Power

Most buildings require electricity, or power, to function. Power is produced in power generators (see below), stored or discharged from Power Storages, and consumed by buildings. Power is transferred via Power Lines, Power Poles, or Train Stations and Railways. Power is measured in megawatts (MW).

Overview
Buildings that consume (or supply) power will only function when connected to a Power grid (see below section) where either the total supply from all power generators is sufficient to meet the total demand from all power consumers or there is still energy in Power Storages. If power demand exceeds supply and all Power Storages are empty, the circuit breaker trips, halting all buildings on that grid until the problem is corrected followed by a breaker reset.

Power grid
A power grid is a network consisting of power-generating and power-consuming buildings connected through Power Lines, Power Poles, Train Stations, and Railways. A graph of total power capacity, power production, and power consumption can be viewed by interacting with any Power Pole, generator, Train Station, or Power Switch on that grid.

Power Grids can be split using a Power Switch. Excess energy can be stored in Power Storages, to be used in cases of consumption exceeding production.

Power trip
If power consumption ever exceeds production and there is no energy in Power Storages to use, the power grid will trip. All connected power generators and power consumers in that grid will stop working. The sound effect of the trip can be heard from any part of the map, regardless of the distance between the tripped devices and the engineer.
 * Unlike other games, buildings won't run slower when the power generation is insufficient. The power grid will simply trip and causes the buildings to cease functioning.

The engineer can reset the circuit breaker by interacting at any of the connected power generators or Power Poles. In the UI, pull down the lever (refer to the image below) to restore the power. Before resetting it is advised to either attach more power generators to the grid or temporarily remove power cables to some of the areas of the factory. Otherwise, the power grid will simply overload again as soon as it is reactivated.

A power trip may also allow hostile creatures to respawn.

If there are no connected power generators whatsoever (such as by disconnecting all power generators at once using a switch), the buildings will instead simply switch off and there will be no trip. In this case, the buildings will resume function as soon as an adequate power supply is reconnected, without the need to reset the fuse.

Power graph
The Power Graph displays information about power production and consumption in the current power grid, as well as the sum of energy stored in all Power Storages on the grid. Power Storages do not affect any of the lines in the graph, instead, related information is shown in a menu to the right of the graph. ■ Capacity: The sum of the maximum power output if all existing generators on the grid were to operate at the same time. ■ Production: The current power output of all power generators on the grid. Only differs from "capacity" if there are Biomass Burners on the grid, being they only to scale to demand. ■ Consumption: The current power demand by all buildings on the grid. If consumption exceeds production, energy will be drawn from Power Storages if available, else a power trip occurs. ■ Maximum Consumption: The sum of the maximum power demand if all buildings on the grid were to operate at the same time.

Power consumers

 * Most buildings require power to function. They are called power consumers. See individual building pages for their power requirement, measured in MW.
 * Each building in standby mode (whether the engineer flipped the standby switch, or if the building is not functioning due to a logistic issue) consumes 0.1 MW.
 * Underclocking early-game buildings to very low clock speeds allows them to consume less power while operating than when idle.
 * Indicator Lights show whether a building is operating and consuming power or not.

Power generators
Power generators convert fuels into power. Each type of generator building has its own set of fuel item types and power output.

All power generators with the exception of the Biomass Burner always operate at full capacity. Biomass Burners instead scale to power consumption and burn slower at lesser demand. For example, if grid capacity is 105 MW, provided by one Coal Generator producing 75 MW and one Biomass Burner producing 30 MW, and power consumption is 95 MW, the entire capacity of the Coal Generator will be used first followed by two thirds of the Biomass Burner's capacity, meaning fuel will be burned at two thirds of the rate it would at maximum demand. This also renders Biomass Burners unable to charge Power Storages.

Type of generators
There are five total types of power generators:

Power Storage
See main article on Power Storage.

Power Storage is a mid-game building available in Tier 4 used for buffering electrical energy. Each can store up to 100 MWh, or 100 MW for 1 hour. As it allows 2 power connections, multiple Power Storages can be daisy-chained to store large amounts of energy.

