Overview
A guide centered around every Rimworld dictator’s favorite subject: Power. Consolidating power. Generating more power, using power to help your allies and harm your enemies, and perhaps most importantly, how to keep the machinery of your power from backfiring and harming you, or your colonists!
Intro
Electricity. The ultimate power on the Rim. Greater than the wisest thrumbo, faster than the wiliest chinchilla, and as fickle as Randy himself. It is also, in the unmodded game, the most complicated system in a colony’s infrastructure, making a major impact on it’s layout, defensibility, and long term success. It is no exaggeration that a good, solid electrical grid is vital to a colony’s survival. In this guide, we’ll go over basic power generation strategy, layout and design tricks and tips, and contingency planning/ Randy appeasement strategies.
Basics
This section goes through stuff that can be found in detail on the wiki.
Windmills: Wind blows. Makes Shocky. Unreliable and dependent on the hidden weather system. About 100w min, 3500w max.
Wood powered Generator: More complicated wood fueled shocky. 1000w constant. ALWAYS better than fueled devices as long as you remember to either use them constantly, or turn the generator off.
Chemfuel Generator: Magic Boom Juice fueled shocky. requires less tending than the woodie. 1000w constant. turn off when not in use.
Watermills: Flammable river powered shocky. 1100w Reliable, if hard to defend. Cheap to replace in woods.
Solar Generator: Sun powered shocky. Doesn’t make power when sun is not out. Inadvisable in areas where sun does not rise for months.(like the arctic)
Battery: Okayish Metallica song. Also stores power for later. Very useful if your generator doesn’t workl all the time. 50% efficient. 2 shocky in= 1 shocky out.
Geothermal Generator: Earth powered shocky. Hard to do. Basically free power. Recommended. Must be built on a vent. Guess what that means for your colony?
Biofuel Refinery: Turns potatoes into magic boom juice. Actually needs power to run. Plan accordingly.
Switch: A device that, if left off, will allow you to connect two power grids at will without a Zzzt event taking out both of them.
Intermediate Strategy
There are a few major strategies. Notice for each of these I ignore geothermals and watermills. It’s not that they aren’t great for powering a colony. It’s that they are expensive, conditional, and great for powering ANY colony. consider them to be mid to late game additions to colonies that can make use of them.
-The Flaming Deathtrap of Great Singular Efficiency-
This strategy is invariably what happens when you build a colony without a power plan. Generation is placed wherever it makes sense. Often grouped together in one spot. Windmills are placed on the same line as wood generators, batteries will be placed in a dedicated bank, and everything, EVERYTHING will be hooked to one massive labyrinthine main line that shares power throughout the colony
Pros: Cheapest to build by far, This colony makes the most of every single generation source by adding them all into one massive pool and letting everyone take what they need. It’s the electrical equivalent of Communism.
Cons: It’s the electrical equivalent of Communism. If something goes wrong, every system starves for power and browns out. This system is weak to every single disaster that can leave a colony with the lights off. diversifying the system just ADDS to the number of things that can go wrong. And as the system gets bigger, it gets harder to manage.
Verdict: Good for small, early colonies. Large colonies that employ this strategy will fail harder than the Soviet Union.
-The Freedom and Oil Method-
The Rim runs on chemfuel. At least as far as you can see! This method uses only basic forms of power generation, and the extremely cheap biofuel refining tech, to generate power needs. No batteries required! Just burn more oil! Maximum pollution and MAXIMUM freedom! Power can generally be split off to several rails to make managing the grid easier, or, if you’re a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ commie, a *wind turdbine* powering your biofuel refinery.
Pros: No batteries means no Zzzt… events -ish. No, really. Zztt events are limited to small. easy to control fires, and are completely stopped by stone walls. You don’t store power in this strategy. In fact, your power grid is pretty well hardened against most disasters. MAXIMUM FREEDOM.
Cheap Research: Literally just the refinery to get started. investment in research is cheap
Space efficient: generators don’t take up much space, and need not be accessible by the buildings they power. Huge design freedom.
Drenched in Oil: you have a huge chemfuel supply for things that aren’t (electrical) power.
Capitalism: You can literally buy more power. Money, the ultimate expression of freedom.
Cons: Work. Pawns have to haul fuel under this system at least once every seven days, and a biofuel refiner is a full time job.
Personal Responsibility: As in, you are personally responsible for your own liquid bomb. Your “Battery” in this system is chemfuel. Which explodes. Build accordingly.
No Social Safety Net: Seriously, just because YOUR part of the colony ran out of chemfuel doesn’t mean I have to share mine. When the oil runs short you get to decide between the haves and have-nots.
Corn Ethanol Market: Because a colony that runs on biofuel gets its power from the same place it gets its food, a disaster in the fields can lead to brownouts.
Verdict: a great power system if you are in a biome with a lot of biomass. Naturally a great choice for swamps and “naturally” warm Rimworlds. Terrible for food insecure biomes and places with short growing seasons. More effective in forests due to wood and game. Build your chemfuel storage away from everything else, and make it stone.
