Energy

Every building in Microlandia draws electricity every day: a home about as much as an average US household, and every workplace seat, hospital bed and school place its own amount, listed below. Demand follows the seasons. Heating pushes it up a tenth in January and cooling up again in August, so the figure to watch is spare power in January: what the city has left over at its coldest.

Where the power comes from

The city can build wind farms, solar farms, coal plants and nuclear plants, or put up a transmission tower at the edge of the map and buy from the neighbouring city it faces. A tower works the day it is paid for; plants take months or years to build. Each neighbour runs something different and charges for it: the cleaner the neighbour, the dearer the kWh. Each also has only so much to spare, shown below as an average hourly rate rounded to the nearest kWh/h:

Towers facing one neighbour share what it sells, so a tower past that limit adds nothing; turn it to face another neighbour.

Every day the grid runs the city’s own wind, solar and nuclear first. What they cannot cover is met by the backup order, one city setting on the Energy map:

• Cheapest first (the default) runs coal, then the neighbours from cheapest to dearest.
• Cleanest first runs coal and the neighbours from cleanest to dirtiest.

The setting appears once the city has two or more backup sources, and each order is quoted at a January peak, so you can see what cleaner backup would cost before you choose it.

When there is not enough

When demand outruns supply, power goes down a fixed ladder: civic buildings first, all or nothing, then homes, then shops, then industry. Homes go dark newest first. Shops on a short rung stay open with what is left, but no new shop opens until there is power for it. Industry is factories, warehouses, the paper mill, the petrochemical plant and data centers: they share whatever survives and throttle their output, an empty one draws nothing, and a new one opens only where its whole draw is spare. Power delivered, what the ladder served against what the city asked for, is the headline of the Energy map.

Selling surplus

A city with spare local generation, including coal, sells it to the neighbours over its transmission towers. Imported electricity only covers the city’s own demand and is never resold. Nothing is sold on a day anyone in the city went short, and local plants keep capacity equal to 15% of the day’s consumption at home as a reserve. The switch is under Plan › Grid rules.

The buyers are twelve cities beyond the neighbours, each wanting one kind of power and a set amount of it, from Properton’s half a nuclear plant to Littleborough’s single solar farm. Power reaches them over a neighbour’s grid, so a buyer can only be sold to through towers facing a neighbour that reaches it, and imports and exports share those towers’ carrying capacity. The neighbour keeps 10% of what each exported kWh earns.

Buyers pay by the kind of power, at real contract prices: $0.112 per kWh for nuclear, $0.079 for wind, $0.065 for solar and $0.04 for coal. The best-paying buyers are served first, each as far as the city’s spare power and the wires allow. Exported coal power pays its fuel costs and creates local pollution like any other coal generation. Earnings are recorded daily and paid when the month closes, under Power Exports in the Budget Report; coal fuel is a separate expense under Fuel Purchases.

Using less

The Energy Efficiency Programme retrofits the city’s own buildings, civic buildings and public works, so they draw a quarter less. Homes, shops, offices and industrial plants are private and are left out. The city pays a price per kWh/day saved when it adopts the programme, then again for each new building that joins at a month’s end, plus a small upkeep. It cannot be undone. A saved kWh also comes off the January peak, which is what supply has to be built for.

Priced daily, billed monthly

Every day the grid records what the city asked for and what it got, where each kWh came from, what the imports cost, what the coal burned and what the exports earned. Imports get dearer the more the city leans on them: each day’s price rises in brackets with the share of the day’s power they supplied, times the price of the neighbour each tower faces. The first slice every day is billed at the lowest rate, so a small town that needs a tower is not charged scarcity prices. On the first of each month the month closes, and its sums become that month’s bill.

Clean Current

The Regional Environment Bureau opens a file on the city once it passes 5,000 residents. Clean Current goes to a city that, over twelve complete months in a row, averages 10,000 residents, uses power as clean as France’s, 50 g CO₂e per kWh or less, and delivers at least 99% of the power it asks for. Carbon counts each source’s whole life, from the mine or the turbine to the socket; imports count at the rate of the neighbour that sold them, and exported power does not count. For comparison, France’s grid runs at about 40 g CO₂e per kWh, the US’s at about 380 and Poland’s at about 590 (2025). The Energy map calls 50 or less Clean, under 400 Mixed and 400 or more Dirty.

