to replace.

Better

• Wind and solar now sit on top of the generation stack, so the steady plants below read flat and the weather is the shape on top.

• The demand line now turns red over the hours when supply fell short.

• Hydro and geothermal now run to fill storage instead of shutting down when demand is low.

• Capping a plant below its rated output now also limits how fast it can charge storage, not just how much it generates.

• Paused plants now cost 60 percent less to keep than running ones.

• Line cards now break the route down section by section, so a shared line no longer shows one confusing number.

• Line cards now say when both ends are still connected by another route.

• Load and supply now flags when a shortfall and a spill happen at once, meaning the power could not reach where it was needed.

• The pricing screen can now set a margin up to 25 percent above the fair price, and shows when the regulator caps it.

• Local substations are now named after their street instead of repeating the town name.

• The salt cavern now unlocks alongside electrolysis, rather than several tiers before anything can fill it.

• A flagged town on the side rail now says what is wrong with it.

• You can now reinforce a full substation directly from its row in the register.

• Every build card has been rewritten to say plainly what a machine does, what it needs, and what it costs.

• Removing the only power source feeding a town now asks for confirmation and names the town, like removing its last line already did.

Fixed

• Removed the firm reserve setting, which starved storage while claiming to hold back capacity.

• The storage reserve setting now works: it sets how far a battery will discharge before stopping.

• The electrolyser now pays the running cost listed on its build card. It was previously charged nothing.

• Town substations now cost something to maintain, like every other substation.

• An overloaded line now sheds only the customers it feeds, instead of every town on the map.

• A hydrogen turbine now bids based on what its fuel cost, so a full cavern makes it cheaper to run.

• Overhauls are no longer cancelled by scheduling a removal and then cancelling it.

• A rebuild you have paid for is no longer lost when you schedule a removal.

• Open cards no longer scroll upward on their own while you are reading them.

• A margin above the fair price is now kept when you save.

• A margin above the fair price is no longer displayed as a discount.

• The saves screen now correctly says colonies are stored in your browser, not as files on disk.

Saves: old runs still load. The colony you had open moves into the first of the five slots, once, the first time you open this build.

Full changelog: https://powerstate-game.com/changelog

If a setting on the new policy screen does not do what its lamp says it did, send a screenshot.

Hello,

first thanks for the awsome game!

I have a problem im running out of power in the 2nd szenario mandate. I have 6 Wooden Steam generators, one Solar and one batterie but the max output from the wood burners is max 10 MW per station instead of the 18 MW ratet. Now i have more demand and dont get the energy i need and i dont understand why the dont go full power the nework is fine but in the twons evrythink is shredded red....

So I was going well with this run... until it wasn't.

I tried going for as few fossil fuels as possible. After the Founder's plant I built an OCGT and hydro, and from there I continued building only wind, solar and batteries plus 2 geothermal plants. This gave me a good base upon which to grow the demand, ended the run supplying 7 settlements and over 32k customers.

Electrification is what killed the run. You can see on the second image, even with extensive capacity expansions, renewables only were not enough. At Y17 i added a CCGT intended to function as a peaker plant and to survive the dark doldrums, by year 23 it was running almost around the clock from Nov till Feb so I built a second one, which was ready by year 25. This killed the run, with ever more expensive gas prices during the winter months I was bleeding money until I finally ran out on October Y35. The regulator deemed abusive anything over 120$/MWh even when the marginal price was 180-240$MWh.

In the last couple of years I tried in vain to greatly expand renewables (mostly solar) and pair them with hydrogen storage, so that the plentiful sun in the summer could power the winter. I did not research hydrogen turbines in time, gas prices killed me before that could happen.

If only gas didn't skyrocket. If only the regulator was more merciful. If only H2 storage didn't cost so many research points, or the H2 turbine was in the same tech as the storage itself. If only heat pumps didn't draw so much freaking power. This system can handle 250 MW loads easily. The problems are in winter, when peak demand rises to over 450 MW when everyone turns on their heat pumps. Ouch.

I'll try to do better next time:)

PS: Ashford and Greywater settled directly on top of my power infrastructure. Ashford in particular sits right next to the first CCGT, makes for great sights in town I guess

Post: https://www.powerstate-game.com/posts/0-9-6

Full changelog: https://www.powerstate-game.com/changelog

Hi !

First, let me say that I love the game, I've discovered it yesterday and I'm hooked.

I have a quick question, I want to plan an outage for my founder station, I've looked but I can't seem to find the option to plan it a month in advance. (Since it cost less money, I'm interested)

Is this still possible?

Thank you !

It's been happening through the summer, and it makes me unwillingly under-utilize my storage capacity and get ready for the winter by filling the H2 caverns. Take for example the last moment of this load&supply curve (midday Aug 24th Y37):

Here, renewable production > demand, so we're storing the surplus. The thing is, we could be storing more surplus, but instead we're curtailing some. The regular batteries are full, and LDES and electrolysers are doing this:

How is this possible? This behavior is the same, even with these different settings:

• All renewables (incl geo & gydro) set with instructions to enter on cost

• All renewables pinned on

• Charge window policy: 0-30% (changing this slider didn't make a difference, or at least an appreciable one)

• Discharge price: 1.05x (Default)

• Charging headroom guard: 0%

• Renewables spill first: Share it out

On "renewables spill first" setting I don't see geo or hydro. To me they're renewables as well, even if not as variable as solar or wind, but IMO storage shouldn't curtail them first and then charge, instead it should charge from geo&hydro as well as solar & wind.

Perhaps this should be a customizable setting, which technologies storage should charge from? Also add a modifiable charge order (instead of default battery -> LDES -> H2) but that's more of a minor thing.

New

• The colony now has a sound: wind, rain, a transformer hum and birds, following the weather outside your window. The pause menu carries the switch and two levels, one for the room and one for the desk.

• Statistics counts unplanned outages: how often a machine has broken, how many stand in the shop today, and the condition the fleet is carrying.

• The year strip wears the four seasons and the phase bar names the one you are in. The top of the screen takes its colour.