-The Lazy Environmentalist Method-
Don’t want to deal with a giant explosion closet? Hate the idea of sharing the same pair of pants during a brownout? Maybe a method exists that avoids those problems while still giving your colonists the sweet septic glow of modern lighting. That question was rhetorical, of course there is! using a mix of batteries, solar cells, and turbines, we can build a power system that doesn’t harm nature or require menial labor!
Pros
Elitism: A smug feeling of satisfaction as you sip psychoid tea during your ample leisure time. No hauling required, and all your farmed goods are used for their original purpose.
Big Problems are Small: Because your power and food infrastructure are separated, a single disaster cannot halt both. Eclipses are short and only lower your overall power generation.
Battery Backups: Your power grid requires batteries to remain stable in the best of times. They do the same in the worst.
Sharing is Caring: the synergy between Wind and Solar makes it easy to link different power grids to each other in emergencies when the batteries run low. The portability of batteries makes it possible to literally share power between different grids.
Cons
Easy Targets: Power fields are dense targets of opportunity for raids. Keep them safe.
Innumerable Petty Annoyances: Your psychoid tea will be sipped cold. Most disasters affect the colony in some way. Plan for everything to go wrong.
Everything Explodes Anyway: Zzzt events happen. Your storage relies on batteries. Keep share switches off till they are needed
Shoebox Apartments: Space is at a premium. Power needs a lot of physical area.
Verdict: A solid choice for most mid game colonies, and generally pretty hard against most threats. Not good for swamp biomes and areas that have a lot of overgrowth. Requires some level of planning and adaptability
-The Engineered Solution-
A solution that takes the best of the above methods and combines them into a real powerhouse of modern industry. An early, mid,and late game solution for making sure the lights stay on. Ideally, the end result of reading this guide.
Pros:
Stable, secure power generation. Problems are small, production is up, and the guys talking about “synergy” and “pragmatism” are all managing other colonies. The guys in yours do those things by default. Disasters happen, but your colonists don’t really notice outside of solar flares or multiple acts of Randy.
Cons:
Expensive: This method requires the most resources, as it uses the most diverse set of techs as well as the most redundancy.
Colonist Needs Brains: requires the most research out of the methods for even a mid game colony.
You Need Brains.: Requires the most planning out of any of the methods. Literally the closest thing Rimworld has to civil engineering. Almost absolutely requires reading this guide. Shameless plug.
Contingencies
Simple things to consider for common problems
Raids- Turrets are power hogs, and raids always last longer than expected. Have separate generation or a switch that can turn off a lot of things en masse.
Volcanic Winter- Crops grow, just more slowly. Chemfuel generators cannot rely on farming entirely. Solar generators cannot produce fully.
Eclipse-As long as your heat, turrets, and freezer aren’t on solar power, you can usually wait these out.
Heat Waves/Cold Snaps- These have the delightful effect of pulling extra power for your heaters and coolers. Their effect is colony wide, so sharing power between grids may not be a good fix. Consider emergency backup power in the form of a backup generator for important grids. Like the one running your freezer. And the one keeping rooms warm. Remember, batteries have similar costs to wood fired generators, and are only slightly cheaper than chemfuel generators. They should be used to stabilize power, not provide for power spikes lasting more than 12 hours. Without extra generation, you will have to turn off some grids and redirect power. Using component expensive switches.
Toxic Fallout-Not a problem for renewable powered colonies. Chemfuel powered colonies may have to ration power. This is a very strong argument for renewables.
For Those Who Read This Far
This section gets down into minutiae. It also uses words like minutiae. If you are still reading this, it’s because you really took a shine to my guide. Thanks for that.
This Will Get Nerdy
It’s terribly nerdy. It just is. You are playing a colony management sim for Phoebe’s sake. For a given generator, we look at it’s generation in Wh, Watt-hours. That is, this thing craps out so many Watts of shocky, for a full hour. Generally, there are a few different kinds of generation:
Unreliable: Generation that is free but random in it’s effectiveness, wind.
On Demand: Generators that must be fueled, and can be turned on and off
Diurnal: Solar generates on a known 12 hour cycle
Reliable but Finicky: Water and Geo generators must be placed properly. Vanometrics are RARE.
To make the best use of these, we have to look at our consumption. That is, what is using the power? we generally have a few different kinds of consumption.
Constant: always on unless the colony is being micromanaged in crisis
Diurnal/Nocturnal: some stuff is only on during the day or night, but not both.
Seasonal: Some power is only used during summer or winter months, but not both.
Situational: some power consumption is only useful during specific events or crisis.
So, we need to match power needs with generation ability.
Batteries can turn unreliable power into constant power, and diurnal power into constant power at 50% efficiency. for a significant component cost. This is less than ideal. Generally, the average output multiplied by 3/4 will give the “reliable” output for a given generator, be it wind or solar.