The hard part is January. A clean grid still needs a backup that stays clean in its coldest week: spare local capacity, efficiency, or a tower to a clean neighbour. The award’s progress, and what is holding it back, is on the Energy map’s Today and Year pages.

Oil crisis

An oil crisis reaches your city through the fuel bill. For the duration of the incident, petrol for citizens’ cars and diesel for your buses cost three times as much. Food and clothing also cost more because their supplies travel by truck, so even a citizen who walks to work feels the squeeze.

Businesses feel it unevenly. Farms and factories lose a fifth of their revenue; construction, shops, hotels and restaurants lose 15%. Other sectors keep their usual revenue multiplier. A city with several kinds of employer has more room to weather the shock than one built around a single trade.

The parameters below cover both the power grid and this fuel shock. Those beginning with Oil crisis apply only while that incident is active.

Parameters

Each parameter names its basis. Measured: a published figure, converted to game units. Calibration: a game-scale coefficient whose direction and scale are grounded in sources, but whose exact value was chosen for play. Scenario: an authored assumption about this fictional region.

Residential kwh per unit day

30

Electricity one household unit draws per day, set from the average US home. EIA’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS, published 2023) finds 10,566 kWh per household a year, about 29 kWh a day; the game rounds it to 30 and uses it for every home, so a 12-unit apartment block draws 360 kWh/day. It is a US-average proxy: RECS puts apartments in buildings of five or more units near 6,100 kWh a year (about 17 a day), so apartment blocks run on the high side.

Basis: measured

Source: US EIA — 2020 RECS, Table CE2.1: annual household site fuel consumption

Worker kwh per seat day

20

Electricity one workplace seat draws per day, filled or not: the building is lit, heated and cooled either way. EIA’s commercial buildings survey (CBECS 2018) sets the differences between building types but gives electricity per worker, not per seat: offices use about 6,900 kWh per worker a year (about 19 a day), all commercial buildings about 13,700 (about 38 a day). 20 sits at the office end, so the kitchens, shops and workshops that share this rate draw less here than they really do.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — CBECS 2018, Table C14: electricity consumption intensities by building activity

Patient bed kwh day

200

Electricity one hospital bed draws per day. CBECS reports hospitals per square foot and per worker, not per bed: inpatient buildings use about 28.8 kWh of electricity per square foot a year, about 2.3 times the commercial average (12.6), and about 18,100 kWh per worker (about 50 a day), around the clock. 200 per bed prices a bed well above an office seat, the direction the survey shows; the size is chosen for play.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — CBECS 2018, Table C14: electricity consumption intensities by building activity

Student kwh day

5

Electricity one school place draws per day. CBECS gives schools’ electricity per square foot and per worker, not per pupil. Education buildings use less per square foot than offices (9.4 against 13.6 kWh a year), and one staff member serves many pupils, so a pupil’s share is small; 5 is chosen for play.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — CBECS 2018, Table C14: electricity consumption intensities by building activity

Inmate kwh day

15

Electricity one prison place draws per day, set between a school place and an office seat: a cell is small but occupied around the clock, with lighting and security running all night. CBECS’s public order and safety buildings average 13.9 kWh per square foot a year and 13,400 per worker, but the survey says nothing per inmate.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — CBECS 2018, Table C14: electricity consumption intensities by building activity

Floor kwh per tile day

5

The least any building draws: 5 kWh a day per 10 m × 10 m footprint tile, for blueprints with no homes, seats, beds or places (monuments, squares, civic buildings with no staff), so nothing in the city runs for free. Deliberately low: at CBECS’s all-building average (12.6 kWh per square foot a year) 100 m² of floor would draw about 37 kWh a day, and even a vacant building about 11.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — CBECS 2018, Table C14: electricity consumption intensities by building activity

Wind output multiplier by regime

A fixed multiplier on wind farm output by the map’s wind: 1 on calm maps, 1.4 on windy Velaria, so siting a city there is an energy decision. A game rule: output does not follow the daily weather, so the grid’s figures and the Clean Current award never hang on weather luck, and the model has no wind direction. A farm’s rated 250,000 kWh a day already assumes a typical capacity factor (US wind ran at about 34% in 2024), roughly a 30 MW farm.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — Electric Power Monthly, Table 6.07.B: capacity factors for utility-scale generators

Wind shadow radius tiles

10

How far from a wind farm a tall building takes some of its wind: 10 tiles, 100 m. A tall building is one whose roof reaches half the turbine’s height, power plants and transmission towers aside. A game rule: one visible ring, the same in every direction, because the model has no wind direction. Real turbines are sited several rotor diameters clear of obstacles, and 100 m is a little under one modern rotor diameter.