When connected to a power grid that is supplied by generators other than Biomass Burners, it will charge using the excess generated power, up to a rate of 100 MW each. Therefore, it will take at least an hour in real-time to fully charge an empty Power Storage, or longer if the spare power is less than to satisfy all Power Storages on the grid (Power Storages that are not fully charged will split the spare power, reducing their charge rate to the available spare power divided by the number of partially charged Power Storages). Charging Power Storage does not add to the grid power consumption or max consumption figures, nor does it diminish capacity since it will slow or stop charging if there are other demands for the available power.

As long as there is stored charge in the Power Storage and there is a power shortage (consumption exceeding production), all Power Storages will discharge to satisfy the difference, powering up instantly. There is no limit on the discharge rate; it will exactly match the power deficiency. This allows the engineer to quickly react to restore the power situation, whether to increase power production or to install a Power Switch. Once all the stored energy has been discharged and the power is still insufficient, the power grid will trip.

Resource consumption
The table below shows the raw resource consumption rate (per min) for every 1 GW of net power generated, among different generation methods:
 * Note: Actual consumption of raw ores may differ according to the choice of Alternate recipes.

Clock speed
Overclocking is unlocked at the MAM. The clock speed of buildings can be adjusted by interacting with it and adjusting the slider. are required to increase the clock speed beyond 100%, up to 250% maximum.

Underclocking can be done freely once overclocking has been researched and costs no Power Shards.

Power consumer

 * Power consumers work at the rate of user-defined clock speed. For example, a Constructor works twice as fast when its clock speed is set to 200%.
 * It is always less power efficient when a building is overclocked.
 * In the above example, its power consumption will be greater than 2x the usual power consumption. This also means a building at 200% consumes more power than 2 equal buildings each operating at 100%.
 * On the other hand, underclocking a building saves power.
 * Two constructors each working at 50% use less power compared to 1 Constructor working at 100%.
 * However, the footprint of the factory will be larger.
 * Power consumers that're underclocked to have active power consumption below the idle rate of 0.1MW will still use 0.1MW while idle.

Power generator

 * Power generators overclock differently from power consumers. However, their fuel consumption rate is always proportional to the power production of the building. Hence, overclocking a power generator will not increase fuel efficiency.
 * This means the generator will burn the fuel faster or slower, but not produce more energy from the same amount of fuel.
 * Production and consumption rate do not scale directly with Clock Speed like power consumers. Instead they follow a non-linear formula based on the Clock Speed. See the Clock Speed article for more detail.
 * Note that the Target MW in the Clock Speed UI is currently bugged to show the wrong number. Instead look at the MW number in the upper left of the generator UI, under where what fuel is in the generator is shown. Do not use Target MW when changing a power generator's clock speed.

Energy
Energy is a derived unit of Power. When Power is being consumed (or produced) over some time, the product of Power and Time is called Energy. Where power fluctuates over time, the average power can be used instead.

The base unit of energy is the Joule (J). The exact unit used depends on the unit of Power and time measured. For example,
 * the energy consumption of producing an Iron Rod in a Constructor, with normal Clock speed and default recipe
 * the energy produced by 1 Leaves in a Biomass Burner
 * the energy produced by a Plutonium Fuel Rod in a Nuclear Power Plant
 * the energy storage capacity of a single Power Storage

Notes:
 * Similarly,
 * Similarly,

Power Storages use MWh instead of MJ. 1 MWh equals 3 600 MJ.

Energy can be used to compare the burning time of Fuels in vehicles or in generators, or comparing the energy efficiency between different Alternate recipes of an item.
 * Stack energy is simply a product of energy and the number of items in its full stack.

Trivia

 * When interacting with any power building with a Power graph displayed, and if clicking on the graph for 6 times, the Power graph will first become glitched followed by a warning indicating that you are abusing the FICSIT property. The warning will go away if you close and re-open the Power graph.


 * A prototype of Satisfactory featured wind power, but it was removed.