Constant power requirements are best met by Reliable but Finicky power generation. Since it rarely makes sense to place all of these sinks on the same rail, and generation options are limited, most constant power draws will not be able to make good use of this method. Requiring the less than ideal use of batteries. Constant needs are things like light and most workstations.
Diurnal power needs can be efficiently met by Diurnal power generation. In biomes that permit it, Solar is the best method for powering grow lights, for example, as they use all of their power while the generator is actually generating. Same goes for any switch metered workstations only usable by specialists.
Seasonal power generation is best met by Reliable methods. note that On Demand methods are less taxing here, as they only consume during they season/event that they are used. This is great for short winters/summers. Long season draws should be treated as constant needs. For example, on a temperate map, a heater will not see much use 3 months out of the year, but will remain on during the winter. Connecting multiple heaters to a chemfuel generator for the winter is economical provided the winter doesn’t last all year. Generally, seasonal power needs are related to temperature control. Greenhouses don’t really fall here, as they are expensive enough to require their own power equipment.
Situational needs are actually best met by On Demand power generation. This includes turrets, larger turrets, BFGs, and crematoriums, also known as after-turrets. This prevents leeching power from other systems, and provides a huge surge of power at exactly the point in which it is needed.
Common Grids
Early in this guide I hinted at the effectiveness of separated grids. They are generally much better than connected grids, because they separate problems. This is a short list for ideas on how to separate your grid, and is by no means exhaustive.
Residential-Residential grids are usually used to power colonist rooms, rec rooms, and… “involuntary long term studio apartments”. They have small, constant long term power needs as well as seasonal needs like climate control. Keeping these grids powered is very important, as failing to do so can invite mental breaks.I recommend wind turbines and batteries for these, as fuel has a nasty tendency to run out during a crisis, and these grids can hold out for a long time on a single battery in most cases. Connect stuff like comms consoles and scanners to these grids. They can be turned off to quickly charge batteries/ save power.
Culinary- These grids power stoves and freezers, as well as lights and basic temperature control. They have large, constant power needs that must be hardened against every possible crisis. Keeping the freezer running during a heat wave is critical. Have a backup fueled generator installed in your kitchen. You will thank me. Avoid water and solar power, as water wheels tend to get blown up in raids and having food rot and not grow at the same time is a huge bummer. If using renewables, remember that the room you built for butchering efficiently can also efficiently store batteries.
Manufacturing- Clumping all the constant draw manufacturing stations together has the benefit centering high amounts of power on one grid, making geothermal generators efficient, and separating all non-critical infrastructure into its own space, which can be left to black out in a power crisis. Water wheels and a combination of wind and solar also shine here, since losing a wheel to raids is not the end of the world. Combining wind and solar, which usually leads to brownouts, can be done effectively here by adding switches to control power to multiple benches.
Central heat/Cooling- In some colonies, seasonal heat requirements may represent a significant draw on resources that last for part of the year. This may include seasonal heating(temperate climates), seasonal cooling (temperate/warm climates), and extra heating or cooling (extreme climates) Heat rails are ideally served by fueled generators, provided resources are available. If they are not, having two switches that control multiple heaters throughout the colony, as well as the equipment that will be powered down to feed them, will work instead.
The Defensive Rail- As stated previously, powered defenses should have their own on-demand power, and be separated from other rails either entirely, or by a switch.
Greenhouses
Greenhouses are the biggest, most power hungry, and most complicated power projects in rimworld. This is fair, because they guarantee a constant food supply. This is the only building where two active rails are neccessary for the stable function of the building. Remember, and eclipse won’t kill your plants. Freezing temperatures and unpowered hydroponics will. Split your greenhouse into two (perhaps three) rails.
The Lighting Rail: ludicrously expensive grow lights should get their own separate rail. Solar shines here, as the lights work during the day, but lights are expensive to power. A mix of geothermal and batteries can also be used. Geothermal gives constant 3600 power. This means that a days worth of power can be stored in three batteries (1800 Wd) If we assume that the generator uses all of its power during the day, and stores all its power during the night at 50% efficiency to supply it during the day, a single generator using two batteries can supply 5400 Watts for 12 hours. Two geothermal generators with 3 batteries can supply 10800 Watts for 12 hours. This is enough for three grow lamps, with one more cheap generator required for a fourth. The same feat would require seven solar generators, and would be vulnerable to eclipses. extra generation here can be used to power smaller lights, but nothing critical.
The Life Support Rail: This rail runs hydroponics and constant draw climate control. It should be separated from the Lighting Rail, and should be powered by Wind or Fueled generation, or its own geothermal plant This hardens your food supply against climate events. Since optimal hydroponics consume 1680 power, two indoor hydroponics bays will eat up a geo plant by themselves.
The Heat Rail(optional): In some climates, it may make sense to put heat on its own separate system, a third rail, to make budgeting easier and make the most of a fueled generator. A single generator can run five heaters, and most of a sixth. That means if you need seasonal heat in say, an ice sheet, you can use this third rail to run the extra greenhouse heaters, and more, and make the most of the extra chemfuel you are burning.