Basis: calibration

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — Land-Based Wind Market Report 2024 (rotor diameters)

Wind shadow loss per building

0.1

The share of a wind farm’s output each tall building inside the shadow ring takes: 10%, one flat step per building, so a player can count the towers and read the loss. A game rule, not a wake model.

Basis: calibration

Wind shadow max loss

0.5

The most a wind farm can lose to the tall buildings around it: half its output. Wind still blows over a skyline, only slower and rougher, so a downtown turbine is a poor buy, not a dead one. A game rule.

Basis: calibration

Carbon g per kwh

Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions per kWh, in grams of CO₂ equivalent (g CO₂e): building the plant, mining and supplying its fuel, and running it. They are not measured stack emissions; coal’s direct median is 760. The city’s own sources use the IPCC AR5 lifecycle medians: coal 820, nuclear 12, onshore wind 11, and solar 45, between rooftop PV’s 41 and utility-scale PV’s 48. Imported power carries the figure of the neighbour that sold it, a scenario (city/utils/neighboring_cities.ts). The bare value, 900, is the imports fallback and also a scenario: the dirtiest neighbour. The city counts the carbon of all the power it uses, imports included; power it exports does not count.

Basis: measured

Source: IPCC AR5 WGIII Annex III, Table A.III.2 — lifecycle emissions of electricity supply technologies

Coal fuel cost at full dispatch

$750,000

A coal plant’s monthly fuel bill when it runs flat out, scaled by how much it is actually dispatched, so clean supply that idles coal cuts the bill the same month. Priced at about half the real cost: $750,000 ÷ (2,000,000 kWh a day × 30) is 1.25¢ of fuel per kWh, and the blueprint’s fixed $150,000 a month (crew and maintenance) adds 0.25¢ at full output, 1.5¢ in all. US coal fuel alone cost about 2.7¢/kWh in 2024 ($2.47 per million Btu × 10,777 Btu per kWh). Chosen so coal stays a tempting shortcut.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — Electric Power Annual, Table 7.4 (cost of coal delivered for electricity) and Table 8.1 (heat rates)

Seasonal demand

A monthly multiplier on every building’s daily electricity demand: January (heating) and August (cooling) peak, spring and autumn sit at 1. A game rule: the shape follows real grids, but the sizes are chosen so a city sized to its average browns out twice a year and one sized to its January never does. It scales daily energy and says nothing about hourly peaks, which swing far more, or about whether wind and solar can cover an evening. It is fixed, not random, so the squeeze can be planned for: the paper prints the January forecast every September. The bare value is January, the peak the placement cursor and the founding gate quote.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — Today in Energy: hourly electricity consumption varies throughout the day and across seasons

Import rate brackets

What imported electricity costs per kWh, rising with how much the city leans on it. Each day the import share is imported kWh ÷ delivered kWh: the first 15 points of share bill at $0.06, the next 15 at $0.10 and the rest at $0.16, per slice like tax brackets, so crossing a line never makes the bill jump. Each neighbour multiplies the whole table (×0.75 to ×1.6). The brackets are an assumption about this region’s market: real wholesale prices do vary, but no market data sets these slices. For scale, 2024 on-peak prices at US trading hubs averaged about $31–62 per MWh (3–6¢/kWh); the first bracket sits at the top of that range and the others are scarcity multiples.

Basis: scenario

Source: US EIA — Wholesale Electricity and Natural Gas Market Data (ICE hub prices)

Import lifeline kwh daily

30000

The first 30,000 kWh imported each day, about a thousand homes’ worth, always bill at the first bracket. Share sets the rate and city size sets the volume, so without it a small town that must import everything, at a 100% share, would pay the scarcity rate on every kWh. A game rule.

Basis: calibration

Reserve margin bands

Spare supply over January’s demand, in bands: 15% or more is comfortable, 0–15% tight, below zero a brownout season. Players see it as ‘spare power in January’. 15% borrows NERC’s default reference margin for mostly thermal grids, but NERC’s margin is peak capacity in megawatts while the game compares daily energy, so this is a game rule, not a reliability assessment. Exports hold back the same 15% of the day’s delivered power as a reserve.

Basis: calibration

Source: NERC — 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (reference margin levels)

Export prices

What the cities beyond the neighbours pay for the city’s spare power, by its kind. Clean power round the clock fetches the most: about $112/MWh, Jefferies’ estimate of Microsoft’s 20-year contract to restart Three Mile Island. Wind and solar sell at the North American contract prices of early 2026, $79.40 and $64.49/MWh. Nobody signs long contracts for coal, so it sells at the wholesale market, about $40/MWh in the US East in 2024. Spare local generation is sold only after the city is fully supplied and its reserve is kept, to the best-paying buyers first. Imported power is never resold, and coal exported still pays its fuel.

Basis: measured

Source: Jefferies via Bloomberg (Three Mile Island PPA); LevelTen Energy PPA Price Index Q1 2026 via Utility Dive; US EIA wholesale hub prices 2024

Export transit share

0.1

The neighbour’s cut of every exported kWh that crosses its grid: 10%. Wheeling power over someone else’s lines is billed per kWh; PacifiCorp’s point-to-point rate, $2.03 per kW a month, comes to about $5.50/MWh at half load, a tenth of a $60/MWh contract.

Basis: scenario

Source: PacifiCorp Open Access Transmission Tariff, Schedule 8

Efficiency demand share

0.75

What the Energy Efficiency Programme leaves of a public building’s electricity draw: 75%. It retrofits the city’s own buildings and public works only, a whole-building retrofit of lighting, controls and heating and cooling plant, because lighting alone cannot save a quarter (EIA puts it at about 17% of US commercial electricity, so even a deep lighting cut saves about a tenth). Homes, shops, offices and industrial plants are private and not retrofitted. The saving also shrinks the January peak, which is what supply must be built for.

Basis: calibration

Source: US EIA — 2018 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey: Consumption and Expenditures

Efficiency cost per kwh daily

$90

What the Energy Efficiency Programme charges the city per kWh/day of saving: once for today’s buildings when it is adopted, then for each new building that joins at a month close. It is the city’s share, a subsidy, not the full retrofit bill: DOE’s weatherization evaluations put the total cost of treating one home at $4,695–$6,812, most of it buying gas savings. $90 sits between wind ($80 per kWh/day of capacity) and solar ($100), so buying demand down competes with building supply up.

Basis: calibration

Source: US DOE — Weatherization Assistance Program National Evaluations: Summary of Results

Efficiency upkeep annual rate

0.01

The Energy Efficiency Programme’s yearly running cost (inspections and administration): 1% of what the city has paid for its saving, billed monthly. A game rule.

Basis: calibration

Oil crisis petrol price multiplier

3

Multiplier applied to the price of gasoline (citizen car fuel) and diesel (city-owned bus fleet) for the duration of an oil_crisis incident. ~3× matches the trough-to-peak swing of US retail gasoline prices during the 1973 embargo, dialled slightly down so the supply-chain surcharge stacked on top of it does not push the city instantly out of solvency.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration — Retail gasoline historical prices

Oil crisis supply chain surcharge

1.12

Multiplier applied to the food and clothing components of citizen cost-of-living during an oil_crisis. Captures the share of transportation/feedstock cost that filters through to consumer goods prices even for non-car-owners (trucks deliver groceries, plastics in clothing, refrigeration). Smaller than the direct fuel hit because retailers absorb part of the shock and not all of input cost passes through.

Source: BLS CPI — energy pass-through to food prices (1973-75 episode)

Oil crisis sector revenue multipliers

Per-sector revenue multipliers during an oil_crisis. Applied as an outer multiplier alongside recession/tech-boom in the company revenue calculation. Sectors not in the table receive 1.0 (knowledge and services are largely insulated from a fuel shock). Calibration based on the relative fuel-intensity of each sector’s production function.

Source: Hamilton — Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08